The Story of the “Kadie”

by Brian Porter, who first wrote and published this on the Malgas Pont Group Facebook page

The Kadie was a 158-tonne schooner built for the firm of Barry and Nephews in 1859. She was built in Clyde, Scotland by Archibald Denny of Dumbarton and was 35.4m.

Her delivery voyage spent 81 days at sea with the “gallant” Captain Fowler in command and she arrived in Port Beaufort on 26 September 1859.

Feeling her way up the Breede River, the first trip to Malgas took two hours and 20 minutes. When the Kadie left Port Beaufort, the only non-Barry on board was the 15-year-old future president of the Free State, Francis Willem Reitz. She arrived “amid the firing of cannons and the waving of flags…”

She spent two weeks in Malgas and returned to Cape Town with four passengers and 100 sheep.

The Kadie continued her coastal trade with trips to Knysna to load wood, to Algoa Bay and a trip to Mauritius with a cargo of ostriches destined for Australia. Her regular trip was from Cape Town to Mossel Bay and then crossing the bar at the mouth of the Breede.

On average she carried aloes, wool, sheep and grain to the value of £150 000 a year from the depot at Malgas to Cape Town. It is estimated that the Kadie doubled Cape Agulhas 240 times.

All this came to an end when she struck a rock at the western edge of the Breede River mouth early on Friday morning, 17 November 1865. Although she held together until the Sunday, there was no hope of refloating her and the wreck has been lying there for 152 years.

The loss of the Kadie affected not only the Barrys, but the entire Overberg economy. The livelihoods of Breede valley farmers who supplied the Cape Town market changed overnight.