Durban's maritime heritage
THIS Saturday, September 24, we observe Heritage Day. It’s a national holiday and a time when we should pause to reflect on our respective heritages, which means different things to different people.
We South Africans used to call ourselves the Rainbow Nation on account of the many different peoples that make up our nation. It’s so easy to continue lumping us into broad groups such as black, white, coloured and Indian, which ought to have been booted into touch 22 years ago but which sadly still rears its head mostly on government forms and notices.
What has all this to do with a shipping and maritime page, you may ask? Well, quite a lot in fact, because a large portion of our population owe their existence in South Africa to ships.
Ships that sailed from India to Durban, bringing the tens of thousands of Indian settlers who came as indentured labour or as traders, of whom the majority remained here to create an industrious and highly important segment of our nation. Just think of the contribution that this community has made to the well-being of this country we call home.
Prior to that other settlers arrived here in Durban by ship from Great Britain, infusing the population with strains of English, Scot, Irish and Welsh blood.
To them we owe the city and port of Durban, and the many small towns that sprang up in what soon became a colony.
Further south other ships brought English settlers to the east Cape, followed by soldiers to fight the frontier wars. These ships helped create Port Elizabeth, while others took German and English settlers to Port Rex, later renamed East London.
Settlers
On the western side of the country, more ships had earlier arrived with French and Dutch and other European settlers who came to the Cape in groups or individually over periods of several centuries, bringing with them the skills and the energy that was to help transform the land into the gardens that would feed the fleets of merchant ships sailing for the Dutch East Indies and British India.
Ships returning from the east brought other groups of people who had no choice in their resettlement – the slaves of what is now Malaysia and Indonesia and whose descendants add such a unique character to the western Cape.
Other ships deposited African slaves from East Africa and Madagascar, seized by slavers and set free by ships of the Royal Navy.
One example of this is the Zanzibari community of Chatsworth, formerly of the Bluff, who were brought ashore by RN ships after intercepting the slave ships.
All these people infused their ideas, their energy, initiatives, their blood and their culture into this land, where it mixed with those many races who had already lived here for millennia. That is what we will be considering this Saturday, thinking with pride and joy of our own histories and background, of what our respective ancestors have contributed to this land and its history and its culture.
It was wise of our leaders in 1995 who agreed to keep a day to remember the past – while moving away from the narrow perspective of a singular Shaka Day celebration – into a wider, more encompassing celebration of our broader South African culture.
In the Durban Maritime Museum there are many wonderful exhibits that reflect our earlier maritime history and background. What is lacking, however, is material to show off some of the diverse shipping that helped shape our destinies – models of ships such as the Truro which brought the first Indian indentured labourers to these shores. Models of others like the Minerva, bringing a group of Byrne settlers in the early 1850s, which ran aground at the end of the Bluff but whose timbers were used to build a new ship – one of Durban’s earlier ship building exercises.
The writer has no authority in saying this, but perhaps the respective communities can assist by addressing these oversights and ensuring that the museum can better reflect our overall maritime history.
Vasco da Gama
The Portuguese community has ensured that the exploits of the early Portuguese sailors are not overlooked. A mounted bust of Bartolomeu Dias has long been on display on Festival Island next to the Maritime Museum. It is hoped too that soon a similar bust of the equally important explorer, Vasco da Gama, can be mounted close by.
The bronze bust of Da Gama was commissioned by the Portuguese government through Dr Gomez Samuel who was Consul for Portugal in Durban in 1997. It was to honour Vasco da Gama’s naming of Natal on Christmas Day, 500 years earlier in 1497, an event that sadly went largely unremarked at the time.
Sculpted by Durban-born Barbara Siedle, the bust is residing at the Portuguese Club waiting for what is hoped to become its new home and plinth on Festival Island adjacent to the Maritime Museum.
Lady in White
Barbara Siedle, the sculptor responsible for the Vasco da Gama bust, had earlier in 1995 completed the casting of a 2 metre high full figure bronze of the Lady in White.
The Lady in White refers to Perla Siedle Gibson, who was born in Durban in 1888 and whose father, Otto Siedle, was a prominent shipping man.
A musician and an artist, she took to singing to troopships and then naval ships as they sailed from Durban harbour during the years of World War 2. The songs were those familiar to soldiers and sailors going off to war and it was a moment of pure nostalgia and joy.
Dressed always in white, with a large red hat and a megaphone in her hand, she become an iconic figure on the quayside singing farewell to the troops and sailors as they headed out into unknown dangers.
It is said that she sang to more than 5 000 ships and over a quarter of a million Allied servicemen.
A year after her death in 1971, aged 82, the men of the Royal Navy donated a bronze plaque which was erected to the memory of Perla Siedle Gibson on the North Pier, where it remained until the widening process some years ago. This has still to be returned to public viewing.
Meanwhile, on completion of the statue this was removed from the Natal Technikon Foundry where it was cast, to the wharf side of N shed in Durban harbour.
The move was to coincide with the visit to Durban of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, whose Royal Yacht HMS Britannia was alongside. The queen had agreed to a private viewing of the statue.
After the visit in March 1995 the statue was taken to the upper level on T jetty where, on August 15 – VJ Day, the monument was officially unveiled in its first temporary position. It was always meant to be eventually placed on the new North Pier.
With the pier’s reopening still uncertain, the statue will now, 21 years later, be moving in the next week to its new, temporary, home at the Durban Maritime Museum, where it will go on display for the public to see.
It is planned to have an unveiling ceremony early in October – details of this will be announced in the next week. The public will be welcome to attend and to meet the artist Barbara Siedle and to hear some of the songs that her famous aunt sang in Durban harbour.