Durban - It is exactly 40 years since the last of the line, the SA Vaal, formerly the Transvaal Castle, set sail from Cape Town on the final voyage to Southampton.
The seaborne mail service from England to South Africa, inaugurated 160 years ago in 1857, ended in 1977.
For many who had travelled in the ships with the lavender hulls and red-and-black funnels, their demise was a sad occasion. They remember when “going overseas” was a less frantic and rushed experience than it is today. It was even, at times, a restful experience.
They remember when much of the enjoyment of travelling to the UK via Las Palmas or Madeira, or via the east coast and Suez through the Mediterranean, was found simply in the experience of “getting there”. Shipboard life could either be leisurely or energetic, depending on whether you decided to sit in a deck-chair watching the dolphins and the flying fish, or to take part in vigorous walks along the deck, strenuous table-tennis or slower deck quoits.
These decisions, like what to select from the lavish lunch menu, might have been the most difficult problems you had to face all day.
Seventy years into the past is perhaps the limit for most people’s memory of the names of the ships on which they travelled. But first, let us go as far back as 1899, the year in which Winston Churchill sailed from England to South Africa in the old Dunottar Castle.
The Anglo-Boer War just about to start, and Churchill was travelling as a budding war correspondent for the Morning Post. In his book My Early Life, Churchill describes in entertaining fashion the frustration that he and the British Army officers suffered as, in the lap of luxury, yet with no radio or cell-phones, they spent 20 days without access to news of what was happening in South Africa.
Fast forward to 1947 when Union Castle was one of the first mail-ship lines to resume their service after World War II. In January, the Capetown Castle, the first of the passenger mail ships to be reconditioned to pre-war standards, sailed for the Cape.
In May, the Llandovery Castle resumed the service through the Suez Canal, along the east coast of Africa, and home again via the west coast. Another three classic vessels of yesteryear were reconditioned, the Carnarvon, the Winchester and the Arundel castles.
Then two bigger ships were to be launched. The first was the Pretoria Castle, named and launched on August 19, 1947, by “Ouma” Smuts, wife of Field-Marshall Smuts, the South African prime minister.
She pressed a button in her home at Irene, near Pretoria, and the electric impulses were carried all the way to Belfast, about 10 000km across the ocean. These signals caused a bottle of South African wine to break on the bow of the ship and the ship itself to start sliding down the slipway.
The Edinburgh Castle was named and launched on 16 October 16,1947, by Princess Margaret, her first major public engagement.
In 1952 two new ships, the Rhodesia Castle and the Kenya Castle, were launched.
One must look ahead now to 1955, a year in which a potentially disastrous power struggle affected the Union-Castle Line, although most passengers were probably quite ignorant of what was happening.
The Clan Line and Union-Castle announced a scheme for the amalgamation of shareholdings in the two companies. Actually, it was a virtual take-over by Clan Line.
This company would control 60% of the new set up, whereas Union-Castle would control only 40%. The deliberations lasted from October 1955 until February 1956. While Union-Castle staff initially reeled from the shock of the takeover, in effect, passengers suffered hardly at all.
It seemed, on the contrary, that something of a new golden age began for those travelling on the lavender-grey ships.
In early December 1957, the new improved Pendennis Castle suffered a farcical, botched attempt at launching when the 16 men who were supposed to knock the chocks out from under the ship to allow it to slide down the slipway, suddenly went on strike and refused to do so. However, the Pendennis was successfully launched on Christmas Eve. So successful was the new Pendennis Castle that in 1958 the shipping press unanimously voted it "Ship of the Year”.
Early in 1959, while the Pendennis was arriving at the Cape on her maiden voyage, it was announced that in June a great new liner, the Windsor Castle, was to be launched.
On Tuesday June 23, 1959, all was ready at the Birkenhead shipyard. The Queen Mother was scheduled to name and launch the vessel at 1.30pm.
At 1.25pm she suffered a severe nosebleed. Consternation reigned, but the calmest person there was the Queen Mother… The spectators knew nothing, and only a minute or so later, having recovered, the royal launched the ship.
All these famous ships had several things in common: the provision for families to enjoy themselves on board in a socially relaxed, non-racial atmosphere.
But perhaps the most memorable of all the entertainments was the “Crossing the Line Ceremony”.
It has long been a seafaring tradition that those passengers who have never before crossed the equator must submit to a form of initiation before being admitted to the august membership of those who have.
Victims were usually made to sit in a hinged chair conveniently close to the ship’s swimming pool (in lieu of the sea) where as a punishment for their “crime” of never having crossed the line before, their faces were covered in some revolting mixture preparatory to being “shaved” with a large wooden “razor”. Then the chair was tipped up and the unfortunate initiate tumbled backwards into the water.
The final episode in the story of the Union-Castle Line ships took place in 1977, when the SA Vaal left Table Bay on its final voyage northwards to the accompaniment of a band playing on the quay, tugs shooting fountains of water in farewell salute and, no doubt, the tears of many onlookers.
With the advent of containerisation and the ever-increasing cost of fuel, sea travel had become uneconomic to run and the golden era of stately,
lavender-hulled ships had sadly ended.