SAHRA Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage
Cawdor Castle, wrecked in Namibia
August 4:
“This day in our shipwreck and aeronautical wreck history”
1782: Grosvenor, this wooden-hulled British East Indiaman wrecked in a gully near the Tezana River mouth, in Lambazi Bay in the Eastern Cape. Of the approximately 150 people on board, about 130 made it to shore. However, over the coming weeks, starvation, struggle, and survivors finding greener pastures with the local people would lead to only 18 survivors making it back to Cape Town. Subsequent searches for survivors, and often searches for survivors of other wrecks, resulted in finding European men and women living happily amongst the Mpondo, of which at least four families were confirmed to have come from the wreck of the Grosvenor. The Grosvenor has been the subject of many artworks and popular books, and the wreck site has been subjected to many salvage attempts over the years. The most prominent, by Captain Sidney Turner, who in 1880 blasted the nearby rocks and wreck site, where they uncovered a variety of items. Some of these ended up in museums, such as the Durban Local History Museum, where Sidney Turner’s famous goblet, smelted from silver rupees, is housed, as well as two of the Grosvenor’s cannons. However, most of the items were sold by Sidney Turner which, allowed him to start his own company. As a result of this, his relationship with Chief Mqikela of Eastern Pondoland improved over the years and he was chosen to start a new harbour so that Chief Mqikela could compete with Port St Johns, which his brother, Nqiliso, chief of Western Pondoland, had ceded to the British government. Port Grosvenor was therefore founded and became a thriving port under its Port Captain Sidney Turner. However, within a year the Cape government claimed his deal with Chief Mqikela to be illegal and although Port Grosvenor had just started to thrive, it faded into obscurity. The wreck site was most recently dived on by archaeologists in 1999.
1824: San Antonio, this wooden-hulled British East Indiaman became stranded after a strong gale on Woodstock Beach in Table Bay in the Western Cape. It was later condemned.
1860: Perimede, this wooden-hulled brig was run ashore in a leaky condition and wrecked near Dwarskerbos, just north of the Berg River mouth in the Western Cape.
1862: Charlotte A Morrison, this sailing barque was put in for repairs in Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape when its cargo caught alight. As the efforts to extinguish the blaze seemed futile, it was run ashore. It burned over the next two days until all that remained of it was below the waterline.
1878: H D Storer/H D Stower, the sailing barque wrecked after its cables parted in an east-north-easterly gale on Back Beach in Durban in KwaZulu-Natal.
1880: Eliza, this sailing brig caught alight whilst its cargo of coal was being unloaded in East London in the Eastern Cape. Very little is known about this incident, but it is believed that it burned out to become a wreck.
1914: Douglas Dodib, this vessel wrecked in Port St. Johns in the Eastern Cape. Very little is known about this vessel.
1972: A SAAF Douglas DC-3 (registration no. 6850) crashed near the Swartkop Airbase in Gauteng. Very little is known about this incident.
1991: Oceanos, this Greek passenger liner foundered off Mpame Point near Coffee Bay in the Eastern Cape. It set out from East London for Durban in a storm, encountering 10 m tall waves. After an explosion on the 3rd of August, believed to be the result of a faulty ventilation pipe becoming flooded with seawater, it lost power and its engine room started flooding. The captain and crew abandoned ship without informing the passengers, in an apparent effort to get help. The heroes of the event turned out to be the entertainment staff who started a proper evacuation procedure. In all, the 571 people that were on board were saved by a combination of 16 rescue helicopters and the ships lifeboats. The captain and crew were reprimanded for their negligent behaviour. The wreck now lies at a depth just shy of 100 m whilst being battered by a strong current, although it has been visited by a select few brave and highly skilled technical divers.
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