SAHRA Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage
August 15:
If you have walked along Blouberg Beach over the last few days heading towards Eerstesteen you may have come across a strange object lying in the surf. It is a rubber bale, one of many to have been washed up along our coast over the last few years though this is the first to be reported in Cape Town. Most of the other reported bales have been found along the South Coast, Mossel Bay, Knysna, Port Elizabeth, Sedgefield and the Cape St Francis area, though a few have been washed up along the West Coast near Paternoster.
They are thought to come from the British freighter 'Helmspey', which was torpedoed 11 miles south of Cape St Francis by a German submarine (U-516) on 11 February 1943. The ship was allegedly transporting around 1 457 tons of these rubber bales from Ceylon to the UK. There is also a chance that some of these bales come from the British merchant ship 'Boringia' which was carrying a cargo of rubber bales from South East Asia when she was torpedoed and sunk by U-boat (U-159) on 7th October 1942 far off the Western Cape.
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