Harbours of Memory

HARBOURS OF MEMORY A book of personal experiences along South African and other romantic waterfronts, odd characters encountered by the author and the strange tales they told. BY LAWRENCE G. GREEN Author of “On Wings of Fire”, “To the River’s End”, “Full Many a Glorious Morning” and other books on Africa FRONT COVER If you love the waterfront atmosphere these harbours of Lawrence Green’s memories will give you hours of enchantment. Readers of Lawrence Green’s previous books are aware that this experienced author shuns the well known stories and seeks the strange, weird and curious episodes that other writers have missed. His characters are not always respectable, he finds many of his people in bars and taverns, and their behaviour is often riotous and abandoned; hence every page is filled with unexpected and fascinating material. Most of these harbours are in Southern Africa. The book opens in Table Bay and there are tales of Simon’s Bay, Mossel Bay, Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, East London, Port St. John’s and Durban. East African harbours form part of this rich narrative and there are meetings with magicians in North Africa. Two of the most vivid chapters in the book deal with Gibraltar and Marseilles. Lawrence Green has a way of passing on to his readers his own enjoyment of life’s pleasures and surprises. You will remember these adventures, including the wine and food. CONTENTS 1 The Road to the Harbour 2 Jaggery and Tamarinds 3 Skeleton Harbour 4 Old Naval Base 5 Harbours on the Veld 6 Aloes and Oysters 7 Bay of Lost Cargoes 8 By Wagon to the Kowie 9 River Harbour 10 The Wild Coast 11 Point Road 12 Ports of the Portuguese 13 Haven of Peace 14 Rum Harbour 15 Harbours on the Nile 16 Suez Magic 17 Gibraltar 18 Cous-Cous and Cobras 19 Gateway to Africa 20 London’s Dockland have vanished for ever. Most of the seamen’s canteens and saloons have gone, too, but there are times when the voices and the music I heard in the sailortown of my youth come back to my ears. I find myself dreaming my way through the centuries in that atmosphere while Neptune’s heroes stream past the dock gates to slake their thirsts as they have always done CHAPTER ONE in the taverns of Cape Town. THE ROAD TO THE HARBOUR Table Bay washed the fringe of the Dock Road at the turn of the century DOCK ROAD was a roaring waterfront and long afterwards. That old water- very close to Table Bay early this front from the Castle to Mouille Point century when I first passed over the had not changed much since the cobblestones bound for the harbour. Dutch departed. The town between Sailormen all seemed to be going in its frontiers of Buitengracht and the opposite direction, heading for the Buitenkant still held many buildings thousand delights of the land. I can designed and adorned by master still see a ghostly panorama of sailing craftsmen long ago and a little of the ships off the broad thoroughfare of beauty remains to this day. Granite Dock Road, square-rigged ships that cobblestones that came from Scandi- wooden jetties where coasters landed navia as ballast in timber-laden their cargoes. Little factories and the sailing ships are still there, too, and I shops of all sorts of craftsmen only wish that other relics had flourished there. Brewing is left to proved indestructible. However, I the financial giants nowadays but the have my own memories and the tales inspiring aroma of beer came from I heard from bygone seafarers and many small premises early this observant characters of the old har- century. If you had barley, hops and bour. the right sort of water, mash tuns, copper dome, coolers and casks, you Cape Town lost the sea and many could go into business. Those old waterfront buildings between the brewers made brown ales, bitter and wars of this century. I met old citi- mild beers with their own distinctive zens who could remember the storm- colours, strengths and flavours, lashed waters of Table Bay beating differing one from another like the against the Castle walls. Not so long wines of various estates. One of the ago the sea almost reached Garlick’s large breweries stood almost on the store and in that area you could smell sands of Woodstock beach. Every the fresh tang of seaweed on the member of the staff had a glass on rocks at low spring tides. House- his desk and two bottles of ale were wives walked down to Rogge Bay supplied free every day. Some and bought line fish for their ordered more and got it. Martienssen luncheons. Townsfolk strolled on of “tickey beer” fame had a brewery them go and unleashed the fox- in Queen Victoria Street, of all terriers; a fierce sport that no longer places. Stott brewed at Green Point disturbs the sedate city of today. “to avoid the noxious vapours of the Shipwrecked sailors and other city”. Malay coopers passed on their mariners have had a home near Dock secrets to their sons, using their eyes Road for more than a century; and as they planned the curves of there, as a young reporter, I listened to wholesome hand-made casks. I their adventures, the tales of men who watched their descendants still at had faced the ordeals of the sea work in recent years under aged unafraid. Along the waterfront their vines in the Somerset Road yards. language was fearful, their behaviour riotous and abandoned. How well the Along the Dock Road or in the landlords in the harbour area knew seafaring streets leading out of it there their customers! Every seafaring were not only brewers and wine nation had its own favourite bar; sea- merchants but cigar makers and men from all the ports of the British pawnbrokers, fish curers, ship Isles, from Norway and Portugal, chandlers and consuls. Drysdale the could toast the barmaids in their own diver had a shed in Dock Road language and feel at home as long as towards the end of the last century, their money lasted. close to the fish jetty and Kamp’s ice factory. Stable boys at Attwell’s Billy Biddlecombe catered for blue- bakery caught rats in cages, then let jackets at the Royal Navy Hotel while Germans from the Woermann steam- engraved mirrors reflected the colours ers went to the Hansa or the Hamburg. of the bottles; walls were covered with Union-Castle firemen paraded Bree flowered paper; doors and windows Street with bands and pantomime were decorated with the proud elephants made of canvas, raising symbols of the liquor trade, from money for drinks at the Fireman’s sheaves of barley to vine leaves. Arms. There was the Cambrian for Some places went in for stained glass, Welsh sailors who came from Cardiff so that the drinks, the polished copper in full-riggers loaded with coal. Irish measures, the porcelain and brass beer shellbacks rolled joyfully in and out of pulls, the lamps - and the customers - McCullie’s pub the Limerick, or made up a kaleidoscope worthy of the Murphy’s renowned Ship Hotel. An brush of a Hogarth. But against this Italian named Dimaio welcomed conventional background there were fellow-countrymen at the Sicilia in all sorts of curios and oddities Riebeek Street, while the Queen’s at gathered at the ends of the earth and the dock gates entertained all the sea- presented to attractive barmaids by faring nations as it does to this day. Of seafaring admirers. You could find course the bars, canteens, inns and anything from a Mexican stone idol to taverns of this quarter were all cosmo- Japanese netsukes in those waterfront politan, but each one had its own pubs. Murphy of the Ship Hotel went strong personality. The atmosphere in in for small panoramas, forerunners of most was Victorian. Splendid the cinema. He also had peep-shows; seamen dropped their coppers into the hands with Mick Sheehan and then say box and were a little disappointed decisively: “You red-headed old rat - I when they stared at Queen Victoria’s don’t want to speak to you”. At that coronation with all the peers and horse-drawn period Koko had great bishops in perspective. Battles were fun stopping hansam-cabs and other better and execution scenes best of all. vehicles outside the Star with a loud and authoritative “Whoa!” Drivers Parrots were kept in a number of pubs; shouted back and their angry remarks Amazonian parrots with exquisite added to Koko’s vocabulary. Koko green feathers touched with rose; endeared himself to customers by African grey parrots with red tails and calling to the Cockney barmaid: “Let long-tailed Macaws. African greys yer ‘hand tremble Liz - give the gent a were the most amusing talkers and proper tot fer ‘is money.” And Mick Sheehan of the Star Hotel in business often picked up during a dull Waterkant Street owned one that was evening when Koko shouted supposed to have come to the Cape in persuasively: “Hany horders ? Give a man-o’war early last century. This yer horders fer the love o’ Mike”. bald parrot Koko looked the part However, there was a rival in the same though its longevity was probably street at the Table Bay Hotel owned by exaggerated. “Give the fellow a George de Lacy. This old parrot made groat”, Koko often remarked, clear clicking sounds in time with the piano proof that it had lived in the days of and danced on its perch.

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