Pandora’s Docks
Words Sean Christie
At the bottom of the city, as everyone knows, lies the Cape Town harbour. It is a site that is simultaneously huge and tiny – huge in area and in the scale of its barnacled clientele, but at the same time tiny in our collective imagination. And in this regard it is really tiny: absurdly, unaccountably so – hence Pauline’s doubts that I would ever find The Ship Society’s premises. I did, however, find it and a great deal of interest besides in this fascinating margent between the city and the sea.
South Arm Road, on which both traffic circles described by Pauline lie, is the dividing line between the tourist-friendly V&A Waterfront and the clanka-clank realities of the working docks. On one side you get the five-star Cape Grace Hotel, its design clearly meant to echo a ship at berth and on the other side, in Duncan Dock, is the real thing – great ocean-faring beasts up to three rugby fields in length – like The Jupiter, a container ship whose hull loomed above me one Saturday afternoon, the paint and metal rusted into the variegations of its planetary namesake. Just before that a bibbed guard had waved me to a stop. ‘Where you going?’ he asked, while at the same time waving me through, on to a stretch of road complicated by railway tracks, booms and randomly strewn dolosse (20-ton concrete structures shaped like children’s jacks, designed to protect harbour walls and breakwaters from wave damage).
The real docklands, and in proof of the fact I was soon gagging for air – the briny smell that pervades the city on certain still, warm evenings has its origins here, among the fisheries and the close, deep waters of the docks. Later, when my olfactory senses had numbed a bit, I came to consider it part of the harbour’s rough charm. The members of The Ship Society had gathered, as they do every Saturday afternoon, to exchange shipping news, related books, DVDs and what have you. Alcohol flowed from the bar and the walls were cluttered with nautical bric-a-brac – ship’s wheels, a stern light, advertisements for the Union-Castle line. The average age was about 65.
‘We grew up in the days of the Union-Castle line,’ said George, a relative babe at 58. ‘Back then their ships carried everything from mail, to people, to Cape apples. Imagine the arrivals hall of a great airport – that’s what it was like at the dockside when the Union-Castle ships arrived … times 10.’ With that, George hustled me into the library. ‘There’s a quote somewhere here which sums it up quite nicely. Aha, here it is, Mailships of the Union-Castle Line by Brian Ingpen (he’s one of our members you know).’ Flicking through the book George found what he was looking for – a passage in which the writer Laurens van der Post recalls the sailing of the last Union-Castle ship in 1977. ‘I have not yet made my peace with the event and doubt I ever shall … Table Bay is still full of shipping but not the kind which made it, for me, one of the most exciting harbours in the world and history.’
George looked like he was in agreement and yet, in a nearby room, a dozen members were ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ as slides of container ships, gassers and synchro-lifts appeared on a white screen. Clearly some transfer of affection had taken place from the good old days to the modern era of containerisation. ‘It’s not like it was,’ said George, shrugging. ‘But we love ships. What can I say?’
Continuing along Duncan Road, which skirts the edge of Duncan Dock for several kilometres, I recalled that all of it – tarred road, rail-lines, cold storage warehousing – had been built on land reclaimed from the ocean in the 1930s and 40s.Revealing markers of the extent of the ocean’s original reach are Beach Road in lower Woodstock, as well as the Jan van Riebeeck statue at the bottom of Adderley Street – imagine whirling seagulls and rolling surf in place of the Eastern Boulevard flyover and its freight of cars!
These days the Atlantic remains a mere flicker behind a spiky metal fence, the waters stilled by the arm of a breakwater. To get among the synchro-lifts and the hard-hatted stevedores (those who appreciate language will love being among the vernacular of shipping), you must don a hard hat yourself and present a permit from the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) at one of the many boomed access points. While a few diehard enthusiasts continue to apply for, and in most cases receive, new permits each year (there’s a 70-year-old artist who loves to sketch oil rigs, as well as a poet, a maritime expert and a handful of fanatical photographers), the fact is the TNPA does not want Joe Public wandering beneath crane-loads of shipping freight. It is better, therefore, to carry on down Duncan Road towards the forest of masts that signals the Royal Cape Yacht Club.
I met Colin Farlam, the club’s resident historian, in their rather empty and unembellished lounge, which exits to a cramped and rowdy bar on the one side and on the other to a wooden deck overlooking a few hundred yachts at quay, their halyards so dense the bolder lines of distant tankers almost disappear.
‘Don’t be fooled,’ he said, ‘the Royal part of our name didn’t come about because the queen snipped a ribbon and broke out the bubbly or anything. It was bestowed by the military in the days before the First World War. They thought that by granting the Royal appellation they could begin to conscript members of the club as soon as trouble started.’
The club, home of Shosholoza, South Africa’s 2007 America’s Cup challenger, has clearly gone to lengths to dispel any notions of colonial snootiness. Once a week during summer they offer Twilight Racing, open to the public at a cost of R20. ‘There are boats waiting to take people out and afterwards they can enjoy the deck and the bar,’ said Farlam. The public can also rent out the club’s premises for functions and parties. But access to the club restaurant is limited and one must still be signed in by a member. This poses some problems for those who want a bit of a nibble after a bout of sailing.
The answer, since 1989, has always been Panama Jacks’ Lobster Tavern & Sushi Bar on the western side of the basin. ‘If you’re coming along Duncan Road from Cape Town,’ said the manageress, ‘you’ll see a very big boat up on the stocks on your left. Go past it and turn left after the warehouses.’
The premises were originally intended as a boatyard for the RCYC, but in 1989, Panama Jacks’ owner, Quentin Pittaway, saw the opportunity to provide dock workers with a cheap lunch of crayfish and steak. ‘Back then,’ reminisces Pittaway, ‘we were selling them for R35 a kilogram.’ You won’t find crayfish at those prices anymore, but when you consider he pays the same rent per metre as his industrial neighbours you’ll wonder how he stays afloat at all. Late lunch among stacks of containers is a heady experience (although somewhat blinding given that the sun comes at you off any number of reflective surfaces), whereas candlelight in conjunction with a low roof of drooping flags produces a cabin-like intimacy at night.
Sadly, both Panama Jacks’ and the RCYC are under pressure to relocate. The Gas and Oil Alliance of South Africa is eyeing their basin, and a study is under way to determine, among other things, what to do about the 17 remaining years on the yacht club’s lease. The TNPA fails to understand how institutions could be happy in such close proximity to the champing of heavy industry, missing the point that their locations have always been part of the charm.
Tighter security restrictions in the wake of September 11 could also see the members of The Ship Society moved further from their beloved ships and, when that time comes, the hobbyists will have to sketch and click their shutters from a distance. Exclusion from Cape Town’s oldest industrial hub will then be complete – a sad day given its importance as a place of the imagination from the earliest days of the city’s history. But for now the harbour is still accessible.
Visit it in the late afternoon and you may experience a light which, according to Cape Town poet Stephen Watson, has the power to transform:
widening outwards, even lasting when
a gull
disturbs the basin’s mirror, when it clears the breakwater
and you can see, far out in a silence which now becalms the bay,
the yachts, going about, have sails more full of sunset light than
wind
PORTS OF CALL
PANAMA JACKS’
Cnr Quay 500 and Eastern Mole Road
Cape Town Docks
021 447 3992 / 021 448 1080
www.panamajacks.net
THE ROYAL CAPE YACHT CLUB
(About midway down) Duncan Road
Cape Town Docks
021 421 1354
www.rcyc.co.za
A number of sailing courses are run from the yacht club premises. Contact the club for details or click on the helpful Yellow Pages icon on their website. To eat at the clubhouse restaurant you must be signed in by a member.
THE SHIP SOCIETY SOUTH AFRICA
Duncan Road, Cape Town Docks (the directions are complicated, so consult the map on their webpage before setting out)
021 434 5528
www.shipsociety.co.za
For a mere R260 a year, members gain access to the library and to date they can still facilitate permits for certain areas of the harbour. Most beneficially, you will be able to tap into the experiences of a generation that fondly remembers a different, more accessible era of shipping.
IZIKO MARITIME CENTRE
Union-Castle House, Dock Road,
V&A Waterfront
021 405 2880
info@iziko.org.za
THE TRANSNET NATIONAL PORT AUTHORITY OF SOUTH AFRICA (TNPA)
At the very end of South Arm Road
Cape Town Docks (cnr of ‘A’ Berth)
021 449 3408/2612
The Transnet National Ports Authority contributes generously to maritime education, notably to shipping columnist Brian Ingpen’s Maritime Department in Simon’s Town. It is hoped the TNPA may one day consent to a viewing platform, from which the public can keep in touch with the fascinating world of shipping. Those who would like to add their support for a viewing platform in the Cape Town harbour, a feature provided by many international harbours wishing to keep the public interested in shipping, may contact Brian Ingpen at brian@capeports.co.za.