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PROLOGUE

The ‘Transvaal Castle’, the last passenger ship to be built for the Union-Castle Line’s mail service to South Africa, inaugurated by the Union Line in 1853 was on passage from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. The normally bustling ship hushed save for the soft hum of machinery, for with the exception of the duty watch the vessel slept, it being close on midnight, it would be docking at Port Elizabeth at six o’clock in the morning.

Few if anyone would have noticed that the great ship was slowing down, Captain Norman Lloyd followed by the Chief Officer, a lonely procession of two made their way aft through silent passageways and seemingly deserted decks until they reached their destination.

The propellers stopped, the pride of the Union-castle Line’s mail fleet drifted along her course line, a luminous trail of churning water plainly visible to the two men standing above in an otherwise impenetrably dark sea. A muted bleep on the after tanoy, Captain Lloyd opened the mahogany casket and scattered the grey ash over the stern, the ship was in position Latitude 34 degrees 41 minutes south, 021 degrees 54 minutes east, almost due south of Mossel Bay anchorage. Briefly joining the swirling wind about the ship’s stern the ash disappeared from sight as it was swallowed by the sea.

With a single great below from her typhoon horn in farewell the propellers of the ‘Transvaal Castle’ resumed turning, the ship would soon be up to maximum speed to make that all important arrival time. Captain Lloyd had performed the last service for old ‘Mickey Mouse’ as he had been affectionately called when out of earshot by hundreds of officers of the mail fleet. Known more formerly as Captain Claude Stanley Griffiths Keen, Extra Master, Member of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners, Member of the Institute of Transport and Member of the Institute of Navigation who for thirty years had devoted his life to watching over the Company’s eight mail ships and the welfare of thousands of men employed afloat and ashore. Now he had joined his beloved wife Ruth in sight of the coastline of her childhood. It was his last request of the Company he had served so faithfully; this is his story.

In memory of my dearest sister, Penelope.