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Chapter Four - page 2
It was not a success, my father was not one to give only half measure; there was no time for study after a day with the boys for of course he did not confine himself just to teaching navigation but joined in after school hours in all the activities of the college. I recall him telling me of how much he enjoyed ‘messing about in boats’ on the river with the boys.
I am not at all sure just why my father gave the experiment such a short trial, he left Pangbourne College on the 29th of July 1924 after only one term, on leaving Claude was given a letter which can only be taken as a recommendation. He told me how much he enjoyed his time there and so his decision taken so quickly is something of a mystery, for with it went all hopes of a legal career.
On the 21st of August 1924 Claude joined as Fourth Officer the ‘Edinburgh Castle’, by now middle aged but a ship designed in a more graceful age. The ‘Edinburgh Castle’ was the last in the line of ships developed from the original design of the Union liner ‘Norman’ of 1894, as a class in my opinion unsurpassed in beauty of line.
My father’s favourite ship was probably The ‘Edinburgh Castle’, he was to sail on her for longer than any other ship save the ‘Sagitta’. The Master was Captain Harry Strong, he became himself something of a Company legend, living to a great age it was always said that he was the only person ever to make a profit from the Company’s pension fund.
| Nautical College reference for G.S.G. Keen. |
This painting of the ‘Edinburgh Castle’ always hung in our drawing room, father always said he didn’t like it, I think it a particularly fine painting.
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On her way to London where she had been accepted as a student by the Royal Academy of Music was a young girl of twenty, she had boarded the ‘Edinburgh Castle’ at Cape Town after a tearful farewell from her parents. Born in George, where her father ran his pharmacy shop she had from a very young age shown her talent for music, in particular the piano and violin.
George was then a beautiful town of extraordinarily wide streets shaded by overhanging oak trees, beyond the fences of which stood whitewashed Cape Dutch styled houses set in green lawns. In the shadow of the Outeniqua mountains from the slopes of which could be seen the sea, down which flowed the streams that ran in culverts down George’s streets, it was not far short of paradise for a girl to grow up in. Holidays were spent at the Wilderness, then as the name implies, a wilderness of sand dunes and sheltered lagoons where the children played and messed about in boats. South Africa as a country did not exist, George was a town in the Cape Province a colony of the British Empire whose inhabitants carried British passports. The Anglo-Boer War was still fresh in everyone’s mind, fortunately common sense and diplomacy brought about, if not reconciliation then acceptance by the Afrikaans and English speaking peoples. On the 31st of May 1910 the Act of Union by joining the Transvaal, Orange Free State Republics with Natal and the Cape created the Union of South Africa.
Ruth’s father, James Henry Morris had emigrated to the Cape with his wife Katherine sometime after their marriage at St. Bride’s church, Knightsbridge in London and before 1898 when their first child, Elizabeth Gwendoline (Gwen) was born at Outshoorn. James Henry was a licensed apothecary and had obtained employment with a chemist in the Karoo town noted for the ostrich farms. Possibly James was provoked into crossing the Outeniqua mountains by the Boer War, Outshoorn is a predominantly Afrikaans town whilst George on the greener side of the mountains was English. There was however another more attractive inducement; the inscription on the gable of James’s pharmacy in George proudly states that the business was established in 1902 and I think we can take it that this was the year the family settled in George. In 1902 George, the Afrikaans word ‘dorp’ is very descriptive, there is no English equivalent but it describes a settlement important to the area, larger than a village but barely a town. Until James Henry established his business George probably did not warrant a chemist shop. and established his own pharmacy Katherine Clara their second child was born in 1900, the year James set up shop in George saw the birth of Ada Dorothea (Dorothy), in 1904 Ruth arrived and finally, the youngest, Alice Margery (Marge) in 1907.
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