As my father mentions in his memoirs, for his whole life he collected picture postcards of ships and masses of information about them. He also collected various odds and ends about ships and shipping, and was particularly fond of Union Castle Line memorabilia. His family was aware of this and so many odds and ends from Union Castle ships were kept for him. The pictures in this post almost all come from such sources.
The oldest of these that I have found among my father’s things was this Fancy Dress Ball programme card dated 15 August 1903.
This rather charming item still has the tiny pencil attached with which to write the names of potential dance partners into the applicable dances. The inside of the card looks like this:
I’m not sure who from his family sailed on the Kildonan Castle in 1903, but his Aunt Mina and her husband, the Rev Gerrit du Plessis certainly travelled in her in 1906, when they returned from the United Kingdom after he had been studying there. The almost identical programmes shown below are from that trip, as is the passenger list.
The passengers had a grand supper before the Fancy Dress Ball that evening:
Interestingly the programme of dances is somewhat different from the one three years previous.
Cover of the Kildonan Castle passenger list for 2 June 1906
The list of Second Saloon Passengers below shows the names of Rev G.J. du Plessis and Mrs (Mina) du Plessis.
- Uncle Gerrit and Aunt Mina listed in second column of the Passenger List above
Uncle Gerrit and Aunt Mina du Plessis in their later years.
It seems that members of the McGregor family, including Gerrit and Mina (Mina was the sister of the Rev Andrew McGregor, my father’s father) went to the UK again in 1922, this time sailing in the SS Grantully Castle, an “Intermediate” ship which sailed to Europe via the East coast of Africa, rather than the more usual West coast route taken by the mailships.
The passenger list cover is shown below:
The list of passengers in First Class includes the Du Plessis and three Misses McGregor, but I am not acutally sure that they are of our family, though the Miss H.M. McGregor listed could be Helen Mary, daughter of Mr Justice Alex McGregor of Bloemfontein, brother of my grandfather.
The passengers evidently had a lot of fun on the voyage, as shown by the “Programme of Sports and Events”:
The Bishop Gwynne listed in the passenger list and shown as the Vice President on the prgramme cover above, was Llewellyn Henry Gwynn, CBG, CBE, who was at the time Lord Bishop of Egypt and the Soudan (sic).
The lunch enjoyed by the First Class passengers aboard the Grantully Castle on 11 August:
The Du Plessis evidently returned to South Africa in November 1922 aboard the RMS Arundel Castle. Unfortunately I do not have the passenger list for that voyage, only some menu cards and baggage stickers, which indicate that they were berthed in cabin 232:
This time the Du Plessis were again travelling Second Class (I guess First Class was cheaper on the Intermediate ships), but their fare and fun were not insignificant for all that. The ship seems to have sailed from Southampton on or around 8 November 1922. The programme of events is shown below:
For dinner on 19 November they had the following:
The above are just some of the Union Castle memorabilia I have kept from my father’s collection. My cousin Owen G. Keen has a website devoted to Union Castle matters. He, and his father before him, sailed for many years in what is called, after the hull colour of the ships the “Lavender Hull mob”.
Owen is the son of my mother’s sister Ruth, who was married to Capt CSG Keen, fondly remembered as Geff. My uncle Geff was for a long time Marine Superintendent for Union Castle at Southampton.
The link to Owen’s site is: http://union-castle.net
Another interesting site related to the Union Castle Line is http://www.allatsea.co.za/union.htm
