A different view on current affairs & history
Unions can serve a useful function by ensuring that management does not abuse its employees but when they become too strong and militant they can abuse that position by holding the country hostage to their excessive demands.
Main picture: Earnings of train drivers as compared with other professions
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Bridges featured prolifically in Port Elizabeth’s storied history. In the early days the town was bifurcated into Town and South End by the pesky Baakens River with its the rude predilection for periodically wash away the bridges leaving the South Enders trapped on the south side of the river until the water subsided. Local ingenuity would emerge and entrepreneurs would provide alternative means of crossing usually by means of a makeshift raft.
Main picture: Folley’s Bridge
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Amongst the treasure trove of entrepreneurs that were conceived by this unlikely town, was as equally unlikely character: James Somers Kirkwood. Initially he arose to prominence due to his wit, showmanship, bonhomie and vitality in the auctioneering business. Why these character traits created the “Kirkwood Show” was James’ ability to convert even the unlikeliest and most mundane of sales into a skit, a parody or a comedy. Perhaps entertainment would have been a more rational vocation for him. The trait that most defines a comedian is that of intelligence and Kirkwood probably possessed it in spades. However, what he is best remembered for today, is his vision for the development of the Sunday’s River. Recession, drought, vision before its time as well as the discovery of diamonds at Dutoitspan, all drove potential investors to forsake the local developments and instead to seek fame and fortune in Griqualand West. Mores the loss for Kirkwood and Port Elizabeth.
Main picture: James Somers Kirkwood
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The only major Colonial Military Unit formed in Port Elizabeth during the 19th century was the Prince Alfred’s Guards. This unit had already been bloodied in the Battle of Umzintzani on Saturday the 24th February 1877. This battle can be catagorised as the unit’s baptism of fire. In this case, the PAG would be involved in a conflict of a very different nature as many of the Basutos were armed with Martini-Henry rifles that were superior to the Sniders of the colonial forces. Besides this, the magnitude of this campaign was fraught with other difficulties such as concurrent rebellions and uprisings.
The details of the military actions are based upon the book Prince Alfred’s Guards 1856-1966 by Neil Orpen.
Main picture: Grand review of the PAG on Donkin Reserve in 1873
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James Laing was a Scottish missionary who spent the greater part of his life ministering to the needs of the amaXhosa who used the sobriquet indoda ebisithanda -The Man Who Loved Us – to describe him. Even though Laing never stayed for long in Port Elizabeth, as he was merely passing through, he has left us with a verbal sketch of the town together with his view of the town.
Main picture: James Laing
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The Port Elizabeth Museum has taken a winding journey using temporary accommodation until it was relocated to purpose-built facility. This location was Bayworld in Humewood. Instrumental in this final relocation was one of their most noteworthy directors, Dr Geoffrey Roy McLachlan. Through his endeavours, Bayworld, as it is now called, is a scientific repository of the local natural history – birds, mammals, fossils, shells and relics of the early inhabitants of our hinterland. As the Herald in a tribute to Dr Geoff McLachlan put it: “He was internationally renowned as an ornithologist, a respected natural scientist and an imaginative museum director.”
This blog celebrates the life of this outstanding person. This blog has largely been based upon an online obituary.
Main picture: Dr Geoffrey Roy McLachlan
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Main picture: The identical houses facing the sea are those of Heugh, Andrews’ father-in-law and Andrews
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Today the deeds of two Buntons more than a century ago are known by less than several dozen people yet in their heyday they were both well-known but for vastly different reasons. Walter Bunton converted the Grand Hotel into the Bunton’s Grand Hotel, not a mere name change but a conversion into the greatest hotel in the emerging town, fit for the great and good of the Cape, the British Empire and beyond. Upon Walter’s death, his son, Henry, would assume control of the hotel.
On the other hand, Walter’s sister, Harriet Meyer, nee Bunton, had divergent interests. The one for which she made her name was promoting the building of an equestrian monument to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of horses killed during the Anglo Boer War.
Then their life’s candle would gutter and be snuffed out and the light which they shone on the world would gradually fade away, eventually to be forgotten. This blog is an attempt to correct this omission from history.
Main picture: Bunton’s Grand Hotel on the corner of Belmont Terrace and Prospect Hill. It was the most important hotel of its time.
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