Where East meets West...
On her maiden voyage from Swansea in Wales to Sydney in Australia, the Kakapo, a British steamer built in 1898 by the Grangemouth Dockyard Company and commanded by Captain P. Nicolayson, put into Cape Town on May 25th 1900 before continuing her voyage into the teeth of a north-west gale.
Rounding Hout Bay, the Kakapo was pushed towards the southern end of Chapman's Bay. Captain Nicolayson, mistaking Chapman's Peak for Cape Point, turned hard east and drove his spanking-new vessel so far up the beach at Noordhoek her crew of twenty were able to scramble ashore. All attempts to pull the stricken ship off the sandy beach failed.
Source: Submerged Productions
Direction-finding devices have a long and proud history in South Africa.
The above compass, found near the Cape of Good Hope several hundred years ago, is now preserved at the old Cape Point lighthouse. Believed to have come from the wreck of a ship belonging to a dyslexic empire builder, it was originally housed at the Castle in Cape Town, an ugly edifice and the HQ of Dutch occupation forces at the time.
At some stage during the early eighteenth century, the Governor's Wife decided to put local slaves (those not being put to the sword for sport) to work, and she had them replicate thousands of the damned thing for export.
Her industry — and that of her slaves, whom she beat mercilessly as they laboured under the hot African sun — bore mixed results. Shortly after shipping her first consignment, ships began foundering at an alarming rate. Down at Cape Point, local ship wreckers grew fat and idle watching countless vessels, large and small, turn into (rather than away from) Bellows Rock.
They no longer found the need to light fires at night, and busied themselves building restaurants, bordellos, curio shops, casinos and other tourist attractions on the 200m cliffs overlooking the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
The Governor's Wife's social standing and official status ensured a ready market for her compasses and, being familiar with the courts of Europe, she was bound to bump into and make some large sales to local luminaries. Napoleon Bonaparte was, if not her most notorious, then perhaps her first major sale. Using the dyslexic compass made by the Cape Governor's Wife (and her well-whipped slaves), Napoleon planned his invasion of Britain. His armies perished around Moscow.
After numerous small successes (see the Kakapo above), the sinking of the Lusitania (locally) in 1911, and the Titanic (up north) in 1912, the compass secured its market and its place in history. It also put Cape Town firmly on the map — so to speak — and, despite some muttering from Lloyds of London, the city became a favoured port for vessels of shipping magnates fond of Russian roulette and other Xtreme sports.
While insular Capetonians harboured their dark secret, i.e. the dyslexic compass, South Africa's Mother City's greatest moment remains her contribution to the Allies ridding the world of Adolf Hitler in 1945. Proving that lightning can strike twice, a descendent of the Governor's Wife flogged a second-hand compass to Eva Braun, whom he met at a gay bar while backpacking around Europe in 1934. Much like Napoleon, Hitler used the dyslexic compass to plan his Final Onslaught on the Windswept Rock of the North Sea Otherwise Known as England (Operation FOWRNSKE).
His armies, as we know, perished at Stalingrad.
We Capetonians are a modest bunch, seldom given to boasting or exaggeration. So, while inordinately proud of our contribution to history and the furtherance of science, we seldom speak of the compass belonging to the Governor's Wife and we will never refute the official story explaining the wreck of the Kakapo.
And, although several GW™ compasses have found their way into the White House — explaining that country's resemblance to the Soviet Union and the likeness of Putin's Russia to Kennedy's United States, we are focussing on hosting the 2010 soccer World Cup rather than on our being responsible for the outbreak of WWIV.
