Union Castle Line

The Big Ship Way To Africa

Build me straight, O worthy Master! Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!{c}

St Helena’s shipping service for 122 years‍‍

About

The Union-Castle Line was a British shipping line that operated a fleet of passenger liners and cargo ships between Europe and Africa from 1900 to 1977. It was formed from the merger of the Union Line and Castle Shipping Line.{d}

It provided the shipping service for St Helena from 1855 (then as the ‘Union Steamship Company’) until it ceased serving Africa in 1977.

Serving St Helena

From the colonisation of St Helena until the middle of the 19th Century the number of ships calling here rose steadily, peaking with 1,458 ships calling in 1845. Thereafter it declined steadily, usually attributed to the opening of the Suez Canal but actually for more complex reasons (see our page Myths Debunked!).

Towards the end of the 19th Century it became increasingly difficult for mail, goods and people to find passage on a ship between the UK and St Helena and to this end, the UK Government approached the Union Castle Steamship Company to formalise a regular service for St Helena as a stopover on their Southampton-Durban route. Not all ships would stop at St Helena but sufficient would to create a viable mail, goods and passenger service. In 1910, 26 of the 28 ships that called at St Helena were Union Castle ships.

World War 1 caused an interruption to the service but by 1926 the schedule had standardised at one ship in each direction per month. World War 2 caused a further disruption and by 1948 the service had resumed at only on ship in each direction every six weeks, returning to monthly callings by 1950.

This continued until 1967 when, due to the increasing popularity of air travel and the growing isolation of Apartheid South Africa, the Union Castle Line withdrew its large passenger ships from service, replacing them with fast goods ships with only 12 cabins for passengers. The first such ship to call at St Helena was the Good Hope Castle (which later ran into some difficultries off Ascension Island).

This arrangement continued until September 1977 when, largely due to the incresing cost of fuel oil, the Union Castle closed its Southampton-Cape Town service completely. The service for St Helena was replaced by the RMS St Helena (1978-1990).

Although the official service ended in September 1977, on 8th November the Kinpurnie Castle collected mail for the last time, by special arrangement because there was no other way to get mail to and from the island.

During this time^{[Early 1970s]} the Union Castle line ships use to call, one would be here on a Friday evening from Cape town and leave after two hours for UK. She carried only 12 passengers but took nine days to get to the UK and then one would call on a Sunday afternoon from the UK. They were the Good Hope Castle and Southampton Castle. People could go right to the steps and stand behind the barricades ready to bid farewell or to meet their families.{e}

Good Hope Castle Fire, 1973

This isn’t a Lost Ship story because the Good Hope Castle did not sink{f}

Fire onboard a ship at sea is widely considered to be one of the most serious incidents that can occur. It is serious because, unless it can be controlled, it is necessary to abandon ship in the lifeboats, which in mid-ocean has many dangers.

On 1st July 1973 the Union Castle Line offices in London received contact from St Helena reporting that the Good Hope Castle, due in on 30th June from Ascension Island, was overdue. Reports from both Ascension and St Helena were that the ship could not be reached by radio. It was later reported from Ascension that the ship had been reported ablaze thirty-five miles south-east from Ascension.

The stricken Good Hope Castle{3}

It transpired that fire had broken out on 29th June some hours after leaving Ascension. A broken lubricating oil pipe to the starboard main engine turbo-blower sprayed oil onto an exhaust manifold, and before the resulting fire could be extinguished it spread through the engine-room casing into the accommodation. The eighty-two passengers and crew took to the boats, and were rescued 36 hours later by the steam tanker, ‘George F. Getty’ and returned to Ascension. There were no serious injuries and it seems the only life lost was that of a small dog that could not be coaxed from under its master’s bed and had to be abandoned.

On the night of 1st-2nd July the Good Hope Castle was sighted by her sister-ship the Southampton Castle some twenty-four miles off Portland Point, Ascension, with a thirty degree starboard list, but no sign of fire or smoke, and with the port propeller visible in the swell. The photograph (right) was taken by one of the passengers on board the Southampton Castle.

On 4th July the MV Clan Malcolm located the Good Hope Castle and reported her again burning. By the next day much of the superstructure had been destroyed but the hull was still apparently sound. The West German ocean salvage tug ‘Albatross’ was called to provide assistance, and on 7th July Good Hope Castle was boarded by a Union Castle Line Superintendent who reported that there were no flames or smoke, but that the deck was severely buckled and hot, with the Bridge and accommodation completely gutted. Two days later the tug was alongside and able to put pumps aboard and prepare a towing connection.

Good Hope Castle was towed to Antwerp, arriving on 18th August where she was inspected and then sent to Bilbao for repairs. There were completed and she left Bilbao on 19th May 1974, arriving at Southampton to resume her position in the mail service to South Africa, starting on 31st May 1974.

Nickname

The Union Castle ships were painted with black and red funnels and a lavender-coloured hull. As a consequence of this the company was affectionately known as the ‘Lavender Hull Mob’, a reference to the 1951 Ealing Comedy film The Lavender Hill Mob.

More…

Life onboard was not all pink gins and deck quoits, as this storyⒾ demonstrates.

SEE ALSO: More on the Wikipedia ⋅ The Union Castle group on Facebook™ ⋅ this video about the Windsor Castle{4}

You can download a history of the Cape Mail ServiceⒾ{g}

Some of the ships calling are mentioned in the Records: the Good Hope Castle, Pendennis Castle, Southampton Castle, Warwick Castle, and Windsor Castle.

In the 1970s the Union Castle offices were at 19-21 Old Broad Street, London, England.

We found a brochure advertising the Union Castle ships in general and the Windsor Castle in particular. There are a few images from it below. We think most Saints who travelled the line did not experience that level of luxury…

Read More

Article: Tin Can Mail at St. Helena?

By John Coyle, published in the South Atlantic Chronicle, October 1998{5}

Many of you will have heard of Tin Can Mail{6}, but probably thought it was only used in some of the more remote Pacific islands at places where ports were non-existent, or when weather conditions made it impossible to berth a ship. Not quite true: in fact, there was an instance of what I believe can genuinely be called Tin Can Mail off St. Helena less than 30 years ago.

The circumstances were that, after one of the regular Union Castle Line mail-ship visits in April 1968, it was realized that some important government mail had been over-carried to Cape Town. This was long before the days of fax machines and e-mail, and the only way the mail could be delivered before the next regular mail-ship (not scheduled for several weeks - this was before the establishment of the Good Hope Castle/Southampton Castle service later in the same year) was for someone to physically carry it to the island. Fortunately, the line’s vessel Pendennis Castle was about to leave Cape Town on her regular run from the Cape to Southampton, scheduled to call at Madeira or the Azores, but not at either St. Helena or Ascension.

It was arranged, therefore, to place the overcarried mail on board for re-delivery to St. Helena. One small problem was that Union Castle declared they could not afford to stop the ship to deliver the mail; we would have to arrange to pick it up at sea, and the only way to do this would be for the mail to be placed in a sealed, buoyant container and dropped overboard as the ship went past! I was then working in Jamestown for Solomon and Co., and thought there might be an opportunity to participate in an unique event.

So I arranged with our agents in Cape Town to address a number of envelopes to the company, and to have them placed on board for delivery with the government mail, Came the day (May 20, 1968) and we received news that the Pendennis Castle was about four hours away, and would pass the island on the northwestern side, about three miles out. A small group, including myself, the general manager of Solomon and Co. (George Moss) and the postmaster, took the company’s launch, the Wideawake, out in good time to make the rendezvous.

It was early afternoon when the ship came into sight, approaching us from the northwest - quite a surprise, as she must have gone the long way around, given that her normal course would have been to come along the coast from the southwest. She was also doing what appeared to be a colossal speed - from a small boat a 30,000 ton passenger liner carrying over 2,000 people and making 25 knots or more is terrifyingly large and fast! Some of the passengers and crew were lining the rails as she approached - obviously this was something few if any of them had ever seen before, and were most unlikely to ever see again. The oil-drum containing the mail was perched precariously at an open access hatch in the ship’s side, and as she passed at about 600 yards, was unceremoniously dumped into the ocean.

Fortunately, there was a marker-flag attached to a small mast welded to the drum. so we would not lose sight of it in the swell. We began to approach the drum to pick it up, when we noticed that the captain had done what amounted to a U-turn, and was approaching us again at what seemed an even greater speed! We held off for a few minutes, and she passed us again going north to resume her voyage, giving us a loud blast on her siren as she went. As she disappeared in the distance, we closed on the drum and brought it on board. The flag turned out to be a Royal Mail flag, confirming it as an official delivery, and I think therefore, justifying the inclusion of the event in the island’s postal history.