Lawrence Green’s historic impressions of Cape Town

Travel writer Lawrence Green’s bestselling Tavern of the Seas provides an evocative insight into the Mother City, says Justin Fox.

For South African travellers, Lawrence Green is the perfect literary companion. Over the course of half a century, he recorded the country from stem to stern in a series of lively travel books. In Tavern of the Seas (1947), probably his best-loved text, Green focused on his hometown. As always in his writing, it is the past that informs the present and so reading Green becomes a journey into history. Although many of the landmarks of his Cape Town have disappeared, a traveller with imagination can still explore this city with the past as companionable foil to the present.

Green’s writing is typical of the mid-century tradition of which he is a part: factual, informative and erudite. In a sense, his yarns are the ultimate Getaway article in book length. This is not surprising, as the author worked for the Argus newspaper and learnt his craft as a journalist.

Within the greater travel-writing tradition, the post-war period saw a particular form of the genre that was sensible, stoic, largely British and harked back to a previous era when the world was simpler and travel was still exotic. The best writers of this no-nonsense, Englishman-abroad style were the likes of Eric Newby, Wilfred Thesiger and Norman Lewis.

In South Africa, a similar form was current. The writing was comprehensive, historically anchored, lacking in affectation and, above all, nostalgic. There was little or no experimentation with style or genre. Our best exponents were TV Bulpin and Lawrence Green, but writers such as Eve Palmer and Francis Brett Young also fall within this ambit.

Men who go to sea in ships
Being a day sailor and something of a nautical type, Green often dwelt on the ocean in his writing. It’s not surprising that Tavern of the Seas should pay so much attention to harbours, the coastline and maritime history.

‘Corners of Table Bay remain very much as they were when I was a schoolboy with a bicycle,’ he writes. ‘ The old crews have signed off , nearly all the old ships have departed; yet these harbour scenes still bring back the earliest Cape Town I can remember.’

Go down to the V&A Waterfront today and you may find it difficult to picture the bustling Victorian port, but hints are everywhere if you know where to look: cannons cemented into the wharf, vestiges at the South African Maritime Museum and, of course, the Clock Tower (built in 1833 as a signal station). ‘It is a place of memories; for more than 60 years men have watched the ships and heard the sirens, the bells, the clatter of winches, the hiss of steam from those windows,’ writes Green.

The author also recalls the fishing boats of yore – elegant Grand Banks schooners that were the pride of the snoek fleets and the whalers. These square-rigged ‘spouters’ out of Nantucket and New Bedford made a home in Table Bay. Their sails were darkened by blubber smoke and their masts were stumpy, but they carried swift harpooning boats at the davits.

Every summer, an armada left Cape Town and crowds would line the waterfront to watch the black fleet sail for what the Norwegians called the ‘south ice’.

The mother of all winds
‘Whaa-whaa-whee Southeaster clouds are pouring down over Table Mountain and every rubbish bin from Salt River to Camps Bay is rattling to the tune of the wind.’ As a mariner, it’s not surprising Green was fascinated by wind. The southeaster almost becomes a character in his writing.

The ‘Cape Doctor’ gained the name from its habit of blowing the city’s filth into the sea in the centuries before street cleaners. In those days, the Heerengracht canal was little more than a sewer and every gutter filled with rubbish. A doctor maybe, but few Capetonians have learnt to love this capricious wind that lifts roofs off houses, spreads forest fires and wrecks ships.

Actually, it’s probably the winter gales, the northwesters, that bear greater responsibility for maritime disaster. Before the breakwater was built, this wind made Cape Town one of the most treacherous winter anchorages in the world: the floor of Table Bay is strewn with cargo and wrecks. A hardy breed of boatmen arose who would brave the waves to aid ships in distress – for a fee. The price rose according to the severity of the weather. When a full gale was blowing, they might demand as much as 600 to lay out new anchors for a stricken vessel.

There was one day, 17 May 1865, when not even the offer of 1 000 would entice them to brave the surf after 12 boatmen had already lost their lives and 18 ships sank that day.

The construction of Cape Town’s Foreshore interred many of Green’s childhood haunts under a layer of concrete. Rogge Bay, the landing place of generations of fishermen, was transformed into an area of high rises and parking lots. ‘There, for 200 years at least, the boats rested in a neat crescent, bows pointing seawards,’ writes Green.

As a child, he’d watched the coming and going of fishermen: a dawn departure, vessels sailing into the offing and an evening return with a blue and silver cargo. ‘Malay wives in brilliant clothes, turbaned priests and an army of fezzed small boys awaited the landing of the catch. Fish hawkers carried baskets with yokes across their shoulders. The modern view may be cleaner, but the fascinating scene of Rogge Bay has been buried.’

The City Bowl
It’s not always easy to find the soul of old Cape Town, but if you’re serious in your quest, Green suggests a stroll up Adderley Street late at night.

‘When all the traffic has faded out, you may well find the ghosts of the Heerengracht returning the crinolines and sedan chairs. Long after midnight, the canal may flow again and there will be thatched roofs and stoeps all down the street.’

In fact, a living thread of the former settlement lies just a few metres below your feet. The river from Platteklip Gorge that once gushed through the Gardens and down the city’s main canal still flows in storm-water drains beneath Adderley. This is the very stream where early Portuguese navigators filled their barrels and which Van Riebeeck dammed to form the town’s first reservoir.

Strolling up Adderley into Government Avenue, you enter the Company Gardens, raison d’tre of the Cape refreshment station. Plants from Dutch colonial outposts around the globe enriched these urban farmlands. Over the years, the 10 hectacres of Van Riebeeck’s time shrank as buildings were added: the Houses of Parliament, St George’s Cathedral, the National Library and South African Museum. It has become the very heart of the city.

Old Cape cuisine
Green pays considerable attention to the city’s cuisine, especially its many taverns, eating houses and the secret recipes that have been handed down in old Cape families. One chapter is devoted to wine, the Cape’s oldest industry, starting with Van Riebeeck’s garden. Despite raids by wild animals and Khoikhoi, the Dutch commander expanded his enterprise, planting 1 200 cuttings at his private farm Boschheuvel (today Bishopscourt). The industry grew and the arrival of French Huguenots improved the standard. Wines from Groot Constantia became world famous and were a favourite of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Green was a bit of a gourmand and lamented the vanishing art of great cooking from the city’s kitchens. ‘Nothing in the Cape, not even the Afrikaans language, had deeper roots than the tradition of wellcooked meals. Yet almost everywhere today, you will lift up your nose in vain for a fragrance that seems blown out into Table Bay by some forgotten southeaster.’

He talks of favourites like tomato bredie, smoorvis, almond cakes and tameletjies (sweets made from naartjie peel and pine-cone nuts). Then there are the multifarious jams and preserves that were a cook’s pride and joy – like blatjang (chutney), fig jam, atchar, quince sambal or mebos. There were also the more arcane recipes, like those for geometric tortoise (scalloped with breadcrumbs was best).

Mountain of the sea
Ten guilders and six bottles of wine went to the first sailor in a Dutch East India ship who sighted the flat-topped mountain rising out of the Atlantic. Since the early days, Table Mountain has been the symbol of the city. Portuguese Admiral Antonie de Saldanha is the first to have recorded his ascent in 1503; later, Van Riebeeck found the dates of much earlier mountaineers carved into trees. In 1806, traveller and author John Barrow made an even more startling find. At the top of Platteklip Gorge, he came upon an ancient anchor whose origin and purpose defi ed explanation.

Green records singular events in the Table’s history: the ascent by Lady Anne Barnard with a train of slaves carrying her refreshments, snowfalls and locust swarms, tremendous landslides that rumbled down the slopes and blocked roads. He also notes the scaling of the mountain on horseback and in a motor car (a very small one).

Less well known are the various mines that the mountain has borne witness to: a small gold reef on Lion’s Head proved profitable for a while; then there was the silver mine of Vredehoek; while abandoned tin and manganese workings can still be seen on Devil’s Peak.

From coast to coast
Tavern of the Seas deals not only with the city, but also the peninsula. The reader is treated to a scenic meander down the Atlantic seaboard to Cape Point and back along the False Bay shoreline. The author recalls the time when Green Point Common (site for the 2010 stadium) was a racecourse, with the track marked out by Dutch cannons planted in the ground. When races were held, the city’s inhabitants descended en masse.

‘It was one of those occasions when the whole Cape met; the governor with his English coach; officers from the Castle on horseback; farmers camping beside their wagons; the coloured people selling pickled fish and watermelon konfyt.’

On the edge of the common were two of Southern Africa’s oldest and most important lighthouses, and beyond them the beautiful farms of Sea Point, too distant from the city for commuters (today it takes five minutes by car).

‘Clifton was an almost bare hillside 60 years ago although I have found an undated note of an old Dutch homestead which was swept away one winter by an avalanche of mud.’ The millionaire piles of today are a far cry from that little piece of paradise far from the hubbub of the city.

The area adjacent Camps Bay was considered a possible landing place for enemies, so the Dutch built a battery and guardhouse to command the beach. Later Lord Charles Somerset had a cottage there for weekends and held shooting parties at his famous Round House in the Glen (there was still plenty of game on the mountain in the 19th century).

Cape Point held a special place in the author’s affection. He recalls famous shipwrecks, the bravery of lighthouse keepers and the legends that clung to this southwestern claw of Africa, such as the story of the ghostly Flying Dutchman. He tells of how icebergs were once spotted from the point, how baboons have been seen in mortal combat with octopuses and how Verreauxs’ eagles would drop tortoises from great heights to split them open.

On the False Bay shore, Green marvels at the way Simon’s Town is ‘still stamped as plainly as Portsmouth with the marks of the Royal Navy’. The port had, through its history, seen a parade of naval vessels of every kind, as well as pirate brigs and slave ships. ‘It is not so long ago since wicked black slavers were towed in here to be broken on the beach. Not long, indeed, since Erebus and Terror sailed in, fresh from their conquest of the Antarctic.’ Lord Nelson visited The Residency (today the Simon’s Town Museum) and, when squadrons of ships called, the village shone more brilliantly than Cape Town, with enormous naval balls and fireworks lighting up the night.

The inspiration of Green
Two years ago, I was asked to compile an anthology of writing about the Mother City, Cape Town Calling. I’ve had a complicated relationship with my hometown and often felt the need to escape (hence my ‘career’ as a traveller). It was to Green that I turned to fi nd many of the things that I sensed were latent in my own relationship with Cape Town. Reading him helped me to articulate my love for the city. I identified with his restlessness, but also his need to return there. I noted the things he held in high regard and found that they were not only dear to me, they were a part of me. Like the mountain at first light or the irascible Atlantic on a winter’s day, the sound of the adhaan echoing across Bo- Kaap, the whales of Kalk Bay or the booming of Slangkop lighthouse’s foghorn in the mist.

Green evokes a Cape Town that is in many respects no more. He recalls going on shooting parties just beyond the city limits, or waking in a cave at Cape Point to find baboons had stolen his catch in the night, or the honk of fish horns blaring through the city streets at the start of the snoek season.

But his reminiscences do throw light on the present and add to the patchwork of narratives that cling to this mountain by the sea at the tip of a continent. For, as Lawrence Green well understood and I have grown to understand, it is only through the city’s past that you can truly know this place.

Essential reading
Tavern of the Seas by Lawrence Green (Howard Timmins, 1947). Two recent anthologies give a more contemporary take on the Mother City: Stephen Watson (ed) A City Imagined (Penguin, 2006) and Justin Fox (ed) Cape Town Calling (Tafelberg, 2007).