Wild Coast – Family haven on a far-flung shore

The Wild Coast is probably the finest family holiday destination in South Africa. It’s ruggedness and inaccessibility have kept its shoreline pristine, but that wildness has also led to it being a graveyard of ships. Justin Fox went in search of great family hotels – and the wrecks that surround them.

I had come to the old Transkei for a leisurely meander from Port Edward to the Kei River looking for great family holiday accommodation along the coast. But I must confess a side interest – the many shipwrecks that strew the shore and the folklore that surrounds them. My luggage was crammed with books about some of the more famous wrecks, notably Hazel Crampton’s The Sunburnt Queen and Stephen Taylor’s The Caliban Shore. Somewhat inevitably, these became my guides for the journey ahead.

Crossing the Mtamvuma River, I was immediately out of suburban and manicured KwaZulu-Natal and into rural Eastern Cape. My first night, however, was pure luxury: the Wild Coast Sun. It presents a wonderfully multiracial window on the new South Africa. The place was buzzing: restaurants, casino, cinemas and pool deck packed to capacity and children filling the games arcade.

I wandered outside and stood there with the hubbub at my back. Beyond the lawns and neatly trimmed golf course, the sea raged. I thought of castaways trudging this way, like those of the Portuguese East-Indiaman, So Joo, wrecked near here in 1552. Many were destined to die on their march in search of salvation in Mozambique. Could their imaginations have grasped a Xanadu such as this resort? Perhaps only in their dying hallucinations.

Further down the coast, Mbotyi offered more rustic accommodation in log cabins overlooking a lagoon and beach. Guests played beach soccer with local kids and young boys fished with their fathers on the rocks, while some family expeditions set off to visit the spectacular nearby waterfalls.

I joined guide Lenox Mkanywa for a trip to the Grosvenor wreck site at Lambasi Bay. A hard drive on bad roads brought us to a bleak, mournful spot. Before us lay the promontory on which perhaps South Africa’s most famous wreck was pounded to matchwood. The Grosvenor met her end at that very spot on 5 August 1782. The clouds were low and scudding out the west; surf exploded the rocks with the force of artillery. I imagined people in the water, the snap of spars, falling rigging, the chaos wrought by cannons broken free of their housing and rumbling across the deck. I saw the ship breaking up on the reef heard the screaming. The terror of towering waves and a watery grave. More than two centuries later, you could still feel the presence of those who were lost – and those who made it.

It was a trick of fate that allowed the stern section of the Grosvenor to drift close to the rocks and deposit so many survivors safely on the shore. But of the 125 castaways, only six reached the Cape. What trials and torment, adventures and extraordinary tales were spawned by the men and women left behind? What emotions passed between them on that fateful day: isolated, snatched from the comforts of their ship and the strictures of a class-bound society and stranded on a hostile coast, encircled by Pondo ‘savages’? To say they were ill-prepared for the challenges that lay ahead would be a gross understatement.

On the shore below a ruined building, we found a rusted winch, apparently used in conjunction with a suction pump during one of the ill-fated attempts to salvage the gold and treasure of the ship. An even more bizarre relic of such ventures is the entrance to a tunnel that was supposed to emerge, under the sea, at the precise spot where the ship sank!

A few hundred metres along the coast is Lambasi Beach, site of another famous sinking. It is thought that the ship bearing a little British girl, who was to become a Xhosa queen, was wrecked here in the 1730s. Legend has it that seven-year-old Bessie was washed ashore and taken in by a local Pondo clan. I think of the child, mermaid-like, deposited by the waves, standing on the beach, shivering and alone. Baptised by the sea: a peeling away of Europe and daubing on of a new, African identity. We know very little about her. Oral history can be so tantalising and so frustrating. Who was she? Where did she come from? What was the name of the ship?

We do know that she was a pretty and endearing girl, that the Tshomane clan gave her the Xhosa name Gquma (‘the roar of the sea’), that she eventually married a chief and resisted attempts by colonists to ‘rescue’ her. Her descendents played a colourful part in Eastern Cape history, but she was by no means the only influential castaway of that period. Many other contemporary survivors, possibly from the same wreck, also rose to prominence in the mid 18th century.

The fate of the Grosvenor survivors was far less happy. Wrecked during a time of conflict between frontier farmers and the Xhosa, their reception was not as welcoming as Bessie’s. They resolved to walk down the coast to the Dutch farms of the Eastern Cape, but the party soon started breaking up. Some were murdered, others drowned crossing rivers or starved to death. A few threw themselves on the mercy of the locals and were taken in. The fate of most is not known, although genetics tells us that some did prosper. Indeed, many early traders recorded how they encountered Xhosas with yellow hair, pale skin and blue eyes.

But history highlights only the most famous wrecks. Crampton suggests that, given the numbers of ships lost along the Wild Coast over a period of more than 500 years, there were literally tens of thousands of cast-aways from all corners of the globe washed ashore. Their stories have been swallowed by the fog of time, but here and there the alert traveller will uncover some vestige of their legacy.

Gun runners and zol merchants
From Mbotyi, I headed down the coast via Port St Johns, Umngazi and Hluleka Nature Reserve. This dangerous section of the shore has seen its fair share of wrecks, particularly around the mouth of the Mzimvubu River, where many vessels came to grief trying to cross the bar for (often nefarious) trading purposes. Gun running was lucrative business during the Frontier Wars. And not just guns: in 1943 the SS Meliskerk went down near there carrying tanks, ammunition and aircraft destined to fight Hitler up north.

My drive south to The Anchorage at Mthatha River Mouth and over the ensuing days was pure pleasure. Trying to stay near the coast on terrain that was often untamed and cut with substantial rivers proved difficult, but I had a meaty Mitsubishi Triton 4×4 and the byways plugged me straight into rural Transkei: misty lagoons shrouded with bat-winged wild bananas, kloofs thick with tropical forest, the thunder of surf, cattle on the sand, children shouting “sweets!”, gents on horseback and the pleasure of rondavel hamlets unsullied by corrugated iron or concrete.

Each time I stepped from the vehicle to take in another breathtaking river, lagoon or beach, I thought of the many castaways who trudged this way. Would they have registered any of the beauty, or only hardship, fear and hunger?

Locals say Coffee Bay’s name derives from a ship, grounded there in the 19th century, which deposited a cargo of coffee beans on the beach. It’s an engaging sort of place, frequented by backpackers, zol merchants, New Agers and throwback hippies. Like at Port St Johns, modern castaways who’ve tossed in the big city wash up in this quaint town. But the presence of the old castaways is also there. At Ocean View, the lovely hotel where I stayed, some of the Xhosa staff have the surname ‘Horner’ and claim to be descended from a shipwreck victim. Historian Hazel Crampton also talks about the amaMolo people, reputedly descended from Asian castaways – mostly seamen or slaves – who can still be traced to the Coffee Bay area.

The water was warm, the surf good, the locals friendly and the walks in all directions, particularly along the coastal cliffs, were spellbinding. Sheep grazed surefooted along the fringe of a 200-metre drop to the waves below.

South of town the terrain grows increasingly dramatic and culminates at the centrepiece of the coast: Hole in the Wall. It’s a slab of rock holding back Indian Ocean rollers, but a keyhole at its base allows the waves to fan out into a lagoon on the landward side. It was to this peaceful area that Bessie’s clan retreated after strife in the north. Would it still be possible to track down her descendents, I wondered?

The white Xhosas
Hugging the shore in a vehicle became difficult and a long detour inland was required to get to Bulungula Lodge. A 4×4 is essential to cover the last few kilometres (although the lodge collects guests with sedans from a pickup point).

Bulungula is perhaps the most remarkable establishment on the coast in that it’s completely integrated into the local community. There are no fences, nothing locks, you share communal showers and eat together. If it rains, you may well find a cow seeking shelter in your rondavel. A blend of trance, world music and maskanda issues from the bar and resident artists have created a beguiling visual spectacle of murals and mobiles.

Owner Dave Martin took me on a walk through the village. “You see, Bulungula is 40 per cent owned by this community, so they are completely involved. This is the way forward for the Wild Coast: low-impact, community-based ecotourism. If we don’t get it right, the big hotels and mining houses will move in and destroy one of the most beautiful coastlines in Africa. I mean, where else can you find rural communities living like this?” His hand swept across an idyllic estuary, a long white beach, clusters of traditional huts and milkwood forest. No tar, no power lines, no modern buildings. “It’s all about the people, of us fitting in with a way of life that’s largely untouched by the destructive cultural influences of colonialism and apartheid. That’s what makes this so special.”
Dave is fluent in Xhosa and we stopped regularly to enquire after neighbours, play with children and pay respects to the elders. We were invited into huts and plates of umngqusho (samp and beans) were produced. Dave shot the breeze; the talk was about road repairs, clinics, lobbying for government support. It came to me, sitting there on a drum in a darkened hut with mealie cobs hanging above our heads, that Dave was a modern castaway in the venerable tradition of those who stayed, put down roots, made a difference.

In contrast with most of the Grosvenor survivors, there were many wrecks that had a very different outcome. The coast is alive with stories of castaways who married into local clans, rose through the ranks of Xhosa society and even became chiefs. One is tempted to put a ‘rainbow nation’ spin on the legacies of these pioneers who represented an alternative kind of frontier living: the heretical notion of integration. It is perhaps for this reason that, post 1994, there has been so much interest in the fate of Wild Coast castaways.

Over dinner round the fire that night, I brought up the subject with Dave. “But Justin,” he said, “didn’t you know that here at Bulungula, you are in the very heart of Bessie’s clan? The people you met on our walk this afternoon are abeLungu – the white people. Although they may be as black as any other Xhosa, they consider themselves ‘white’. They’re the direct descendents of the survivors of those early wrecks. . . and Bessie’s in particular.”

Reading Crampton’s book later that night, I traced how Bessie’s clan had, over the generations, been pushed south from the area around Lambasi. Political strife and war had stripped them of their wealth and today this is one of the poorest areas in the country. But their history is a proud one and the stretch of coast they now occupy is a piece of paradise.

Next morning I followed the Bulungula ‘bus’ delivering old folks to the pandemonium of pension day at a nearby hamlet. The whole world had pitched up and a market was in full cry. I wandered through the throng feeling somehow different, more. . . integrated? It struck me that some of these rural folk were probably the descendents of British sailors and landed gentry. I superimposed rolling English countryside onto this hillside scene: not such an incongruous fit after all. My shipwreck quest was producing the most startling revelations.

My next port of call was The Haven in the forested Cwebe Nature Reserve. It’s a large, family resort set on lawns that double as a golf course, pasture for horses and antelope, a runway… and a helicopter landing area, if you happen to need a place to off-load a few hundred shipwreck survivors. Which is exactly what happened on 4 August 1991.

Shelter from the stormy blast
It was a rough winter storm and the passenger liner, Oceanos, laboured into heavy seas off Mbashe Point. The drama began when water started pouring into the engine room. Realising the fate of the ship, the crew panicked, neglecting to close the lower-deck portholes. Passengers remained unaware of events until they saw the first signs of flooding.

At this stage, most of the crew, including the captain, were already packed and ready to abandon ship. It was left to the onboard entertainers to muster the passengers. In an astonishing rescue effort involving 16 helicopters, not a single one of the 571 on board lost their life.

The Haven’s receptionist, Sylvia Makhala, clearly recalls the events surrounding the sinking. “As the choppers started coming in that morning, we had to scramble. Blankets, food, hot drinks, lots of soup. Some of the passengers were still in pyjamas. They filled the corridors and the bar. We pitched tents out front and were able to sleep all of them. But, boy, we were worked off our feet!”

Further down the coast, I stayed at two fine hotels on either side of the Qhorha River: Kob Inn and Mazeppa Bay Hotel. Some of the local wrecks are quite recent, like that of a Canadian yacht that caught fire off Kob Inn on 22 January 1995. The crew was rescued by guests on an inflatable ‘banana’! Bits of the yacht take pride of place in the bar.

A few hundred metres north of the inn, I found the remains of the vessel washed up on the rocks – just a piece of the bow and some of the yacht’s ribs with vegetation growing in what was left of the bilges. Nothing, however, remains of the Idomene, which was wrecked a stone’s throw up the coast in 1887. A rice carrier bound for London from Rangoon with a crew of 24, she struck a reef during a terrific summer gale.

There is a stone kraal in which seven of the 13 drowned lie buried (the other bodies were not recovered). I walked there early one morning and stood beside a handful of mounds on a grassy slope overlooking a shoreline pounded by dumpers. Common dolphins surfed the waves in delight. Out at sea a container ship, coasting inshore to avoid the strong Agulhas current, laboured into the swell. Occasionally her bows disappeared in an explosion of spray. A wild coast indeed.

Mazeppa Bay is a pleasant walk from Kob Inn, but a long, inland drive away on this river-sliced shore. Set in a grove of wild date palms, Mazeppa is another family favourite. The main beach ends with an island – a good game- and shark-fishing spot reached by a hanging bridge.

As I’d found at every other establishment on the coast, there were local wreck stories. Most interesting was that of the Mazeppa, a small schooner that conducted illegal trading here in the 1830s. She was responsible for taking the survivors of Louis Trichardt’s trek from Delagoa Bay to Port Natal in 1839. Four years later, the ship was out searching for a British man-of-war to rescue the garrison at Port Natal, which was being besieged by the Boers. The captain steered the ship into what is now known as Mazeppa Bay for shelter and ran aground. Legend has it the wreck is buried beneath the sand dunes.

Setting sail for home
By now stories of maritime disaster were crawling out from under every stone I glanced at. At Wavecrest, I hadn’t even put my bags down before the delightfully eccentric owner, Conrad Winterbach, was thrusting newspaper cuttings into my hands concerning the Greek coaster, Jacaranda, his local wreck.

“There’s something fishy about that one,” he said. “The captain’s story doesn’t add up. He said she was empty, riding high, got caught by the wind and was pushed ashore.

“But the weather wasn’t so bad that day – I’ve checked the records – and she landed neatly, head on, bow up the only little beach on this bit of coast, so the crew could just step ashore without getting their feet wet. And why the huge salvage operation if she were empty? Insurance scam, I’ll bet.”

The next morning before breakfast, Conrad and I tore south in his ski boat to see the remains of the Jacaranda. We launched into the air off enormous swells. It was a perfect winter’s day – gannets dropping out the sky, dolphins and humpback whales riding the crests – but the sea’s temper suggested a big cold front on the way.

Whether the Jacaranda’s skipper had been drunk, was inept or seeking insurance money, there’s no denying the treacherous nature of these waters. Even the finest ship could easily come unstuck there.

“This coast is thick with wrecks; castaway genes are everywhere. Did you notice some of our staff are very pale-skinned?” asked Conrad as we bobbed beyond the breakers looking at the rusty skeleton of the Jacaranda, jammed against the shore.

“Yes, I was wondering.”

“You guessed right! Castaway bloodlines – and proud of it.”