Skip one century...

Over a hundred years separates these 2 pictures of the seafront at Simon's Town, setting for my novel, The Girl from Simon's Bay.


On the right is the jetty and Wharf street circa 1910, while on the left I am standing at the end of the modern jetty with the yacht marina and the outline of the SA navy's latest corvette in the background. It's worth taking a quick dash (swim?) through that century because I suspect there aren't many places that have changed hands, welcomed explorers and monarchs, patched up ships, and seen a large portion of local residents expelled...

Simon's Town in the early 1900s was a British enclave - rather like Gibraltar  - and the home of the Royal Navy's South Atlantic fleet. Famous visitors abounded, from Rudyard Kipling to Robert Scott, prior to his trips to the Antarctic in 1901 and 1910. The First and Second World Wars enhanced Simon's Town's strategic importance on the Cape sea route, with the dockyard performing vital repairs to hundreds of vessels and its many taverns quenching the thirst of thousands of sailors.  

Post-war, the town welcomed the King and Queen and Princesses, but Britain was finding that maintenance of an outpost at the southern tip of Africa was becoming too costly. In the mid-1950s, under the terms of the Simon's Town Agreement, the naval base - and, effectively, the town - was transferred to South Africa. At the same time, the introduction of apartheid by the Nationalist government was threatening Simon's Town vibrant multiculturalism. In 1967, the town was declared a White Group area and all non-whites faced eviction. Up to a third of residents were forced out. Some twenty five years passed until the eventual fall of apartheid and the arrival of a democratic government. The community could once again celebrate its multicultural nature.  

Nowadays Wharf Street and the jetty, plus nearby Jubilee Square, host kayakers, whale watchers, sailors and visitors from near and far. The picturesque town hugging the shore shows off its heritage in the historic buildings and museums, while acknowledging the lean years and looking forward to the next, perhaps calmer, century?
Who knows...