All aboard!

For over seventy years, from 1900 to 1977, the best way to travel from Britain to South Africa was aboard a "Castle" mailship of the Union Castle Line. The voyage from Southampton to Cape Town took 3 weeks and, during that time, passengers could be as sociable or solitary as they wished. Judging by the photographs in the SA Maritime Museum, in the old Union Castle building on Cape Town's Waterfront, most took up the entertainments on board with gusto: games on deck, daily promenades, Fancy Dress Balls, Crossing-the-Line ceremonies and - my particular favourite - Tug-of-War between First and Second class passengers.

Food and dining was also an important part of the passage south. In the early days, refrigeration was not yet the norm and so poultry, sheep and cattle were kept on board to provide passengers with fresh milk and meat. Aside from transporting passengers, the mailships provided a crucial weekly mail service and carried tons of cargo ranging from magazines to gold bullion. When war broke out, many were requisitioned as troopships. The Arundel Castle, for example, took part in the North Africa landings, and the repatriation of soldiers at the end of the war. She then resumed her service as a mailship on the Southampton-Cape Town run before retiring gracefully in the late 1950s after 211 voyages. The arrival of commercial air travel signalled the end of the Union Castle's decades of service, and the Windsor Castle left Cape Town on 6th September 1977 on the final crossing. 

For many passengers, the highlight of a trip south was the arrival in Cape Town, complete with streamers and a band playing on the quay. For Frances Whittington, heroine of The Fire Portrait and a budding artist, the highlight came earlier in the day, in the chilly hour before dawn. 

It was still grey when I set up my small easel and paints, and waited. 
There! A black ridge resolved itself against a slowly flushing sky. 
The top of the Table, ruler straight; with two peaks, sentinel-like, at either end. 
And then the city at its foot, shining beneath the famous mountain.