Free Shorelines by Chris Marais Page A

was also a sea captain in these parts, had been compiling research on the enterprising Stephans. He uncovered some poignant events, which began with the suicide of Captain Johan Daniel Stephan up at Hondeklip Bay.
    According to reports, it took the family years to recover from the tragic death of the young skipper.
    The most enthralling character in the Stephan clan turned out to be Oom Carel Stephan, born in 1843. As a young buck, he fell in love with Marie Rochier, whose parents farmed near the Berg River. They disapproved of Carel and would not give their permission for a marriage. So, in the true tradition of ‘the old days’, Marie went off and drowned herself in the farm dam. Out here in the Wuthering Heights atmosphere of the sandveld .
    On that day, a heartbroken Carel swore he would never marry. He bought a condemned French barque called the Nerie , towed it to the mouth of the Berg River and made it his fortress, warehouse and home. From here he traded and managed the Stephan empire, seldom socialising. He ruled his work-force like the Godfather and called them “ my children”.
    Oom Carel kept a much-loved parrot up there in his floating quarters, like Captain Hook. Upon the bird’s demise, he went off to the local carpenter and ordered a tiny coffin to be made to fit the parrot. He ordered all his clerks to attend the funeral. The local missionary, who also enjoyed the patronage of Oom Carel, had to read the formal service, almost as though the parrot had been a human family member. But that was the West Coast in those days – you always expected the unexpected.
    Oom Carel used a Khoi runner called Piet Danster to relay messages. Piet carried a little whip, which he would use on himself when he felt he was slowing down on the run. He would regularly embark on 80-km runs, cheerfully negotiating the routes between Stompneus Bay, Lambert’s Bay, Hopefield and Saldanha Bay.
    Then came the Anglo-Boer War, and Boer general Manie Maritz rampaged up and down the West Coast with his flying commandos. They helped themselves to stores from the French barque, made their way north to Lambert’s Bay and fired a couple of shots at a British gunboat. This was to be the one and only ‘naval engagement’ of the Anglo-Boer War.
    At nearby Vredenburg, the Boers looted shops and came away with knives, sweets and savouries. Then they hit the local hotel and one of the commandos got so jolly they had to leave him behind, snoring under the bar counter. He woke up with a special thirst the next morning, presumably surrounded by some very irritated burghers.
    The Stephans had a store in Vredenburg. The cash from the store was hidden in a secret hole in the pulpit of the local church. No one thought to look there. Oom Carel, meanwhile, decided to sandbag his ship in anticipation of future attacks. Unfortunately, all that weight broke the old ship’s back, and she sank into shallow mud, scant metres from the hotel where we had enjoyed lunch and Dr Lichtenstein’s racy river memoirs. Oom Carel, one presumes, took up new lodgings on dry ground.
    “Goodness,” I exclaimed, just as the sun was setting. “And where does your father fit into all this?”
    “He worked for the Stephan brothers and did most of his salvage operations in a boat called the Luna ,” said René, whose clan hailed from the French-Spanish border lands.
    When a Portuguese mailboat, the Lisboa , went down on 24 October 1910, near Paternoster, it was René’s father and the Luna who went to her rescue. All 250 passengers survived; three crewmen drowned. The cargo consisted of barrels of olive oil, red wine and a number of fighting bulls, destined for the arenas of Lourenço Marques. Even the bulls were brought ashore, and they no doubt strengthened the bovine gene pool of the West Coast over the decades to come.
    The wine, however, enjoyed another fate. Paternoster’s Italian fishing community went to ‘check up’ on the wine barrels that had washed ashore.