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ship sailing times 1879 England to Capetown
johnk


Joined: 18 Oct 2010
Posts: 64
Location: St.Helens, Merseyside
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Hi, wonder if anyone can help with this or point me in the right direction.
I am doing some research on sea travel during the Victorian period and would like to find out how long would it take to sail from Liverpool to Capetown, were there any stop overs and would the army commission a ship to transport troops and materials.

thanks

John
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Galloglas
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It's a good and interesting question.
Diaries and Pay and Museter rolls give us some clear indications of the E2E timings for those sent out to reinforce the First Invasion, whilst a table in The Narrative gives equivalent detail for the much larger force package sent out after the First Invasion and so as to enable the Second.

Ships appear to be a mixture of troop ships and those in the merchant marine routinely employed in supporting large scale moves on a ad hoc basis and probably based upon a system of earmarking suitable vessels with ship owners so that they could be engaged under contract when required once the sea lift requirement and ports of embarkation could be identified and incorporated into the detailed planning.

There were also small other bits of ad hoccery whereby force elements were embarked onto the normal freight and passenger liner systems simply by buying out the capacity of the ship.

The ports of embarkation tended to be those nearest the main UK holding bases for overseas campaigns. Ship sizes were also still fairlt small by 20thC standards providing another source of flexibility. Offloading facilities at ports of disembarkation (POD) (almost entirely Durban, though apparently with some re-arrangements of ship loads at the Cape en route) were fairly limited and significant a source of delay. As was the problem of dispersing troops and cargo and running it forward from the POD. The rail route to Pietermaritzburg lacked capacity and the intent had clearly been to transfer to a much shorter LofC via the Lower Drift as soon as possible. Neither the Tugela Mouth nor Port Durnford offered worthwhile development potential within the envisaged time span of the campaign.

G
Martin Everett


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 786
Location: Brecon
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John

You really need to examine WO25/3509 and WO25/3510 which give departure and arrived data for individuals and units at the time of the Anglo-Zulu War. These schedules are held in ledgers at the National Archives Kew and are not available on-line. Individual officers joining units used commercial shipping lines. Usually deprted from Southampton or Devonport. Units were moved in bulk by transports, which were permanently chartered and crewed by Royal Navy personnel, direct from the nearest port.

To give you an idea....... 1/24th after AZW departed Port Natal (Durban) on 27 Aug 1879 aboard transport Egypt and arrived at Portsmouth 2 Oct 1879 (they could have spend a few days in Cape Town or Madeira). 2/24th left Portsmouth aboard Himalaya on 2 Feb 1878 and arrived at Simon's Bay (near Cape Town) on 28 Feb 1878.

Someone has written a book on transport ships - sorry I cannot remember the title or the author.

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Martin Everett
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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 1797
Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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A fascinating topic which has always interested me, John. There is an almost limitless supply of published works with a S African flavour - military and otherwise, including autobiographical - which describe voyages to the Cape from England. Often, the length of the voyage as well as the nature of it is described. Perhaps the best of these is found in R.W. Leyland, A Holiday in South Africa (Sampson Low, London, 1882) in which a voyage from Liverpool to the battlefields of Zululand is described. It took about 21/22 days from Liverpool or around 20/21 from Plymouth - but that was a bit faster than average around 1882 I think. Many officers involved in the AZW left memoirs which describe their voyage out, and sometimes their return trip too.

As Gallo has said, the Narrative would be a good place to start. (Narrative of the Field Operations Connected with the Zulu War: 1881 & 1907, plenty of reprints about). A pull-out page provides the dates of embarkation & arrival of every transport used for the reinforcements sent for the 2nd invasion, including dates at St Vincent, the Cape & Durban. Most of those vessels took around 6 weeks altogether from England to Durban.

You say your research covers the Victorian period. A long period! The voyage times came down considerably between 1837 and 1901 as the ships themselves changed. Stopovers seem to have been involved in most voyages - St Vincent, Madeira (tourists liked sledging down the hill at Funchal), and St Helena were the usual, the latter being the least used. On many vessels drafts of troops were mixed with civilian passengers. Even S America was almost on the way - when Colenso first sailed in 1853/4 his voyage to the Cape took only 35 days but a year later it took 72 days including the last leg between the Cape & Natal. Their only sightings of land before the Cape were of Trinidad and Brazil!

Among your best sources will be the shipping columns in The Times, whose archives are available online for a subscription or through many universities. Reports of most voyages coming in and going out, as well as news of vessels during their voyage (picked up & passed on by other vessels on their arrival here) appear daily. If a vessel was on the high seas somewhere, it would get at least two mentions - departure and arrival - in The Times, and sometimes much more, including incidents en route and - if a military draft was on board - which regiment was going where. Care has to be taken with ships' names, as some names were used by more than one vessel.

Because the AZW was still very topical, The Times gave space to reports on the arrival of vessels bringing troops back to Portsmouth or Plymouth in 1879 and 1880, mentioning which regiment and often which officers or (by then) well known personalities who had picked up decorations, were arriving. From these more detailed reports there are often little nuggets about the length and nature of the voyage itself.

Some Cape traffic involved longer journeys - India or Australia - but regular troopships such as the Jumna, Malabar etc., went via Suez.

Peter
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johnk


Joined: 18 Oct 2010
Posts: 64
Location: St.Helens, Merseyside
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Thank you Galloglas, Martin and Peter for, as usual, invaluable help

John
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Robin


Joined: 16 Jan 2007
Posts: 135
Location: Nottingham Road KZN RSA
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In december 1946 i landed in Durban harbour after a 5 day passage in the Flying Boat "Golden Hind"
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ship sailing times 1879 England to Capetown
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