Tuesday, 16 July 2019

The Fairest Cape, the History of Cape Town and the American Connection

What does Cape Town have to do with the American Civil War? Not much, you'd think. But there is a curious Afrikaans folk song that most schoolchildren in South Africa learn, which gives a hint that it ain't so. It begins like this:

"Daar kom die Alibama, die Alibama
Daar kom die Alibama,
Die Alibama sy kom oor die see …"
Afrikaans folk song

English translation:

(Here comes the Alibama, the Alibama,
Here comes the Alibama,
The Alibama comes over the sea ….)

Excepting that die Alibama is – or was – really the CSS Alabama, a Confederate raider that hunted Union ships around the globe during said civil war. Under Captain Raphael Semmes the raider sank or captured around 60 northern ships.

During her South Atlantic Expeditionary Raid she plied the ocean between South America and the Cape, using Table Bay as a safe anchorage. The Cape of Good Hope was at that time a British colony, which favoured South over North. (Our own civil war between Boer and Brit came some three decades later.)

The Alibama song came about when the mainly mixed race workers of Cape Town (people who are known as Cape Coloureds) would gather on Signal Hill overlooking the bay and harbour, to cheer the ship flying the Confederate "stars and bars" flag coming and going.

While the ship was anchored in Table Bay, where today the Victoria and Alfred, or V&A harbour welcomes tourists, Captain Semmes would be dined and wined by the local high society. Which was something of an irony given that slavery had been abolished here since 1836 and the people jeering the ship most loudly were the sons and daughters of freed slaves.

The most exciting event seen in Cape waters was when the Alabama traded fire with the USS Vanderbilt that had been sent to hunt down and destroy her. But the elusive Southern vessel managed to slip the scene. The Alabama was finally sunk during the Battle of Cherbourg off the coast of France in June 1864, the death blows fired by the USS Kearsage.

Its lasting legacy is one of its flags that was presented by Captain Semmes to the mayor of the town as thanks for his support and which now hands in the South African Museum. And the song that is part of the standard repertoire in the "battle of the bands" which takes places during the Cape Carnival annually around New Year.

There is another story about an American sailor enjoying the hospitality of the Cape of Good Hope, or "tavern of the seas" as it was known in the late 19th century, one Joshua Penny. Penny had been press-ganged: that heinous practice of the Royal Navy where they would accost drunk sailors in pubs anywhere around the world and drag them off to serve His Majesty's Ship Spectre.

When he ship anchored below the iconic mountain penny decided to jump and take his chances on land at the southern corner of Africa. The absconded sailor found a small and dark cave high up on the mountain that had a tricky access and spent the next 14 months living rough.

Water was no problem on the mountain but food was hard to come by. In his memoirs he recalls: "My whole stock of provisions nearly exhausted, I thought it time to recruit. I sallied out with a stone in my hand and had not advanced a great distance when I espied an antelope on the brow of a precipice. I threw the stone at the back of his head and tumbled him to the bottom. I cut the meat into strips and hung it on sticks put into crevices in my habitation."

When he'd had enough of the wild life Penny stole down to the harbour and found passage on a passing Danish vessel. It was only then that he learned that, just weeks after leaving Table Bay, the Spectre had been lost at sea.

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The Fairest Cape, the History of Cape Town and the American Connection