Port Grosvenor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Port Grosvenor
Port Grosvenor (South Africa)
Port Grosvenor
Port Grosvenor
Coordinates 31 ° 22 ′  S , 29 ° 55 ′  E Coordinates: 31 ° 22 ′  S , 29 ° 55 ′  E
Basic data
Country South Africa

province

Eastern Cape
District OR Tambo
ISO 3166-2 ZA-EC
local community Ingquza Hill
founding 1885
Special features:
no harbor
Robert Smirke: The shipwreck of the 'Grosvenor'

Port Grosvenor was a coastal town and port on the Wild Coast in Pondoland ( South Africa ). It is located near the site of the accident involving the East Indiaman Grosvenor , who was shipwrecked in 1782 . The port was only operated in 1885 and 1886. The sea trade with Pondoland continued to focus on the southern port of Port St. Johns , of the since 1878 part of Cape Colony was.

history

The construction of Port Grosvenor goes back to Captain Sidney Turner , who bought 240 hectares of land on the south coast of the colony of Natal with his father-in-law Walter Compton in 1867  . Turner had started the first attempt at salvage of the Grosvenor , as reported on May 20, 1880 by the newspaper Natal Mercury . Turner and a friend, Artillery - Lieutenant Beddoes had, by ship Adonis left for Port St. Johns, the wreck had reached and started to blow up the surrounding rock with dynamite.

At the beginning of 1885, the local chief Mqikela, who was dissatisfied with the British colonial government and wanted to build its own port, signed a contract with Turner. Turner was granted over 8,000 acres of land including the coastline on which the wreck of the Grosvenor lay. In return, Turner should select a suitable location for a port and undertake the necessary construction work. The chosen location was the mouth of the Tezana River at Lambasi Bay, near the Grosvenor wreck . Turner therefore called it Port Grosvenor.

As port captain , Turner levied usage fees and managed the port and its pilots . Turner was forced to come to terms with this situation due to his financial situation, as he had to provide for his wife and family with seven children since 1884. Despite the objections of the colonial government, the port was officially opened in 1885. Although the Cape Colony government did not yet have jurisdiction in the area, it later ruled Turner's concession rights illegal. The family moved to Port St. Johns. The last ship to arrive at Port Grosvenor in 1886 was the tugboat Somtseu .

The agricultural experimental station Lambas (also Lombaas ) of the German Pondoland Society , founded by Franz Bachmann and Konrad Beyrich , was located near Port Grosvenor . Today there is a lodge for tourists here.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Shipwrecks on the Wild Coast
  2. ^ South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA): Grosvenor (1782) - Closing Summery of Archiological Fieldwork Activities: 1999 - 2013. P. 7 f. ( PDF, approx. 13 MB )
  3. ^ William Beinart: European Traders and the Mpondo Paramountcy, 1878-1886. In: The Journal of African History. Vol. 20, No. 4 (1979): p. 482 f. ( Online at JSTOR ).
  4. ↑ Author collective: Meyers Konversationslexikon. 17th (supplementary) volume, 4th edition, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna 1885–1892, p. 665, ( online at retrobibliothek.de ).
  5. ↑ Berthold Volz : Our colonies - country and people. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1891, p. 306. ( online at archive.org ).
  6. ^ Hugh F. Glen, Gerrit Germishuizen (ed.): Botanical exploration of southern Africa. 2nd ed., Strelitzia 26, South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria 2010, ISBN 978-1-919976-54-9 , p. 83. ( Online at biodiversitylibrary.org )
  7. ↑ Wildcoast: Port Grosvenor

literature

  • Hazel Crampton: The Sunburnt Queen. Jacana Media, Johannesburg 2004, ISBN 978-1-9199-3192-0 .
  • Sidney Turner, Daphne Child (Ed.): Portrait of a pioneer - The letters of Sidney Turner from South Africa, 1864-1901. Macmillan South Africa, Johannesburg / London 1980, ISBN 978-0-8695-4095-4 .
  • Stephen Taylor: The Caliban Shore . Faber & Faber, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-5712-9567-8 .