a DH-9 aircraft in the first experimental Air Mail service between Durban and Cape Town along the east coast. This service was to connect with the Union Castle mail steamers bound for the United Kingdom. While flying between the Xora and Bashee River mouths, he had noticed a wreck lying on the ocean floor. He was somewhat puzzled for there was no known wreck in the area and thought it may be the wreck of the SS Waratah. Lt. Roos was to pilot an aircraft accompanied by a young reporter, Lindsay Smith from The Star newspaper. Lt. Roos drew a map of the area and a flight path to guide their search. The wreck was approximately four miles off the coast between the Bashee and Xora Rivers, but more towards the Xora River side. Dogged by bad weather and engine trouble, nothing was accomplished on this search. Shortly afterwards Lt. Roos was sadly killed in a car accident. The map was lost and Lindsay Smith’s copy had also been mislaid. Ironically it was The Star newspaper that sponsored the 1989 expedition, using the salvage ship Deep Salvage 1 to confirm the identity of this wreck with a diving bell. However positive conclusion was drawn from this expedition. I found an authentic copy of the map with Lt. Roos’s father, Brigadier Roos. This is a side scan sonar image of the Nailsea Meadow shipwreck dived on with the Delta submarine.
In all, both maps had been lost for 42 years. Then in 1973, as Brigadier Roos was going through an old family album, he found a map. After reading this story in a newspaper cutting, I tracked Brigadier Roos down. We arranged for a meeting and he showed me the map, which had been placed inside an old family album full of warrelated photographs. So not only did I have my X on a map, I had an historical account of its placing and was now sitting with Lt. Roos’s son in his living room talking about it.
So where does one start finding facts on a ship that simply vanishes somewhere off the Cape of Good Hope late in July 1909, with the loss of all 211 persons on board? I was advised to go to the reference library to search newspaper accounts of the overdue ship headed for Cape Town. I was quite friendly with a young lady librarian who gave me a lot of information about where to look, index cards, references, microfilm and eventually the archives. I needed, if possible, an X on a chart, while understanding how it got there. An area or map of probability as I now know it. I needed a pattern of events to unfold because if someone was going to bankroll the project, I needed to tell them a story that was supported by some factual documentation. By May 1983 I had gathered some facts surrounding the last possible resting place of the ship to at least point me in the right direction. This mainly came in the form of a report of a Cape Mounted Rifleman who witnesses a ship roll over, an aerial sighting in 1925 by Lt. Roos and a side scan sonar report undertaken by the CSIR in 1977. Particularly of note was a meeting with Brigadier Roos, a former military attaché to Portugal and Officer Commanding of the Cape Town Castle. Brigadier Roos had found a map that had been lost for many years and on that map was an all important X. The story was beyond fascination. Brigadier Roos’s father was Lieutenant D.J. Roos, a South African Air Force pilot. In 1925, Lt. Roos was flying
28 >> DO IT NOW December/January 2011
There was something even more extraordinary that I had pieced together. I had obtained the military records of Cape Mounted Rifleman Edward Joe Conquer. The Cape Mounted Rifleman had been stationed on the Wild Coast in the early part of 1909. On the 28th of July 1909 the soldiers had been ordered to carry out live shell practise at the Xora River mouth with signalling exercises via heliograph. As it was a cloudy day, the exercise was suspended until the sun reappeared, as a heliograph requires the sun to reflect the mirrored signal. On that day, 16 years earlier than Lt. Roos’s aerial sighting, Edward Joe Conquer was stationed on a knoll on the right bank of the Xora River with signaller H. Adshead. He saw, through the eyepiece of his telescope, a large ship proceeding very slowly in a south-westerly direction and making very heavy weather. Conquer’s record notes the following:
“I watched this vessel through a telescope and can still see her in my mind’s eye. She was a ship of considerable tonnage with a single funnel. Two masts and a black hull, the upper works were painted yellow. I gave the telescope to Adshead who remarked that the ship was having a very rough passage. I watched the ship crawling along and saw her roll to starboard and then before she could right herself, a following wave rolled over her and I saw her no more.” About three days later, the East London Dispatch newspaper arrived at the camp and the main page carried big headlines of the non arrival of the SS Waratah. I thought this was an extraordinary observation. This was no theory by Edward Joe Conquer. This was an observation witnessed by other soldiers as well.