A mysterious crop of “boulders” has mushroomed on Pollok Beach, revealing another strand in the Friendly City’s unique maritime history.
The three orange-brown slabs dotted along the beach between Pipe and the Summerstrand Lifesaving Club draw a line between the tropical rainforest, a forgotten flurry of international trade, a world racked by war and how a sleepy SA coastal town was caught up in it.
Environmental consultant Angie Fotheringham said she had spotted the first one last week on one of her regular early morning beach strolls.
“I almost walked past it because it looks like a rock, but then I thought — that wasn’t here yesterday.
“It had a strange pattern and texture and smelt like it was rotting. I dug down and tried to move it, but it was really big and heavy.
“I was fascinated.”
Fotheringham put the word out and learnt that a similar object had surfaced at Cape Recife and another at Seaview.
Historical Society of Port Elizabeth chair Graham Taylor convened with Fotheringham for an impromptu inspection at Pipe and with the help of Lloyd Edwards, Arnold Slabbert and maritime writer Colin Urquhart, he pieced the incredible story together.
The first piece of the jigsaw appears in The Englishwoman’s Blog, where Claire Valente records how in 2019 strange “blocks” started popping up on the beach near her home at Prainha do Cando Verde on the northeast coast of Brazil.
Valente subsequently learnt that similar blocks, apparently rubber, had been washing up on British beaches and there was speculation that they might come from the Titanic, which sank in 1912 in the North Atlantic and which was known to be carrying rubber as part of its cargo.
It seemed a bit obscure, so she did some research and found that natural rubber was especially valuable during World War 1 and World War 2.
“Thousands of British, Japanese and German merchant ships and submarines were lost or sunk during the war years, many of them carrying a cargo of rubber.”
Her finding is supported by a piece in the January 1947 edition of the Southern Economic Journal which notes that the military success of the Allies in World War 2 was seriously threatened by a rubber shortage.
The next clue comes from the website uboat.net which records that German naval submarine U-516 was prowling off Seal Point, Cape St Francis, on February 11 1943 when it came upon the unescorted British steam merchant Helmspey.
The British boat, captained by Harry Jones, had departed from Colombo in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in Southeast Asia and, having bunkered in East London, was on its way home to the UK.
U-516 captain Gerhard Wiebe dispatched two torpedoes, which struck the Helmspey.
Four crew were killed and the survivors were rescued by a South African Air Force crash launch and transported to Port Elizabeth, where a fifth died.
Two are buried today in the South End Cemetery.
The Helmspey sank with its cargo which included, according to the meticulously researched uboat.net site, “2,772 tons of team, 2,000 tons of manganese ore and ... 1,457 tons of rubber”.
Valente’s photos of the Prainha do Cando Verde blocks match the Pollok boulders exactly so clearly they are also rubber bales.
But the Bay’s are from the Helmspey, originally from Ceylon and, though they have appeared sporadically on this coast for years, these ones were spewed out by our recent high seas.
Taylor said it was a wonderful story which dispelled the myth that SA was far removed from World War 2.
HeraldLIVE
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