Page 36 - Bulletin 14 2010

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in width. After being stacked outside the lowest of the adits the ore was sorted by eye and by
hand, according to the amount of manganese it contained: the higher the purity the blacker

and denser it was, while the lower grade ore was both lower in density and browner in colour
as a result of the iron oxide impurity it contained. After sorting the ore was stacked in heaps a

metre or so high awaiting transport to the head of the shute and several substantial piles of

this hand-sorted ore – totalling at least several hundred tons in weight – still lie at grass to the
north and somewhat below the lowest of the adits. (Figs. 1.20 – 1.21.) The piles are supported

by drystone retaining walls, still in excellent condition.

It should be mentioned that there is an apocryphal story that the shute ended on the jetty itself
and that on one occasion the ore emerging at high speed from the bottom of the shute went

right through the bottom of the waiting lighter, sinking it. Indeed, the remains of the lighter

are said to still be visible on the sea floor!

There is no doubt that the mine exported manganese ore in the year 1910. Yet by 1912 – even

though that substantial quantity of ore was still lying in heaps up on the hillside – the mine
had closed. The reasons for this are still not completely clear, although it is known that the

company had experienced much trouble with the shute. For example, a storm destroyed large
sections of it soon after its completion. (Fig. 1.22.) Perhaps the answer is simply that the

company had, like so many mines before and since, run out of capital, or perhaps the ore,
which had been found to contain an undesirably high proportion of phosphorus, was now

found to be unsuitable in the production of alloy.

In 1929 an attempt was made to reopen the mine, with the local press reporting that “Capital
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is being raised to work the manganese on the slopes of the Hout bay mountains …”
However, given that the giant manganese deposits at Postmasburg in the Northern Cape had

been discovered some three years before in 1926, it defies logic that anybody should attempt
to resume working a tiny deposit such as that at Hout Bay. What can be said, however, is that

this historically unique mine is most worthy of our systematic protection and restoration.