Page 141 - Bulletin 18 2014

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Stewart’s Career Continues

At the same time Stewart had been appointed by the tiny Kalk Bay and Muizenberg

Municipality to sort out their water problems, which were solved by his design for the
Silvermine Reservoir which was built by a contractor, G. S. Firth, in 1898.

Not all jobs were productive. In 1898 the Colonial Government appointed him as a technical

member of the commission investigating an ambitious irrigation scheme at Steynsburg in the

Karoo. The scheme was condemned, and as there have been no further suggestions to revive
such a project we can presume he was right. (Seventy years later the tunnel of the Orange-

Fish scheme would emerge near Steynsburg and again bring water to the region.)

During the Boer War he was attached to the Royal Engineers as a major (without pay) and he

designed defence works. At the conclusion of the war he returned to Scotland again, but not
to stay - to claim a bride, Miss Mary Mackintosh Young, whom he brought back to Cape

Town. She bore him three sons, but sadly passed away in 1921. He later married the widow
of the well-known Rhodesian pioneer “Matabele” Thompson.

The Alexandra, Victoria, and De Villiers dams which served Wynberg were built in the same
period - but this time the newly married young engineer lived at ground level and travelled up

the mountain when required.

Another dam, to serve Simon’s Town, was also on the cards. This one would eventually be

engulfed by the Lewis Gay dam designed by Ninham Shand in the 1960s, during which the
amazed engineers came across a fascinating piece of machinery, devised by Stewart. The

chemical dosing system consisted of a float-actuated bicycle gear, complete with chain and
pedals. The alum-dosed water then ran through a long trough containing lumps of limestone.

From the trough the water was led in to the slow sand filters containing sea sand which had a

large proportion of readily soluble seashell in it. The results were phenomenal. Never had a
clearer, more sparkling, but still soft and palatable water been produced by this ingenious

contrivance, and the Shand men were all grieved to have to see it make way for the essential
larger plant of greater capacity.