Page 153 - Bulletin 8 2004

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published at the time is interesting in that it shows how heavily the boat depended on the
regular, reliable, and, above all, safe train service. Note that the boat was “patronized” by

the Caronia, one of the leading cruise ships of the day. (Fig. 3.39).

Taxis would collect passengers from the ship and deliver them to Cape Town station where

they would entrain for Kalk Bay for the Seal Island trip, along with other passengers. (Fig.
3.40). Indeed the departure times of Iona were planned around train arrival times, and the

great majority of her clientele arrived on trains. The Seal Island trips proved to be a
profitable and popular undertaking, but unfortunately maintenance was only done as

problems arose.

In 1956 I chanced to watch the crew wrapping the original but then leaky copper exhaust

pipes in chicken wire and plaster of Paris. The diesel exhaust gases combined in these pipes
with the warm engine-cooling seawater to form a weak sulphuric acid, which had

consumed the copper in parts. This shortsighted repair failed not long after and early in

1957 Iona sank (for the first time) during one night. She was later returned to service after
being raised by Captain John Hocken, who is listed in the 1957 Cape Times directory as

engaging in marine salvage.

The boat used in the salvage operation was called the Joey, a double-ended wooden boat
with a Kelvin Ricardo petrol paraffin engine. Somehow the boat, or Captain Hocken and

the boat, came into the possession of Murray and Roberts who in 1958 put her into my care

with the request to sell it. This I duly did, to a Mr. Alberts of Calitzdorp, earning a
commission of £12-10s.

My friends and I took the boat to sea quite regularly on jaunts to Simon’s Town before she

was sold to Mr. Alberts, whom I think used her as a fishing boat. I do not know what
happened to her.