Grandad had been working for BTM for a couple of years. One day, he was summoned to head office and told he'd been chosen to head up the Cape Town branch, which was an amazing opportunity for a young man of 26. His task was to bring up the staff compliment to 12 and build a solid base for the Hollerith brand in South Africa. I'm guessing he had met his sweetheart by then because he and Sandy [Florence Sanderson] married a year later.
He must have been excited about the prospect of starting a new life with his bride in a faraway land. I imagine he knew something about South Africa as it was a member of the Commonwealth, the location of the Anglo-Boer War and an envisaged growth region for BTM. Yet I wonder what his imagination dreamt up when he thought of living there? Lions and elephants on the streets? Or smart colonial cocktail parties?
The company gave David a first-class ticket to sail on a Union Castle ocean liner to Cape Town. That was when he bumped into Henry, Duke of Gloucester. Apparently, the Duke was stunned into silence by the sight of his double, and Grandad had to scramble to think of what to say in the presence of such an esteemed royal personage. After all, this was the son of King George V, no less. With a polite half-smile and a respectful “How do you do”, my grandfather got past the awkward moment, but as he says in his memoir, “I swear he gave me a wink!”
This is a fascinating anecdote but it’s hard to correlate with the facts. Grandad’s memoir states that the Duke was on route to Lobito Bay on the Atlantic coast to open the Benguela Bay railway. The Benguela Railway was completed in February 1929, sure enough, but there is no record of the Duke of Gloucester being amongst the officials at the opening. What is certain is that Henry and his brother were in Africa in September 1928 on an expedition to shoot big game. It was while in Nairobi that Henry was entertained by Mansfield Markham and his wife Beryl, and where his affair with Beryl is purported to have begun.
Finding passenger lists for people travelling to and from the United Kingdom isn't generally complicated, but for some reason, I haven't been able to track down that first trip of David's in 1928. All his subsequent trips are there [1939 being the most eventful because the family's time in England happened to coincide with the outbreak of war] but then he was sailing as a second-class passenger along with his wife and daughters. So, that first voyage remains something of a mystery. Another one to add to the mounting pile!
Photo by
Royal Australian Historical Society
It's all fascinating! According to a BBC news article by Andrew Jeffrey in 2004, the official opening of the Benguela Railway took place on 6 June, 1929. It was one of "the events" of the African colonial calendar. Sir Robert Williams was accompanied by his family, H R H Prince Arthur of Connaught and representatives of both the Portuguese and Belgian governments. Not Prince Henry Duke of Gloucester. But there was a 2nd opening ceremony for the 2nd part of the railway according to Peter Hall, who wrote an article in 2015 for The Heritage Portal called 'Benguela - more than just a current'. The opening ceremony for the through route from Elisabethville to Lobito (a distance of 1 312 miles) took place at Dilolo Station, on the 1st July 1931. Perhaps that was when the Duke attended, or he merely visited the construction. An excellent short video called 'Trails and Rails' by Pathe on the railway construction is available on YouTube on this link: https://youtu.be/MsCEsMtTHdo
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