While Bright Dream is of little value - the scrap price is currently deflated as many owners flooded scrapyards with obsolete vessels during the economic meltdown - the fuel aboard might make a mess of the magnificent Wild Coast if she were to ground.  This is unlikely as reports indicated that she was at anchor.

Another ro-ro with an equally anomalous name was in port over the week-end. The former ro-ro ferry Winner 6 (ex Equine) refueled at B Berth from the UniCal bunker tanker Southern Valour and was scheduled to sail for a breaker's yard in India. 

At this time of the year in a previous era, refrigerated ships would have been berthed from B to D Berth, loading fruit for Europe.  Gone are the queues of fruitships in the roadstead or at lay-up berths waiting to load, as the fulcrum of fruit shipment has moved to the container terminal where northbound and eastbound containerships load refrigerated containers by the hundred.

Looking well-found was the 62-metre Lida, a former near-sea trader, but now equipped to harvest obsolete undersea communication cables.  She is typical of many European-built coasters over the years, and, as containerisation rendered them obsolete, a number came onto the South African coastal trade which at that stage remained the domain of the general cargo coaster.

I watched Lida sail a few years ago, with barges on her foredeck.  This time, she was at A Berth that saw vibrant days as the departure point for the Southampton-bound Union-Castle mailships.  Many readers can associate with those sailing days when, for those on the ship, a fortnight of sheer holiday and excitement lay ahead.  (Towards the end of that unique mail service, the steaming time was cut to eleven and a half days.)

Those on the quayside harboured other emotions as sons, daughters and friends departed for the UK, some emigrating, others heading for a carefree jaunt around Britain or Europe.

Once the mailship had passed through the harbour entrance, the thronging crowds dispersed quickly, some dashing to Sea Point to watch the vessel pass Robben Island before altering course to the north. The more tearful folks went home to ponder the implications of an empty nest.

Since the mailships enjoyed priority, the harbour stopped other movements from mid-afternoon until after the liner had left when there was often another ship sailing or arriving, often to berth at A berth.  When I had pedaled to the docks on mailship day, I used to hang around to see what happened thereafter, and often struck it lucky for that was when even more fascinating ships moved! 

On one occasion, I recall Robin Locksley, one of the familiar Robin Line vessels, coming alongside A Berth immediately the mailship had sailed.  Officially known as Seas Shipping, the company began in 1920 as a feeder operation along the American coast for Farrell Lines.  A fall-out among shareholders saw Robin and Farrell part ways in 1933 and, when Robin Line entered the US-South Africa trade in 1935, the companies became bitter rivals, a scenario that continued after World War 2.

With air travel in its infancy, the war-built Robin ships had been refitted with plush accommodation for 12 passengers as the company executives promoted ocean passenger travel in their freighters at every opportunity.

In its heyday, the fleet operated twelve steamers whose nomenclature reflected - albeit vaguely in some instances - the Robin Hood story.  Moore-McCormack bought the company in the 1950s and later replaced the Robin ships with their own vessels.

Although I enjoyed the hype of the mailships and might take a photo or two of a modern cruiseliner, I find the world of freighters and containerships more fascinating. 

During my week-end dockland stroll, I saw the epitome of this interest.  Inward in ballast from Port Gentil (Gabon), African Challenger called for bunkers en route to Tuticorin on the south-eastern coast of India.  She had berthed in the wee hours of Sunday morning and I was pleasantly surprised when she drew away from the Landing Wall within ten minutes of the tugs' arrival shortly before lunchtime.

Probably on charter to carry rice to West Africa, she is an old lady, with obvious signs of working cargo overside but typical of those very ordinary five-hatch handysize bulkers that bring our grain, that call to refuel, and that carry a myriad of minerals from Richards Bay, Durban and Saldanha.   

Such ships, their larger cousins that move coal, ore or grain, the containerships, and the many types of tanker form the backbone of shipping, and indeed, of the world's economy.

But my dockland stroll went sour.  I walked past the Clock Tower, that icon of the Waterfront.  Despite assurances in March from Waterfront officials that its use as a kitchen would cease in October last year, its culinary role continues. 

This is a disgraceful dereliction of their duty to preserve this unique building, and is equal to the appalling apathy displayed by Iziko Museums who have left two unique ships - SAS Somerset, the last of her class anywhere, and Alwyn Vintcent, the last South African steam tug - to rot away.  Shame, indeed!

With fog shrouding the Atlantic seaboard on Monday morning, the salvage tug Smit Amandla put to sea, heading for Mbashe Point where an obsolete car carrier Bright Dream - a misnomer indeed - had broken down en route to the breakers.   The tug should be there by now and, if all goes well, will probably tow the ship to East London or Durban.

Togo's soccer players, sadly, became victims of another African conflict.  Until 1914, the tiny elongated country along the Gulf of Guinea was a German protectorate and then was split between British and French control, the latter imparting its language and the names of some of its footballers.

A snippet in a new booklet, TOL, A Short History of Transocean Liners, that came my way last week referred briefly to an interesting story surrounding the 1938-built German freighter Togo that took her name from the West African country. The German crew did not relish the prospect of internment should war break out, and, with French guns trained on the ship when loading in Duoala (in French Cameroon), cargowork was expedited so that she managed to sail only hours before war was declared - without her clearance papers and pilotless - for Boma at the mouth of the Congo River. 

Breaking the British blockade of the North Sea, she arrived safely in Hamburg in December 1939.  Although heavily armed and camouflaged, Togo became a singularly unsuccessful commerce raider, as repeated aerial and naval attacks - a bomb went right through her without exploding - as well as British gunnery from coastal batteries prevented her from breaking out into the Atlantic on her first sortie in 1943, forcing her to return to Germany.  Later, she became a floating radar station in the Baltic Sea.

The Norwegians took her as a war prize and she sailed under two owners before her original owners bought her, refitted her and she returned to Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linien's southern African service.

She was a most handsome vessel with teak fronting to her bridge and, like all her DOAL consorts, was always well maintained.

Remarkably, she plied the DOAL service for a further 12 years before she was sold to operate again for various owners until she was wrecked on the Mexican coast, nearly 50 years after her construction.

In reporting the arrival of the fine freighter Transvaal, the first German ship to call at a South African port after the war, the Cape Times of 13 December 1951 captured a poignant moment - the meeting between the ship's third mate, and his mother who had immigrated to South Africa and had not seen her son for years. 

Lest war historians rush to find it, I should point out that the 70-page booklet - written by that highly respected shipping and affable figure, Hans Busse - focuses not on the war, but on the post-war success of a cluster of companies within the fold of the Von Rantzau family.

South African Lines (SAL), founded in 1945 by a Greek shipowner Eugene Eugenides, began a joint South Africa-Europe service with DOAL in 1951, forging close links with the German company that led initially to the formation of the local agency Transocean Liners (TOL), and ultimately, to a buy out of SAL by Globus Reederei, subsequently bought by Safmarine in 1973.

Besides providing agency services for DOAL and SAL, Transocean looked after Lykes Lines, the US company whose war-built C3 and Victory ships traded from the US Gulf to South Africa, and TOL extended its agency operations to include French and other interests. 

Mrs Liselotte von Rantzau-Essberger, the energetic chairman of the group from 1959, visited South Africa often, and despite brush-offs by leading politicians, developed the South African business to the point where she registered a local company, Cape Continent Shipping Company.  The DOAL freighter Karroo was transferred to the new company and registered in Cape Town, while four smart new ships, Stellenbosch, Swellendam, Palabora and Tabora, were registered under the new company in 1968.

Stellenbosch and Swellendam each had a 180-ton derrick that was most useful in shipping the range of heavylift cargoes - electrical switchgear, powerstation boilers, mining equipment and refinery components - that were being imported as part of a large-scale government spending spree.

Containerisation changed the company's interests to focus on the container service to Europe.  DAL Kalahari should arrive in Cape Town over the week-end.

With 47 years in the business, and an interest in shipping that stretches back to the day he, then a real kortbroek, shook hands with the master of the DOAL liner Transvaal in 1951, Hans Busse has packed much into this valuable, attractively-designed record of Transocean Liners and its associated companies. 

Oh that more shipping memories are recorded like this, that more kortbroekies can get closer to ships, and that more shipmasters would make time to meet them!