Tony Murray

The Governor Sir Philip Wodehouse imported an engineer of repute, Mr John Bourne, whom he had encountered in his previous posting in Demerara (now Guyana), where Bourne had saved the colony a large amount of money. The intention was to appoint him as Colonial Railway Engineer, but until there was a public railway for him to control there wasn't much for him to do. He toured the Colony to check out possible opportunities. His most far-reaching recommendation was that the government should plant forests of bluegums to provide timber for fuel, instead of importing Welsh coal to run the locomotives.

The obvious major route was to extend the Wellington line to Tulbagh and Worcester, and this alignment was informally approved by a select committee. Some work on the grading was done to keep the navvies from the original works employed, but in 1866 the government changed, and the Responsible and the Anti-Progressives Parties put a stop to railway construction - mainly because they felt that if country developed, they would lose their seats. Bourne's job opportunity was abolished and he returned to England. His lasting contribution to the Colony was a project he took on while kicking his heels - he stabilised the new lighthouse on Roman Rock which was about to collapse. The granite skirt which he suggested has ensured that the light is still in service today.

However there was steady pressure to extend the Wellington line and an 1868 governmental select committee recommended that railway construction be...

1845... The railway age is in full swing in Britain. Robert Stephenson is completing the line between London and Edinburgh. Brunel is extending his line into Cornwall and is tinkering with the atmospheric railway. New railway companies are springing up, and contractors are working all over England. There is money to be made, directly and indirectly from building new lines. In America the network east of the Mississippi is growing and there is talk about accessing the harvests of the prairies with railways.

If there is a railway boom in England, and there is money to be made by exploiting the agricultural potential of America, are there not opportunities for investment in other parts of the world? What about that backward little colony at the foot of Africa? It’s apparently bankrupt, but it does produce wheat and fruit and make wine, and could perhaps trade in wool and meat as well, and it's comparatively well placed for trade with Europe. Pity about the lack of a proper harbour, and the appalling roads, though. But it might be worth the investing one of these new-fangled railways to solve the transport problem!

And so in 1845 a committee met in London to form a company to promote railways in South Africa.

Things were looking up in the colony. The new Colonial Secretary, John Montagu, had sorted out the financial mess and was turning his attention to roads. He even had a plan to solve the labour problem by putting convicts to carry out...

Until the middle of the 19th century, few authorities worldwide bothered about safety at sea and more particularly about the provision of lighthouses. The sea was a demanding mistress and was entitled to claim vessels, cargoes and lives, and the ruling classes who governed nations and held the purse strings were unaffected and unconcerned by losses at sea. And so the wrecks piled up on the treacherous coasts of Europe and North America, and in some numbers on the uncharted peninsulas and capes around the southern tip of Africa.

Photographing a shipwreck at Cape Point (SAHRA)

Certainly the Dutch East India Company was not prepared to spend its profits on maritime safety around the Cape of Good Hope, and left any efforts in this respect to the initiative of the Governors – to be funded from the normal budget. Van Riebeeck had a go at putting a bonfire on Robben Island, but soon gave up when the local supplies of wood were exhausted. Thereafter the Dutch did nothing.

At the time of the British takeover of the Cape, the authorities in Whitehall and their parliamentary...

Who was the first properly trained engineer to practice in South Africa? There is little in the history of the Dutch occupation to suggest that the minimal infrastructure they provided was carried out by competent officers. Van Riebeeck may indeed have built a primitive jetty and Wagenaar a water tank, but these no doubt were constructed by handy employees of the Company who succeeded by common sense rather than by formal training. Likewise Hendrik van Oldendaal, Simon van der Stel’s head gardener, who is sometimes touted as the first Town Engineer of Cape Town on the grounds that he constructed a “canal” to cut off water from the mountain from the Grand Parade. The Dutch were avid canal builders and imposed their homeland expertise on their colonies; Columbo, Batavia and New York all were blessed with canal systems, but again, these were no doubt constructed by workmen who had learn their trade in the polders. Undoubtedly Cape Town Castle was designed and set out by competent military engineers, but there is no record of their having stayed in the country.

The Castle (The Heritage Portal)

In about 1740 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) decided to lash out and spend money on a mole to protect shipping in the Table Bay...

Few engineers in the 19th century went to university and most were articled to an established practitioner, by which means they would eventually be admitted to Associate Membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers. But in the early years the profession was not established, pupillages were scarce and the Institution did not exist. Many gained experience as labourers and artisans and were recognised as engineers when they emerged from the pack to plan and execute their own projects.

One achiever who took the hard route was James Cameron, who joins our list because he became the second City Engineer of Cape Town.

James Cameron

He was born in the village of Murthly near Dunkeld, Scotland in 1800. After attending the village school he studied mathematics and chemistry at University in Perth, and he was then apprenticed to a carpenter. At the age of seventeen he became fascinated by the work of missions and missionaries, and especially about the need in Africa for "persons acquainted mechanical arts and industry" and he decided to improve his skills with a view to serving abroad. In 1824 he offered his services to the London Missionary Society. This organisation was only too keen to enlist artisan-missionaries who could bring enlightenment to darkest Africa not only by preaching, but by teaching practical skills.

James moved to Manchester to...

In present times the prospect of Bus Rapid Transit may be exciting the imagination, but the concept, and the public interest it has created is scarcely something new: in the 1850's there was a flurry of activity in the Cape Colony as tram transport became a definite possibility. The taxis of the time were the "omnibuses": horse drawn carriages, usually overcrowded, plying indefinite routes to irregular timetables in cutthroat competition with one another. To be fair, many performed a very useful function, providing a link with the outlying districts over unmade tracks in all kinds of weather. But the local services were less admirable. The Southern Suburbs of Cape Town were ripe for expansion, but the advantages of living in the countryside were offset by wage-earners having to travel daily to town in the uncomfortable, dusty and unreliable 'buses. The citizens, it was felt deserved something better. There were talks of railways but these required considerable capital investment and thus an extensive customer base.

Strangely for the times, the first campaigner for tramways in the Cape was a woman, Mrs Jane Silberbauer who edited a local newspaper, The Cape Chronicle. In 1860 she wrote glowingly about the benefits of the new form of transport recently introduced in England. Carriages on rails, she pointed out, could carry many more passengers, required fewer horses and provided a much more comfortable ride than the omnibuses. Her article was read by well-known businessman and public benefactor Henry Solomon. He was one of the...

If a pioneering contractor, in the popular image, was big, bold, blustering and boozy, then George Pauling fitted the bill. He was an enormous man who stood back for nobody, but his reputation as the leading railway contractor in the development of Southern Africa during the late 19th century was only partly due to his physical presence. His success was mainly based on shrewdness, common sense and a huge capacity for hard work – and, it may be said, a talent for making friends in the right places.

George Pauling

Pauling was born in 1854 in India, where his father Richard was Resident Engineer on the Delhi Railways. He came from a family whose construction connections stretched back to Elizabethan times – an ancestor reputedly worked for Wren on the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, while another built the British Museum. The elder Pauling appears to have been somewhat erratic, and at the age of 15 George was forced to contribute to the family finances by taking a job with Firbanks, a well-known firm of railway contractors. It was a tough introduction to the working world, but young George gradually worked his way up to the position of timekeeper, where his dealings with the navvies taught him a lot about handling labour in the construction industry. He caught the eye of a member of the...

Thomas Stewart was born in Craigend, Perthshire, Scotland, in 1857 and as a sixteen year-old entered into a pupillage with Mr D.H. Halkett, who on completion of his time after three years appointed him as an assistant. He then worked with the Glasgow Corporation Water Works and furthered his studies at Glasgow University. Later he joined the staff of Sir John Wolfe Barry before being recruited to South Africa in 1882. He arrived at the Cape on 28th of December in the company of another young Scot, James Rawbone.

Portrait of Thomas Stewart

The two young immigrants were less than charmed by their first impressions of Cape Town, which was windy, dusty and badly drained. As they explored the dimly lit St Georges Street they were annoyed by the stoeps of buildings which projected across the sidewalk and which ended abruptly and steeply at street corners. Hogmanay was to be a dreary time for the two spirited young Scotsmen. They vowed there and then that, if at all possible, they would return to their homeland on the next ship.

But it wasn't possible, as they had contracts to honour. Rawbone would make his mark in the Colonial Forestry service, and become the founder of the well-known Rawbone-Viljoen family, the apple-growing pioneers of Elgin. Stewart was employed as assistant to the Hydraulic Engineer of the Colony, Mr...

It is quite remarkable how young and relatively inexperienced engineers arrived in this country in the 19th century and, from scratch, established a branch of their profession in a remote and rather backward part of the world without the benefit of a mentor or role model.

A typical example was John Gamble, who at the age of 31 came to South Africa and set up the foundations for hydrological studies and irrigation engineering in this part of the world.

John Gamble

John Gamble was born in 1842, the son of a naval surgeon, and was a mathematical prodigy. He won a scholarship to Oxford, was a brilliant student, and after taking his degree remained at the University to become a lecturer in mathematics at Lincoln College. During this period he was awarded the Gold Medal for the Johnson Memorial Prize Essay, his subject being "The Laws of Wind".

But academic life was not for him. Suddenly in 1866 he decided to take articles with the well-known engineer Sir John Hawkshaw. After an initial spell on the construction of the docks at Hull, he became Resident Engineer on the main sewers a Brighton, where he put his mathematical skills to good use in devising a system of survey measurements to ensure that the sinuous tunnels were correctly located.

In 1874 Hawkshaw was appointed by the Brazilian Government...

Several engineers have had a lasting influence on the shape and well-being of Cape Town – one thinks of Tom Stewart, David Lloyd-Davies, Ninham Shand and Solly Morris – but few made such an impact as Sir John Coode. It was his plan for the progressive development of the Table Bay harbour complex which eventually led to the reclamation of the foreshore and thus gave the city a new lease on life by doubling the effective area of the CBD. Coode also made a huge contribution to the development of the harbours at East London and Durban and had a hand in the design of most other South African ports.

Coode was born in Bodmin Cornwall in 1816, and became a pupil of a well-known harbour engineer, James Walker. At the time artificial harbours were virtually unknown, as most ports were situated in river mouths or coves. At this early stage of his career Coode attracted attention by personally developing and using diving apparatus to investigate underwater conditions for breakwater design. After qualifying he joined the practice of another famous harbour pioneer, James Rendel, and was appointed as Resident Engineer for the huge Portland Harbour project south of Weymouth, Dorset, which is still one of the largest expanses of water in the world enclosed by breakwaters. When Rendel died in 1856 Coode was appointed Engineer-in-Chief, and within a few years he was recognised as the leading authority on artificial harbours. The project took 23 years to complete, after which Coode...