Port Nolloth

In the article below, Graham Ross and Tony Murray celebrate the achievements of Richard Thomas Hall, the man responsible for the railway line connecting Okiep and Port Nolloth. The piece first appeared in the publication 'Past Masters: Pioneer Civil Engineers who contributed to the growth and Wealth of South Africa'. Click here to view the stories of other great engineers.

Ore from the Namaqualand copper mines was shipped to Cornwall for treatment, so it was perhaps natural that the Cape Copper Company appointed a Cornishman to investigate its transport problems. Richard Thomas Hall, the engineer who conceived, designed and built the narrow gauge railway through the forbidding country from Port Nolloth to Okiep, was born in Falmouth, Cornwall in 1823. His experience as Superintendent of the narrow gauge Redruth to Chacewater Railway and of its conversion from horse to steam traction stood him in good stead when it came to tackling the transportation problems of the Namaqualand copper mines.

The Port Nolloth to Okiep railway line (DRISA)

He arrived in Namaqualand in 1865, enlisted the help of surveyor Patrick Fletcher, and carried out extremely thorough investigations into the various options for getting the copper to the coast. He did not exclude road transport from his studies, but he must soon have become aware of the difficulties attached to this mode, particularly...

The North Western Cape is not the most hospitable part of South Africa, and young Patrick Fletcher, who hailed from the island of Jura off the coast of Scotland, must have had mixed feelings when he arrived there in 1850. He was born in 1827, and obtained formal qualifications as a civil engineer and as a geologist before arriving in South Africa. Here, strangely, he found that opportunities in his chosen fields were limited, so he studied for and passed the examinations for admission as a land surveyor - a calling for which, in a rapidly expanding country, there was a greater demand. He then took himself off to Namaqualand which was experiencing a copper mining boom. This economic windfall was threatened however by the difficulty in transporting the ore to the coast.

Patrick Fletcher

In 1854 Fletcher surveyed the first 120 miles of the Orange River, and brought the first thirteen bags of copper ore down the river to the anchorage on the coast on behalf of the Kodas Mine, which had hoped that this waterway could be used to transport ore. During the voyage the boat was nearly capsized by a hippopotamus, and without much further ado that mode of transport was abandoned.

His attention then turned to the Cape Copper Company operations in the vicinity of Okiep. Ore from these mines was...

Port Nolloth is a sleepy town located on South Africa's north western coast. Today it is a great spot for a relaxing seaside holiday but life in the town was not always so easy. In the book A History of Copper Mining in Namaqualand John M Smalberger digs into the early history of the town and describes the incredibly tough conditions experienced by those brave enough to live there.

Before the commencement of copper mining, Robbe Bay, as Port Nolloth was then known, was important in so far as it provided the Namaqua with a source of income from the sale of seal skins, and as a source of food, since the seal meat was dried and could annually support some 300 persons. With the advent of mining it assumed, for a short time, a greater significance as one of two harbours used for the export of copper ore and, more importantly, for the import of food and capital equipment. Despite its advantages over Hondeklip Bay, mainly in that it possessed an inner anchorage which was safe ‘in any weather whatsoever’, Hondeklip Bay came to assume the position of port for Namaqualand to the exclusion of Port Nolloth. This was the result of a number of factors; the early closing of the northern ‘mines’ after the copper mania of 1854/55; the fact that the Port Nolloth route was badly circumstanced for water; and that the Hondeklip Bay route was closer to the homes of the majority of transport riders. It must...