RAY SMUTS
THE RMS St Helena ended a 147-year tradition linking Royal Mail ships directly with the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena when it set sail from Cape Town last Friday, inaugurating a new service encompassing the Namibian ports of Walvis Bay and Luderitz.
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The 7 000 dwt, RMS St Helena has been the only ex-UK supply lifeblood to St Helena and her neighbours, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha, for 14 years, but islanders can from now on expect most of their necessities to be sourced in South Africa and Namibia. Mail will also now come from Walvis Bay.
Captain Bill Langworthy, London-based general manager for St Helena Shipping Service, says: “We expect around 15 St Helena-destined TEUs per month from the UK, either through Cape Town or Walvis Bay, whereas we used to handle some 55 TEUs every three months on the former service.”
The frequency between Cape Town, Walvis Bay, Luderitz, St Helena - affording passengers a seven-day stop-over- and Ascension Island is currently 21 days but Cape Town will be dropped from the schedule in December and January in order for the vessel to accommodate the maximum number of people wishing to head via Namibia to the islands for the Christmas holidays.
As to Namibia cargo prospects, Captain Langworthy says it is early days as shippers need to get to know the the line, service and vessel. “What we are able to offer shippers is a non-negotiable, named-day, sailing.” St Helena Shipping Service is represented by the Manica Group in Walvis Bay and Luderitz.
The beauty of the new service, as Langworthy points out, is that transit time from Walvis Bay to St Helena is only three days, almost two days shorter than from Cape Town.
He says whether or not the UK will yet again feature permanently in RMS St Helena’s life is subject to the success of the service and subject to review by the Government of St Helena in January, next year.
Dropping the UK, specifically the port of Portland in Dorset, from St Helena Shipping Service’s schedule in order to focus on southern Africa is not an entirely welcome all-round decision.
The ‘Saints’, as the islanders are known, are ‘passionately British’ and see the move as tantamount to severing links with the ‘Old Country’, of which they became fully-fledged citizens about two years back.
Rather, it is driven by economic necessity, aimed primarily at boosting tourism to this beautiful but forbidding destination currently only attracting around 1 000 tourists a year.
St Helena Shipping Service is represented in South Africa by Andrew Weir Shipping SA.
