South West Pioneer. A memorial tribute to James Frank Bassingthwaighte, first permanent white settler in South West Africa, by Colin Earl Bell.

South West Pioneer. A memorial tribute to James Frank Bassingthwaighte, first permanent white settler in South West Africa, by Colin Earl Bell. Bennu Books, South Africa, Sea Point, 1977. ISBN 090907304X / ISBN 0-909073-04-X

South West Pioneer. A memorial tribute to James Frank Bassingthwaighte is loosely based on the story of the Bassingthwaighte family in what is now Namibia. Historians need to be aware that many of the events and people described are products of the author's imagination, and even when real people are mentioned, if Bell did not know the names of the people, he simply made them up. It is necessary to say this because some of his fictitious names have found their way into some quite serious historical reference works.

Colin Earl Bell  

Chapter I

THEY HAD BEEN sailing before a slight breeze since early dawn. A thick fog shrouded the ship, deadening the sound of the bosun's voice as he called off the fathoms from the bows. The sea was rough and the weather cold but, according to the master, to be expected on this coast during most of the year. The ship's carpenter leaned against the leeward rail and eyed the faint lightening of the surrounding gloom dead ahead. It looked as though they were going to break out of this fog soon, and he sincerely hoped they would do so before they hit the shore! The master of the trader had been here often enough, but this was James Bassingthwaighte's first trip at sea - as a ship's carpenter - and he found the circumstances both novel and frightening. Orphaned at an early age, the boy was taken into his uncle's business as an apprentice, but later his qualification as a wagon builder coincided with hard times in the carriage building industry. The industrial revolution in England and the accelerating change in all business and industry, persuaded his uncle to release his nephew when approached with a request to go to sea for a couple of voyages. For James, however, the prime motivation was a call for adventure in faraway places. This stalwart and enterprising young man of twenty-two could find little to fire his imagination in the England of 1842. A society in upheaval, with sweated labour and stark poverty cheek-by-jowl with affluence and a strict class distinction, all served to make him long for pastures new. Thus it was that he now found himself aboard a vessel about to enter Walfisch Bay harbour. The ship emerged from the fog with startling abruptness, and suddenly the young Englishman was looking back at a seemingly solid wall of white cloud stretching from south to north as far as the eye could see and rising to a height of about six hundred feet where it ended in a flat table top, stark against the clear blue sky. To landward a line of surf marked the shore, and beyond that a featureless wasteland stretched into the hazy distance. Some way to the south a line of scrub vegetation reached down to the sea, marking the course of a dry river bed. "You cannot see them from here, but that area is swarming with game - wild animals of all sorts including lions." Unnoticed by James, the second mate had joined him at the rail. "Our landfall is pretty good. Over there is the Swakop River, with Walfisch Harbour about twenty miles south of here. We should anchor well before sunset, and you will be able to go ashore in the morning. I presume your tools are ready to take with you?" - "Yes, sir, they are all packed into two crates, ready lashed to be lowered into the boat." The mate thoughtfully eyed his young companion and shook his head in wonderment. What could possess a good-looking youth, all of six foot tall, built like an athlete, and with his life before him, to venture into such a strange inhospitable country at the behest of a man like Morris? [...]

This is an excerpt from the book South West Pioneer. A memorial tribute to James Frank Bassingthwaighte, first permanent white settler in South West Africa, by Colin Earl Bell.

Title: South West Pioneer. A memorial tribute to James Frank Bassingthwaighte, first permanent white settler in South West Africa
Author: Colin Earl Bell
Publisher: Bennu Books
South Africa; Sea Point, 1977
ISBN 090907304X / ISBN 0-909073-04-X
Original hardcover and dustjacket, 19 x 25 cm, 124 pages, several b/w photos and drawings