The story begins in 1964, with Voyage 158, as the Union-Castle passenger ship Capetown Castle left Southampton. The ship was scheduled to make stops at Madeira – Cape Town – Mossel Bay – Port Elizabeth – Durban. This was a regular route, and many passengers would disembark early at the especially popular destinations – mainly Madeira or Cape Town.
The Capetown Castle was berthed at Southampton waiting to leave on its outbound voyage on the appointed date and at the appointed hour. The ship left promptly at 1pm on 24th December 1964.
The Capetown’s route followed the printed list on the Voyage Card. By the time the ship arrived at Cape Town it was the 7th January 1965. There was no stop at Mossel Bay on this voyage, and Port Elizabeth was the first of a series of short stops along the South African coastline, allowing for the delivery of the mail sacks that had been carried over from England to be delivered to recipients in South Africa.
The final destination on the outbound voyage was Durban. It was at Durban that the Union-Castle ships habitually arrived mid-voyage, to take their most valuable cargo aboard: large amounts of gold bullion sent by the South African Reserve Bank in Pretoria, to the Bank of England in London.
The Capetown Castle duly arrived at Durban early in the morning of 14th January 1965, and lingered in port for less than a day. During this time, the ship took on its important freight – wooden boxes, each containing a pair of gold ingots. The boxes would be packed into a secure bullion room already installed on the Capetown Castle for transport to England. The boxes were numbered and sealed, and were counted into the bullion room.
Sometimes more boxes than expected arrived, but this overflow could always be packed into the a storage room directly adjacent to the bullion room. The storage room did not have a secure lock, so the door would be welded closed. This ad hoc solution had been approved in the past by Head Office in London, when there had once been an unexpected overflow of silver ingots, and these had travelled safely to London in a storage room with the door welded shut. After this it was taken for granted that use of the storage rooms was accepted protocol, and using the storage rooms for overflow was a given.
On Voyage 158, 873 boxes of gold bullion were loaded aboard the Capetown Castle. 729 of these were loaded safely into the bullion room, leaving 144 boxes to be packed in to the allocated storage room, which then had the door securely welded shut. To one side of the storage was the bullion room, and to the other side was the mailroom.
For decades, Union-Castle had held the contract to deliver mail from England to South Africa. The mailroom did have a key, but it was quicker to leave the mailroom unlocked as it was opened at every stop the ship made, and this made the process of discharging mail for South Africa, and picking up onward mail, much faster.
The Master of the ship, Captain Holland, in company with the Purser, Mr Dyer, would check the bullion room daily. They checked the bullion room by eye, and also checked that the storage room door was still firmly welded closed. Everything seemed to be in order when the Capetown Castle left Durban late in the afternoon, to begin its return voyage to Southampton.
The Capetown Castle docked back at Southampton on the 5th February 1965, where a van was already waiting to pick up the bullion. The bullion room boxes were again checked in situ, and ticked off on a list held by the 3rd Officer as they were removed to the van. The storage room weld was removed and the checking, ticking and removals, continued. Finally there were no further boxes to remove, but the check list was short 10 boxes [=20 ingots]. The boxes were double-checked, but there had been no error, and the delivery was definitely short. The value of the missing gold at that time was about R200,000 in South Africa, [or £100,000]. This was potentially a disaster for the company, and caused consternation in both the London and South Africa offices.
The Official Enquiry at Cayzer House on the 9th February interviewed every officer from Captain Holland, to the ship’s Surgeon, and the two Masters at Arms.
Captain Holland admitted that he had not checked the bullion room on days the ship stopped at Mossel Bay and East London. There was one policeman on a chair, sitting within sight of the bullion room on days when the ship was in Durban and Cape Town, but the placement of the chair meant that the policeman was unable to see the doorway of the mailroom which was supposed to be kept locked. The Captain considered the welding up of the storage room door made it “perfectly secure”.
Only two of the officers were asked a follow-up question after their interviews. Each of them was asked separately if there was anyone of the deck crew who they had thought was even a little suspicious on the voyage. Master of Arms Mr Gough, mentioned the no.3 Hatchman named Harris from a previous voyage. The Chief Officer Mr Barry, also thought that Harris had been suspicious, but he additionally mentioned the present no.3 Hatchman, Williams – who had apparently done a good job on the voyage, gave no trouble, and seen to it that there was no pilferage – but had committed the cardinal sin (according to Mr Barry) that “[he] seemed above the average in intelligence”.
On the same day as the Enquiry, Mr Austin, a Director of the Union-Castle’s Cape Town Office, received a coded telegram [no410] to Mr Bloxam in Head Office at Cayzer House. Mr Austin had received an anonymous tip about the whereabouts of the “missing cargo” as the tipster put it
With the benefit of hindsight, it was not a bad tip, and although it wasn’t exactly accurate, it certainly contained specific information which was not very far from the truth. It seems very likely that a third person had been party to at least some of the details of the theft, and while they hadn’t exactly got it right, got quite close to it. The most important point was that it somewhat confirmed that the missing ingots were still aboard the ship.
On the 17th February, two letters went out in the post. One letter was sent from Cape Town by Mr Austin as the senior representative of Union-Castle in the Cape Town office, to the Chief Cashier, South African Reserve Bank Pretoria, containing a letter of undertaking that the Union-Castle line would accept liability for any losses caused only in the event that the gold was stored outside the bullion room.
The second letter was sent by Mr Bevan at Cayzer House in London, to Mr Lawrence the Cayzer Irvine agent in the Durban office, and was a real dressing down. Mr Bevan did not mince his words: He was shocked that a decision of this nature (i.e. the use of the storage for bullion) had been made unilaterally. Mr Bevan conceded that Head Office had once given its consent for an overflow of silver ingots to be carried in a storage room; but much to the surprise of Mr Austin and no doubt also to every senior officer, who had ever been put in charge of loading more boxes of bullion into their ship’s bullion room than would actually fit into it, this permission had in fact only been given for that specific incident and was not supposed to be taken as instruction set in stone. Mr Bevan was not quite done and finished with “We should add that that we were placed in a most embarrassing position vis-a-vis the Bank of England”.
A copy of Mr Bevan’s letter was sent to Mr Austin, who was already quietly filing every bit of paper of any kind related to the theft.
All the officers, summoned to the Enquiry, returned to their posts aboard the the Capetown Castle after the Enquiry ended as the ship had a schedule to follow. The Capetown Castle embarked on Voyage 159 from Southampton at exactly 4pm on the 18th February and followed its previous route exactly.
A rumour arose among the new passengers aboard the Capetown Castle that a lot of the passengers were plain-clothes policemen, still trying to find the missing ingots and solve the crime. They then started trying to guess who were the police and who the real passengers.
When the Capetown Castle arrived back in Capetown in early March, the South African journalists joined the hunt. Only one journalist thought to just ask one of the officers how many police were aboard the ship. The answer was “none”. In fact, the answer was correct. There was no need for the police, for these reasons:
Firstly it wasn’t that easy to smuggle twenty ingots off the ship. The empty boxes had already been found in the storage room, and the crew had all been searched as they disembarked the ship in Southampton.
Secondly, after the loss had been discovered, around 70 police and security officers had already searched the ship in Southampton. There was no sign of the missing ingots so it seemed quite likely that they were still aboard the ship.
And finally the Southampton Police had really had been quite diligent at checking into every member of the deck crew who had sailed on Capetown Castle Voyage 158.
As The Capetown Castle was making its voyage back toward South Africa on Voyage 159, the Cape Town and London offices were exchanging a number of messages in encrypted telegrams. They were trying to keep their own plans under wraps so as not to scare the thieves into disposing of the evidence overboard, or at least that was the story being given out to prevent leaks of any kind. Even the Master of the Capetown Castle, Captain Holland, had been kept in the dark.
In fact the real plans were already being followed. Telegram 880 was an encrypted telegram, sent by Cayzer House to the South African Durban Office, which represented Cayzer Irvine.
The original telegram was sent to the manager, Mr Lawrence, who was quick to share it verbally with Mr Austin in the Cape Town office. The telegram was probably regarding the next steps for the Southampton Polices still working to find the ingots. Mr Austin replied by reminding Mr Lawrence not to divulge any further information to anyone. Mr Lawrence seems to have been a rather garrulous gentleman. In fact the next step had already been leaked to the South African press, who had realised a while ago that something was up, but had not been told anything until now. To be fair, they did seem to have kept quiet until the end of the investigation was completed.
The plan was to secretly send two detectives from Southampton CID, Detective Chief Inspector Bertram Adams, and Detective Sergeant John McCulloch, to Durban. They were flown to Durban the day before the day that the Capetown Castle was due to arrive. The biggest secret was that the Southampton Police had already identified and and arrested the thieves, who had both worked as deck crew on Voyage 158. The police had already persuaded at least one of the two to spill the beans about the ingots. As a result, the two Detectives en route already had a very good idea where the ingots might be found aboard the Capetown Castle.
By the time the Capetown Castle arrived at Durban at 8.30am on the 9th March, the Southampton detectives had already been joined by a small entourage of Senior South African Police. These were Lieut-Colonel A.P.Klopper, commanding the South African Railways and Harbours; Colonel W.J. van Heerden, Assistant commissioner of Railway Police; and Major J. Claarsen, South African Railway Police. Detective Adams led this team aboard the Capetown Castle at 11am.
Once aboard, he requested Captain Holland to lend the team two senior officers. These were Mr Mitton – Staff Commander, and Mr Barry – Chief Officer. They understood the layout of the ship, and would hopefully be able to understand the thieves’ directions to the hidden ingots.
Of the missing 20 ingots, six were recovered from the bottom of a sandbox, where they had been wrapped in adhesive tape, and cemented in with mortar painted to mimic the bottom of the sandbox. These ingots were dug out at about 2.30pm, under the interested scrutiny of rather a number of South African journalists, not to mention the passers-by who could see what was going on.
The remaining 14 ingots were located at the far end of the ship later in the evening. They had been wrapped in paper and more tape, and laid out flat between two fittings on the ship’s deck, and again cemented over and then painted grey to match all the paintwork in the immediate vicinity. These were located without the public scrutiny, as they were in an area which could not be viewed from shore, and therefore there were no photographs of the retrieval.
The 20 ingots were re-boxed and sealed in the presence of Inspector Adams, Police Officials and some Bank Officials representing the interests of the Standard Bank of South Africa who had turned up rather late to the party. The newly-boxed ingots were then solemnly stowed in the bullion room aboard the Capetown Castle for transport to London, where they duly arrived safely.
After the drama of a long day with a successful outcome, Lieut-Colonel Klopper invited Inspector Adams and Detective McCulloch to his home for drinks, the following day, as thoughtfully photographed by one of the local newspapers.
Afterwards, the two detectives went aboard the Capetown Castle, which was due to leave Durban on the 11th March, although not before the Capetown Castle had picked up this voyage’s gold bullion shipment. Of course the press photographers were there to document the casual piles of boxed ingots waiting to be hoisted up and stacked into Capetown’s bullion store.
Ostensibly the detectives were now travelling aboard so that they could make enquiries with the local police at East London, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town, as the Capetown Castle followed its usual route back towards England, and definitely not as a short cruise for them to relax and enjoy, after so much hard work. They disembarked at Cape Town and flew home from there, to arrive back in Southampton on the 17th March.
From the discovery of the theft on the 5th February to the arrests of the thieves and recovery of all the ingots on the 9th March was only 32 days, but what had led to the theft at all?
Picture from The Daily News, Durban, 10 March 1965
Picture from The Sunday Tribune, 14 March 1965
The thieves had realised that there was a long duct wide enough for someone to crawl into, running along the ceiling of the mail room and the storage room. The mail room was easily accessible, due to not being locked very often, and the pile of mail bags were a useful way to climb up to make a hole in the duct into which they could climb. They wriggled themselves into the duct and along until they were above the storage room and made a second hole to get into the storage room. The storage room door was welded shut, so they knew that they would be undisturbed as they unboxed the gold ingots and carried them back to the hole in the mail room, from which it was easy to walk away.
It was harder to hide a lot of heavy gold ingots, but luckily, the thieves had been on the deck crew on Voyage 158. As deck crew, one responsibility was to come up on deck in the evening after the passengers had left, to clean the decks, repaint anything that needed re-painting, and mend anything that needed mending, to leave the deck spick and span for the passengers, the following morning. No-one questioned if one of the crew was walking around with some paint or mortar, or carrying something in a bucket because this was just their job.
Chief Officer Barry deserves a mention: When asked at the Enquiry at Cayzer House whether he had any qualms about the deck crew, he had mentioned a previous Hatchman, and rather oddly the no.3 Hatchman, Williams, about whose work he had no complants. Barry did not trust Williams’ “above, average intelligence”. Mr Barry’s instinct was not wrong. The two crewmen picked up by the police were Raymond Williams, and Neil Hawthorne (the no.2 Hatchman on Voyage 158). They had both confessed everything. The men were were tried in Winchester Crown Court, in June 1965, but the Jury was unable to to come to a verdict at this time. Bail was refused while a new court date was being set.
At the re-trial at Winchester Crown Court in July 1965, the police brought in witnesses who had not been thought necessary at the first trial. This time the Jury did reach a verdict and the two men were both sent to prison for 10 years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the overly intelligent Mr Williams turned out to have a bit of form as far as importing contraband went. Sadly, neither him nor his accomplice seem to have really planned how to get the bullion off the ship without getting caught. Leaving the ingots aboard the ship for a voyage or so was not a bad idea, but did not allow for the tenacity of the people to whom the gold belonged. No-one was going to let that slide.
The South African press thoroughly enjoyed covering this story through to the end. Here is a selection of additional articles, pictures and cartoons that were published:
Mr Austin in the Union-Castle Office had started collecting together all the notes, letters, and telegrams regarding the theft as soon as he heard about it. He kept a special folder labelled Gold Bullion theft, and thanks to the enthusiasm of the local journalists, his folder included a lot of press cuttings, as every newspaper competed to offer every detail of the whole debacle, to its readers.
In writing this story, many thanks are due to the late Arthur “Chick” Breetzke, a one-time officer on the Union Castle line, and later on South Africa’s SafMarine . He donated to The Cayzer Family Archive his collection of old documents from the then defunct South African Union-Castle offices. Amongst these papers were Mr Austin’s Gold Bullion file, which tells the whole story. The file really was gold.