A Word about the Family 3 



he still made voyages, as captain of vessels to India 

 and China when my mother went to live near 

 London, and sent the elder children to school. My 

 mother's health was very delicate and the doctors 

 ordered her a change to the Cape, so in 1850 we 

 sailed in the Old Anne, a teak-built East Indiaman, 

 which has been captured from the Dutch in Saldanha 

 Bay in 1806 and re-christened. She was of the old 

 galliot " bowed " class, and took three and a half 

 months to reach Table Bay. She was chosen for our 

 migration because Captain Clinch was an old friend 

 of my father's in Hong Kong. He gave us the 

 whole suite of spacious and comfortable state cabins. 

 I remember (when becalmed in the tropics,) watch- 

 ing the great blue sharks from the cabin windows 

 lazily swimming under the stern, waiting for food. 

 A dear good friend of my parents, Captain 

 Castle (who so nobly distinguished himself when his 

 ship was burnt at sea,) exchanged into the Old Anne 

 as first officer, so as to be of assistance to us on the 

 voyage ; he went on to India, and I never saw him 

 again ; he died a few years ago in Devonshire. 

 After sighting the Cape we were terribly mauled in 

 a gale before we could get in. There was no Table 

 Bay breakwater then. I remember, that Port 

 Captain Wilson gave me a fine Newfoundland dog, 

 that used to swim after penguins, which were then 

 plentiful in the Bay. My mother's first trouble 

 on landing was, that the better looking of the two 

 servants immediately got married to a man who had 

 courted her on the ship, while she was pretending to 

 be too ill to do her work ! While we were at the 

 Cape the Van Reenens and other old Cape families 

 were very kind and made the short visit pleasant, 

 but we did not stay long, as Sir Benjamin Chili Pine 

 (whom my father had known in the East), who was 

 then Governor of Natal, persuaded him to accept an 



