She was never going to sail quietly into the sunset.
The SA Agulhas 1 has seen too much adventure to finish life as a museum piece gathering seagulls at the quayside. The “Old Lady” of SA's maritime sector has ushered generations of scientists and seafarers to and from Antarctica and South Africa’s two Southern Ocean islands since her birth in a Japanese shipyard in 1977.
Since then she has gathered significant life experience, including numerous rescues.
One of the most famous was the 2002 multinational rescue of the Magdalena Oldendorff cargo ship that became trapped in ice in severe weather. Two South African military helicopters airlifted 79 Russian scientists and 11 crew safely onto the SA Agulhas before returning to Cape Town.
A decade earlier, the SA Agulhas had herself been rescued from Antarctic pack ice after rudder problems.
However, the biggest threat to the ship in her storied career came from land, not sea, in the form of budgetary constraints.
Having had her research function usurped by the more modern SA Agulhas II, she became a dedicated training vessel. Then last year the government issued a tender to dispose of the vessel because of “changing priorities and financial constraints”. The ship’s future seemed uncertain, despite the government’s insistence that a condition of sale would be a continuation of training opportunities for South African seafarers.
Fortunately, salvation was at hand in the form of private company JS Maritime, which this week officially assumed ownership after a ceremony in Cape Town.
The company will collaborate with the South African and German governments in what will be a bilateral partnership combining aspects of tourism, seafarer training and scientific research.
The SA Agulhas 1 will get a total refit and start a “second life” as both a training vessel and ice-breaking cruise ship ferrying tourists to Antarctica. “There are lots of things to be done,” JS Maritime CE Stefan Bulow told dignitaries at Tuesday’s ceremony. “We’re not just going to give the ship a future, but we’re going to give an old lady a second life.”
German consul-general Tanja Werheit said it was only fitting that the ship changed hands during an auspicious year for both Germany and South Africa: 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 30 years since South Africa’s first democratic election.
“There’s no doubt that Capt Bulow will take good care of her,” Werheit said. “Both literally and figuratively she is now a flagship of South African-German co-operation.”
