The Fishy Smiths by Mike Bruton

Author:Mike Bruton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2018-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Eric Hunt (right) with the coelacanth reward poster in Zanzibar.

The Smiths returned from their 1952 expedition in relative luxury aboard the Dunottar Castle, one of the ‘old ladies’ of the Union-Castle fleet. This may seem strange to modern scientists but it was the only way in which they could travel back to South Africa with their large fish collections1.

On board the Dunottar Castle in the 1950s a bugler would have called the guests to meals and the scrumptious menu would have included turtle soup, parsnip fritters, roasted pheasant, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Dover sole, foie-gras, truffles, plover’s eggs, cock’s kidneys and crayfish tails. Lawrence Green, a regular voyager on the ‘lavender liners’ in the 1940s and 1950s, mentions that the turtle soup was made from the flesh and fat of the green turtle, Chelonia mydas, simmered for three days with basil, thyme, parsley, celery and tomatoes. Some ships had cows, hens and chickens on their poop decks to provide fresh food (Green, 1958).

They are likely to have had little appetite for the ship’s entertainments (cinema, tombola, dancing and card games), let alone its epicurean menu. It would not be surprising if they had stayed in their cabin during meal times (wearing their khaki outfits) and warmed up a tin of pilchards and peas on their primus stove for dinner! They would also no doubt have pored over and organised their expedition notes and carefully plotted out the process of archiving and illustrating the fishes that they had collected once they returned to Grahamstown. Little did they know that their carefully laid plans would soon be thrown into complete disarray!

When the Dunottar Castle slowly slid over the bar into Durban harbour early in the morning of Wednesday, 24th December 1952, the Smiths must have breathed a sigh of relief. Their expedition had been hugely rewarding, but they were very glad to be back in South Africa and away from the heat and hardships of the tropics. Smith (1956) commented at the time, ‘It will be a long time before anything gets me back to the tropics’. But their relief would have been short-lived because soon – that very same day, even before disembarking – they would be involved in another mad scramble to secure a coelacanth specimen and, unbelievably, JLB Smith would be back in the tropics within a few days.

Three weeks after Eric Hunt had said goodbye to the Smiths in Zanzibar, he was moored in Mutsamudu on the north coast of Anjouan island in the Comoros and was brought a coelacanth specimen! It had been caught by a traditional fisherman, Ahamadi Abdallah (elsewhere referred to as Achmed Hussein and Achmed Hussein Bourou), using a hand line from a dugout canoe on 20th December 1952. This happened to be a big day in the Comoros, as the islanders were preparing for the Compétitions Sportives de l’Archipel, the annual sports festival, to be held on Mayotte. The principal of the primary school in Domoni, Affene Mohamed (who would later become the

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