The Longest Ride – Part IX: Vignettes from Mozambique, 1947

Beira, Mozambique awaits, January 1947. Photo by Paul Beard.

The S. S. Carroll Victory arrived at the port city of Beira, Mozambique, on January 24, 1947. The ship remained anchored to a buoy in the harbor for a week before a berth opened up on the docks, where it spent another week for the unloading of the tons of phosphate aboard. For 50 cents round trip each, the seagoing cowboys could hire a launch to take them to shore during the first week, which many did.

Seagoing cowboys board a launch to take them to shore, January 1947. © Charles Lord

The tropical heat enticed the cowboys to move mattresses into the empty horse stalls.

Beating the heat, until rain chased them inside on occasion. © Charles Lord

It also heated up the ship’s water tanks. By the 11th day, Charlie Lord wrote home, “The water that comes out of the ‘cold’ faucet is too hot to wash your face in comfortably. I took a shower tonight and it was like a steam bath, I couldn’t stay under it for more than a few seconds at a time. I checked with a thermometer tonight, and the water from cold taps is 114º. . . . The hottest it got was 132º.”

Two days before docking, the entire cowboy crew hired a large launch to take them up the Pungwe River to view wildlife, mostly several hippopotami bobbing up and down spurting water and monkeys running along the river.

Seeing the sites on the Pungwe River, January 29, 1947. © Charles Lord

“We passed thatch villages,” said Lord, “met natives in dugout canoes, and stopped at a village where there was a sugar refinery.” They came back down river and turned up the Buzi River across the bay from Beira. In the town of Buzi, they feasted on bananas, papayas, bread fruit, melons, coconuts, and other tropical fruits.

Paul Beard took the challenge and successfully climbed a coconut tree, tossing three down. © Charles Lord

Other cowboys, including Charlie Lord, bought bunches of green bananas for 40 cents a bundle. Photo by Paul Beard.

On their second full day docked in Beira, Lord and two of his camera buddies decided to walk into the countryside to see what they could find.

A native hut by an ant hill outside Beira, Mozambique, February 2, 1947. © Charles Lord

They passed through several native villages, and then, Lord said, “We noticed a rhythmic beating sound that seemed to come from a village to our left.” They followed the sound. “The beating and pounding grew louder and louder. My heart was in my throat – hoping, hoping. We emerged from the buildings into a clearing among the trees to see hundreds of people packed around a crude stockade. In the stockade a native dance was going on.” For the equivalent of 60 cents, Lord got permission from the chief to take photos.

The rhythm section and leader of the native dance in a Mozambique village, February 2, 1947. © Charles Lord

“For a few minutes, they were self-conscious and stiff,” Lord said, “then the rhythm got into their blood and they forgot all about me. The line’s left wing was composed of people shaking boxes with sand, pebbles and other things back and forth in rhythm. Each box had its own tone. There were castanet-like instruments, and sticks, women who sang and chanted and on the right the drum section. Five or six men sat on the ground with tom toms between their knees. They were hollowed out tree trunks with skins stretched tightly over the ends. The big tom tom, about five feet long, had the most beautiful tone of any drum or tympani I have ever heard, bar none. It’s tone was uniquely bell-like. And did those people have rhythm!!! It just took you and shook you. They completely lost themselves in the ecstasy of the dance, their faces glowed with complete joy.”

As always, Lord talked with a variety of people to get a feel for the culture of the place. Mozambique at the time was a Portuguese colony in which only the Portuguese could vote, he was told. On their walk through the countryside, Lord and his buddies had come to a Chinese settlement. He reflected to his wife, “The social scale can be illustrated thusly in rough simplicity – Portuguese ride cars, Chinese bicycles, natives walk. The Portuguese do absolutely no work. The Chinese do work but almost entirely shop keeping, I think. Even they have the natives do their menial tasks. . . . The Greeks and other whites are in the Portuguese class, Indians are about on a par with the bicycle class, I think.” The natives did not think kindly of the Portuguese. Lord found the natives to be the friendliest people of all he had met on his trip.

~ to be continued

The Longest Ride – Part VIII: Havoc in Haifa

In January of 1947, a second stop in Haifa, Palestine, gave the seagoing cowboys of the S. S. Carroll Victory a chance to further explore this country of unrest under British control in which Jews were being resettled after World War II.

On arrival, the cowboys walked around and shopped in upper or “New Haifa” which Charlie Lord described as “the beautiful Jewish section on top of Mt. Carmel.” Some made a trip the second day to Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee.

New Jewish office building, upper Haifa, Palestine, January 10, 1947. © Charles Lord

Arab mosque beside the Sea of Galilee, January 11, 1947. © Charles Lord

Maynard Garber and a friend chose instead to hike up Mt. Carmel that day, meeting two English-speaking young Arab men on the way. “They were much disturbed over the problems arising over the Jews,” Garber noted in his journal. “They admitted that the Jews were smart people and could help Palestine a lot, but they said the Jews wouldn’t want them once they got control. . . . Young Arabs here with an education are very brilliant, but they say we will soon be fighting the Jews for this country.”

The next night, January 12, Lord wrote a lengthy letter to his wife. “Today has been a hundred days, a book condensed into one page.” It began with a tour by several of the cowboys of the Jewish HaZore’a kibbutz, a 45-minute bus ride out of Haifa.

HaZore’a kibbutz near Nazareth, January 12, 1947. © Charles Lord

“All eat together, share everything in this commune,” Lord said, describing the tour in detail. “Doesn’t sound very exciting yet, does it,” he said. “It still didn’t when we came back on the ship and sat down to supper. I had just started on my jellitin [sic] dessert when there was a loud boom and the 7500 ton ship shook beneath us.” Two blocks away from the ship’s berth – at 5:20 p.m. according to two cowboy diaries – a truck full of bombs exploded at the Northern Palestine police compound. The New York Times the next day headlined an article, “Haifa Blast Ends Palestine Truce: Kills 4, Injures 142.”

The blast set off a scurry of activity for the seagoing cowboys. Some of them were in town near the compound when the bombs went off. Fortunately, none were seriously hurt. Lord and others on the ship grabbed their coats and cameras and headed into the city. “The guards let us thru much to our surprise,” Lord said.” The cowboys witnessed plate glass from the store fronts covering the sidewalks on lower Haifa’s main street Kingsway, shopkeepers frantically picking up contents from their stores, firemen fighting the fire in the police compound, and the wounded being carried out on stretchers. When attempting to take pictures of the broken glass, an Arabian Palestine policeman grabbed Lord by the coat and dragged him into an office in the shattered building and through a narrow alleyway of barbed wire to find a British authority to whom to turn Lord over. Fortunately for Lord, and much to the disdain of the policeman, the Britisher let him go when Lord explained who he was and what he was doing.

Fellow cowboy Robert Richter got pulled into the action in a much more poignant way. While standing near an ambulance, a British soldier said to him, “Help me bring my buddy down, will you?” Richter did. Filled with emotion, he slowly shared the gory details with his shipmates back on the ship. Richter also learned from the guards the details of the bombing, which pretty well match this account found online.

The driveway at the Haifa police compound where the truck full of bombs parked. The force of the bomb bowed out the heavy wire screens. January 13, 1947. © Charles Lord

Store owner sweeping up glass broken from the force of the blast. Haifa, Palestine, January 13, 1947. Photo by Paul Beard.

Another shopkeeper cleaning up after the bombing. Haifa, Palestine, January 13, 1947. Photo by Paul Beard.

Lord and others were able to take their photos of the aftermath the next morning before the Carroll Victory departed with 5,000 tons of phosphate, per Garber’s account, for Mozambique.

~ to be continued

 

The Longest Ride – Part VI: Exploring Segregated Pre-Apartheid South Africa

The Brethren Service Committee accepted the job of recruiting UNRRA’s cattle tenders with the motivation of providing “an unusually broadening and educational experience” for the men who served. The S. S. Carroll Victory‘s stop in Durban, South Africa, to pick up horses for Greece in December 1946 most certainly provided that opportunity for Charlie Lord. His eight days in Durban gave him a window into the racial situation in South Africa that led to the creation of the “Apartheid” laws and system only months later in 1948.

Durban, South Africa, December 1946. Photo by Paul Beard.

On his first full day in port, Lord looked up two fellow Quakers who helped arrange some visits for the Carroll Victory seagoing cowboys. The first tour took them to the McCord Hospital for Natives, located, not without objection, in the fashionable white Berea section of Durban. “Twenty-one cattlemen took the bus,” Lord said. “We rode thru miles of a beautiful city. . . .They have 325 beds, are forced to turn away people all the time. Short of money, help and equipment. Very, very interesting!”

Children at the McCord Hospital for Natives, Durban, South Africa, December 1946. © Charles Lord

That evening, Lord went with one of his Quaker contacts to a meeting of the Joint Council of Europeans and Natives to hear Mr. Barrett, the Chief Magistrate of Durban, speak. “His talk was interesting,” Lord said, “but the discussion afterwards was much much more fascinating. Intelligent natives really put Barrett on the spot. He was obviously on the defensive all the time. After the meeting ended, several cattlemen talked with 3 or 4 of the Negroes for about half an hour, and learned an awful lot.”

The next day, Lord and some other cowboys spent time with Lord’s other Quaker contact. “Maurice told us the origin and nature of the Indian problem in S. Africa,” Lord said, “the background of the present Passive Resistance movement. We all found it fascinating.

“When we first arrived I wondered why everything is marked European or non-European, why they divided it that way. I can understand now. That is the easiest way to separate the white from all the other groups when you have four distinct castes. They are:
–White European – about 25% of the Union of SA maybe
–Indian – 20% or less of Natal [the province where Durban is located] (not the Union)
–Native – 50 to 75% in both Natal and the whole Union
–Colored – small % of mulattos
The Indian men tend to be intelligent, good businessmen, but women uneducated. Many of the men own shops, make lots of money, which is probably one of the reasons for white hatred of them – economic.”

The next afternoon, cameras in tow, Lord set out on his own to explore the Indian quarter. He fortunately was taken under the wings of a couple of honest young Indian men who took him around. “Without them I would have been sunk,” Lord said, “might even have been in real danger.” The men took him through the Indian and native barracks, separated by a wire fence and built and owned by the city of Durban for city employees. “Some of them are very bad,” Lord said, “but many are quite nice. The native barracks were significantly better constructed and planned than the Indian ones.”

Native barracks, Durban, South Africa, December 1946. © Charles Lord

Barracks in the Indian quarter, Durban, South Africa, December 1946. © Charles Lord.

Lord’s “good-will ambassadors” took him into Indian homes, to a Hindu temple, and into an off-the-beaten-path basement pool hall, all the while explaining to Lord Indian customs and grievances. When back uptown, reminiscent of his experience in Virginia, Lord noted, “We couldn’t go in a restaurant to eat together. I bought a sack of candy and shared it with them.”

Another full day followed, with a regular bus tour for the cowboys into Zululand and the Valley of a Thousand Hills, a place where they could not have gone on their own. “You have to have a pass to enter the territory,” Lord said.

Cooke’s Tour Bus in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, South Africa, December 17, 1946. Photo by Paul Beard.

“We saw lots of wonderful photographic material but breezed right past most of it. We did stop at one native village, fairly typical I guess, except for commercialization.”

Zula huts in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, South Africa, December 17, 1946. The white-walled hut is the Chief’s. © Charles Lord.

A tall Zulu lad, December 17, 1946, Valley of a Thousand Hills, South Africa. © Charles Lord.

Lord’s stop in Durban was rounded out by viewing movies taken by a friend of one of his Quaker contacts showing “extraordinary” footage of Indian yearly festival customs, native war dances, and native religious ceremonies, capped off with “quite a discussion on politics” with a young Afrikaner of Dutch descent who was there.

Lord’s eight days in Durban had indeed provided a truly “educational and broadening experience”.

~ to be continued

Once again, my deep appreciation to Charlie Lord for granting me permission to share his photos and accounts from his letters.

The Longest Ride – Part V: Bumboats in Port Said

Getting from Greece to South Africa meant going through the Suez Canal for the seagoing cowboys on the S. S. Carroll Victory. When they arrived in Port Said, Egypt, they had hoped the ship would take long enough to get its orders to enter the Canal that they would have time to explore this modern city and do some shopping for souvenirs. 

Port Said, Egypt, November 30, 1946. © Charles Lord

A short four hours in the harbor, however, did not allow time for shore leave. But they needn’t have worried—the shopping came to them. The bumboats that bustle around many Mediterranean ports teemed around the Carroll Victory after the ship anchored in the bay.

The S. S. Carroll Victory attracted bumboats like a magnet in Port Said harbor, November 30, 1946. © Charles Lord

Charlie Lord describes the scene in a letter to his wife: “Egyptians immediately swarmed over the sides from row boats and motorboats like the pirates of yore. They threw ropes up from the boats and began pulling up all kinds of trinkets and goods to sell and trade.

Bumboat activity, Port Said, Egypt, November 30, 1946. Photo by Paul Beard.

“They had leather goods of all sorts including suitcases, hassocks, billfolds, handbags and blackjacks. They had inlaid-wood boxes, knives, rings and bottles of Spanish fly. You know what that is don’t you? Very handy for sailors when in port to give young girls. They had copper rings with glass or quartz, something which would cut glass anyhow, which they sold for gold with 3 diamonds. One cattleman gave 2 shirts and a pair of pants for one. Harry says he gave a sports coat, 2 shirts, and 6 pair of socks for his, worth about five cents perhaps. One of the stones fell out at lunch. I looked at a suede leather woman’s handbag, the Egyptian asked a lot, I said less and got it. So please don’t buy a new handbag.

Seagoing cowboys barter with Egyptians for souvenirs on the S. S. Carroll Victory, November 30, 1946. © Charles Lord

With camera bag in hand, Charlie Lord looks longing to shore in his newly purchased Egyptian fez. Photo courtesy of Charles Lord.

“The ‘pirates’ stole everything they could lay their hands on,” Lord said. “We had our portholes locked and door locked all the time thank goodness. Lots of seamen lost clothing. The third junior mate said the men bring all their stuff aboard just so they can get on to steal things.”

The sailboats in port captivated the seagoing cowboys. “There was a line of hundreds of sailboats, with the longest curving masts,” Lord said. “They made a dramatic picture.”

Sailboats lining the harbor at Port Said, Egypt, November 30, 1946. Photo by Paul Beard.

Lord’s shipmate Harold Jennings noted in his diary, “Entered the Suez Canal at about 1 o’clock today. Weather supposed to get warmer from now on out.” And that it did.

One day out of Port Said, Lord wrote home, “Cattlemen and crewmen busied themselves making hammocks and swings in which to enjoy the warm sun. Men peeled to polo shirts and shorts or just shorts. The weather is wonderful so far.” His tune changed two days later. “Yesterday was very hot,” he said. “A head wind blows smoke from the stacks back on the aft part of the boat and every single thing is covered with the fine black grit. If you pick up a book, the cover feels like sandpaper.”

Seagoing cowboy Maynard Garber beats the tropical heat with a book, December 1946. © Charles Lord

Four days after crossing the Equator and after enduring 11 days of heat with little to do, the sight of Durban, South Africa, on December 11, 1946, lifted the spirits of the restless cowboys. Another foreign world awaited them.

(to be continued)

The Longest Ride – Part IV: Risking Danger to Tour the Holy Lands

On its way from Greece to South Africa to pick up a load of UNRRA horses, the S. S. Carroll Victory docked in Haifa, Palestine, for boiler repairs. The ship arrived in the harbor the night of November 26, 1946, during a volatile time of unrest between the Jewish underground and the British who had ruled the country since 1918. The seagoing cowboys, eager to see Jerusalem, wanted to get to shore. The Carroll Victory waited for hours, however, before a pilot finally got the clearance to move the ship into port around 2:00 p.m. the next day.

“We went gradually into the harbor, between the long breakwater with its machine-gun nests and the shore,” Charlie Lord said. “Rumors began to fly as to when and if we would get shore leave. Supper came and went, and we became more and more anxious. We heard we might not get ashore because of the shooting between British and Jews the night before. At 7:00 Mr. Roth sent out word that the passes had arrived.”

The ship’s departure was set for 6 p.m. the next day. The cowboys debated whether to go ashore that night or wait until the next morning, as a curfew was in effect from 6 or 7 p.m. They decided to go by night so they would have more daylight hours to see the sights. “British soldiers told us it was very dangerous to take a truck ride to Jerusalem because of possible land mines or thrown bombs,” Lord said. They hired a truck anyway, as no buses or trains were running after curfew. After some time in Haifa, twenty-seven of the crew met at 10 p.m. and “squeezed into the truck and sat down on the wooden floor packed like sardines.”

Carroll Victory cowboys touring the Holy Lands, packed in the back of a truck, November 28, 1946. © Charles Lord

They arrived in Jerusalem around 5 a.m. Thanksgiving Day and found a restaurant where they had breakfast. At dawn, they made the short drive to Bethlehem. A guide took them on a quick tour to the site of the oldest Christian church in the world, the site of the manger where Jesus was born, and the spot where Herod had all the two-year-old babies of Palestine killed. “Most of the village looks modern,” Lord said.

A star in the floor marks the spot where Jesus was thought to have been born. © Charles Lord

The cowboys met at the appointed time and made it back to Jerusalem by 9 a.m. “We rolled past the countless building projects of Jerusalem, the barbed wire rolls and British soldiers, the railway station with smashed windows and cement from a Jewish bomb,” Lord said. “We stopped near the center of the city, set our departure time at 12:30.” Some of the group engaged a guide who “knew how fast we would have to go to finish by 12 o’clock.” He set a whirlwind pace through the temple area and old Jerusalem, with Lord shooting pictures as he walked—up and down long flights of steps, through heavy traffic and subterranean tunnels “for three solid hours,” he said. “If you stopped for an instant it meant running to catch up.”

Viewing the Mount of Olives from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, November 28, 1946. © Charles Lord

A woman at the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, November 28, 1946. © Charles Lord

On their daylight drive back to Haifa, “the scenes along the way were lovely,” shipmate Harold Jennings said. “Arabic tents everywhere, desert lands, camel caravans . . . then banana trees and orange groves with modern irrigation systems.” It was a land of contrasts.

Camels have their front legs tied until loading is complete says Carroll Victory cowboy Paul Beard. Photo by Paul Beard.

The cowboy crew made it back to the ship by 5:15, only to learn that departure had been delayed until 4 p.m. the next day. This gave the cowboys the opportunity to go to Nazareth, as well, and for some to the Yagur Kibbutz near Haifa.

A street in Nazareth, November 29, 1946. © Charles Lord

A Bedouin tent village in Palestine, November 29, 1946. Lord coaxed the bus driver to stop on the way back to Haifa so he could get some photos. © Charles Lord

As Lord, back on board the Carroll Victory after his first excursion, wrote of his experiences in Palestine to his wife, he noted, “A depth charge just shook the ship under us. They are to keep Jewish frog-men from putting mines under English ships.” Not a very consoling thing for his wife to hear, I’m sure. For the seagoing cowboys involved, their excitement about touring the Holy Lands overrode any concern about the potential dangers facing them on their travels. They safely departed Haifa at midnight November 29 and headed for Port Said, the Suez Canal, and Africa.

The Longest Ride – Part I: A Man with a Mission

The longest UNRRA livestock trip of which I am aware lasted five months. The 32 seagoing cowboys who signed on to the S. S. Carroll Victory in November 1946 were aware that the ship would take horses to Greece and then go down to South Africa to pick up more horses to take back to Greece, and possibly repeat the trip to South Africa, which it did. I have a number of accounts of this trip and will share their stories over the next several posts.

S. S. Carroll Victory, photo © Charles Lord

Charlie Lord signed on to the Carroll Victory at age 26 with a mission in mind: documenting the trip photographically for publication. Lord had spent three-and-a-half years in Civilian Public Service during World War II, serving part of that time at the Philadelphia State Mental Hospital at Byberry. In May 1946, Life magazine had published some of Lord’s photographs, taken on the sly, of the horrendous conditions and treatment of the mentally ill. These images shocked the country and gave impetus to a reform movement for more humane treatment of mentally ill persons. Lord knew that UNRRA seagoing cowboy crews were often interracial, following the success of the experimental interracial crew during the summer; so this time around, in the age of Jim Crow, Lord hoped to capture a story of an interracial seagoing cowboy crew working together in harmony.

Lord wrote a postcard to his wife September 26 after arriving at the Naval Landing Building in Norfolk, Virginia, to get his seaman’s papers. What he saw in Virginia troubled him. “The segregation burns me up,” he told her. “It cuts my heart every time I step on a street-car, bus, or ferry and see a little sign ‘Segregation of Races,’ a synopsis of laws of Va. as effective June 11, 1946 etc. Every motorman is a deputy sheriff in case of trouble!”

A maritime strike kept Lord waiting a month in Newport News, Virginia, before he was able to sign on to a ship. He took advantage of the time to take photos of the Terminal Stockyards where the livestock were collected, inspected, and culled and photos of the Brethren Service Center office.

Horses awaiting shipment at the Terminal Stockyards in Newport News, Virginia, October 1946. Photo © Charles Lord.

“I talked with the fellows at BSC office about the article for Life,” he told his wife. “They are quite interested and will give me full cooperation. They think UNRRA will too.”

Seagoing cowboys in line for assignment to a ship, October 1946. Photo © Charles Lord.

When shipping resumed, Lord had a choice between a ship headed for Poland or a ship going to Greece and South Africa – a choice he had to make before knowing the racial makeup of the cowboy crew. He chose the longer trip. “I hope it is the wisest course,” he told his wife. “It will lose much of its significance if the interracial angle falls through. . . . I should be able to get 2 or 3 stories out of the trip, one using pictures only of Greece and back for a typical trip, one using all pictures for an amazing trip and a very non-typical one, and one emphasizing the interracial aspect for Look or Ebony perhaps. It seems an opportunity impossible to pass up. It is almost the first and last time a person can make such a trip without paying a lot for it probably.”

From the album of fellow cowboy and photographer Paul Beard, courtesy of Heifer International.

“This trip means endless photographic opportunities, but alas, that means endless film. . . . I will be in Greece 3 different times for several days each time, at two ports in Africa with a chance to spend a few days ashore, each time we’ll go through Suez Canal, along Egypt, and when loaded, we may even go around Cape Horn and up western coast clear around Africa to save horses from the terrific heat of the Suez. The water temperature itself gets up to 90º they say.”

Next post: Life on board