SHAW SAVILL'S REMARKABLE SOUTHERN CROSS OUTLIVED THE COMPANY

RIGHTLY, Judge Nathan Erasmus sentenced the three child-traffickers to life in prison. Inter alia, the trial also highlighted the country's drug scourge that, possibly to fund a drug habit, had caused people to stoop to selling a child. Apart from questions about the mysterious sangoma being absent from the dock, where were the druglords who, through their life-wrecking trade, seem equally complicit in this deplorable crime?

- BRIAN INGPEN

Shifting to a more agreeable matter, it is 70 years since Shaw Savill's Southern Cross arrived in Cape Town on her maiden voyage, an event I remember well. With my mother in hospital, my father took my brother and me to the harbour after visiting hours on that Sunday afternoon. Scheduled to leave later that evening to make way for the mailship due from the coast the following morning, Southern Cross was at A Berth.

Despite my kortbroek status at the time, the magnificently different image of Southern Cross remains with me. Her revolutionary engines-and-funnel-aft design, her grey hull and light green topsides caught the public's imagination as it did mine.

Southern Cross's general arrangement created a large lido deck midships on which passengers could enjoy sunbathing around a pool and playing deck games without having to dodge occasional clods of soot from her funnel. The new liner attracted passengers galore!

For comfort during her tropical passages from Britain via Panama Canal to Australasia and, when Britain-bound, to South Africa, she was air-conditioned, an innovation that was not offered on many earlier ships. The concept of a passengers-only liner for blue-water services represented a fundamental departure from the standard liner of the time.