Gone, but not forgotten: The NSRI’s base in Walvis Bay

In the course of conducting research for his memoir, John Fourie – a founding member of the NSRI’s long-defunct Walvis Bay station – has unearthed some fascinating history in the institute’s archives, ensuring this extraordinary station is not forgotten.

Walvis Bay was founded at the end of the 18th century as a stopover port for sea travel between Cape Town and the Netherlands by the Dutch East India Company. To cut a long story short, it eventually fell under South West African rule and after some to-ing and fro-ing, became a South African enclave within Namibia. It was only in 1992 that Walvis Bay was fully reintegrated back into Namibia – but what many people don’t know is that this also brought about the closure of an extraordinary NSRI station that had been established in Walvis Bay several years prior, in 1976: Station 18.

One of its founding members, John Fourie, now 71, has been conducting research for a memoir he plans to pass on to his children and grandchild.

“It started off with wanting to leave a legacy to my kids, my granddaughter… And I had, over the years, made a hobby of collecting pieces of history around the original Station 18. In fact, it irked me that another station had been designated Station 18 [Melkbostrand], essentially erasing our station from history. Well, that’s not strictly accurate – the history is there, the logs etc, but they’re in danger of being forgotten in the greater story of the NSRI. It prompted me to wonder: how can we bring it back? Get it back into the story? They were quite turbulent times and worth recording.”

Unlike other established NSRI stations at the time, Station 18 was roughly 2000 kilometres by road from the NSRI’s Head Office.

“My experience, and I think most of my fellow crew’s experiences, were perhaps unique in that we didn't have a huge support structure, being so far away from, well, everything. And along with that we had a coastline that's almost a thousand kilometres long. The Skeleton Coast isn’t called that for no reason; indigenous San people called it ‘The land God made in anger’ while the Portuguese mariners named it ‘The gates of hell’.

“Walvis Bay was the only real port where larger vessels could dock at that time. So you had railways coming in, all the goods had to be transported out. You had the harbour authorities, and then you had the military. In our day we used to encounter Russian ships! And around all of that, the pelagic fishing industry.”

In his mission to track down as much information as he could for his memoir, John reconnected with fellow founding member and founding Station Commander Captain Keith Burchell, who was also in the process of writing a memoir, and the two obtained access to the NSRI’s historical archives – which were in a state of disarray thanks to a recent relocation.

“I took that over,” says John, “organising the archives. I'll try and sort it into some order. Then it needs to be scanned and recorded digitally, and cross-referenced so that it can be more easily organised and accessed.”

One item of particular interest is a scrapbook John’s wife made back in the ‘70s and ‘80s that included newspaper clippings of operations conducted during his time at the Walvis Bay base.

“I had managed to track down that scrapbook in 2006 and copied some of the contents, but sadly I haven’t been able to find it again in the existing archives.”

John’s memoir, when complete, promises to be a rollicking read, peppered with fascinating memories and personal snapshots of a unique time in history; John participated in many large and daring rescue operations, helping to earn the station a distinguished service award during his time there. Keeping the NSRI’s history alive shows that the spirit of resilience, camaraderie and courage with which the Institute was founded is baked into its foundation and continues to sustain it today.