THE DINNER TABLE

A fleeting encounter at the modest home of Reverend George Smith, Vicar at a parish near the city of Cape Town, and his gracious wife, Anna, forms the backdrop to a memorable experience which would be related many years later by this fine couple. It is a narrative that had a profound impact on their lives and Christian ministry. The peculiar confluence of circumstances that brought the dinner guests together on the evening of Sunday, 22 October 1961, is a moment in time that wove together a diverse, motley group of believers whose paths crossed for a brief juncture and who then proceeded to follow a strangely different course. They had no way of knowing the direction their lives would take, but the brief point that their paths crossed, remained ingrained in the memory of both the hosts and the guests, one and all.

George and Anna Smith hailed from the quaint village of Frodsham in the north-west of England. They shared a passion for people and a deep commitment to their faith. Having been part of the same parish and village community from childhood to adolescence and adulthood, they were well acquainted with each other. Having married, they were of a similar disposition to leave their tiny hamlet to make their way across the ocean to South Africa, burning with the desire to serve others. Ecclesiastic study had strengthened their resolve to live lives of significance in service to their God and their fellow man. As a couple in the ministry their particular gift was to offer hospitality to others – the downtrodden, other missionaries of the faith, the lonely and displaced, indeed, all who could benefit from a listening ear and a welcoming demeanour. They found their niche in the Diocese of Cape Town where George accepted the vicarage of a modest congregation. The couple would regularly meet transient folk passing through their chapel and they would often invite diverse visitors to enjoy a meal at their small home on a Sunday evening. 

Thus it was that Dave and Mary Hagan and the brothers Bill and Barry Sturgeon found themselves as guests at the dinner table that Sunday night. Dave and Mary had a harrowing story to tell of their flight from the volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha just days before. Bill and Barry were from a small town in Ohio in the Midwest of the United States. They, in turn, were passing through Cape Town on their way to the Congo, a region in turmoil during the early sixties as the shackles of their colonial experience were being shaken loose with angry vigour. They were on a mission to spread the Gospel of Peace to a region wracked by internecine tribal war, juxtaposed with a struggle for independence waged against colonial overlords by competing bands of bellicose militia. 

Each of these dear folk at the dinner table shared what had motivated them to find themselves in Cape Town at that time. The hosts were driven by their passion to serve a present need for hospitality. The guests Dave and Mary had a tale of the urgency of escape from the violent explosion of a natural disaster in the wake of a volcanic eruption. The brothers Bill and Barry told a story of anticipation that they would address emerging needs in the flux and turmoil of war ravaged Congo. Past, present and future met at this single point of gracious hospitality where they communed over a modest meal prepared with all the love Anna poured into her recipes meticulously followed.

Dave and Mary Hagan, having grown up on one of the remotest islands on earth, related the horror with which they had witnessed the initial rumblings of the volcano on Queen Mary’s Peak. The first stirrings of the trouble to follow began in August through September of 1961. Earthquakes and landslides just behind the only settlement on the island grew in intensity and presaged the large earthquake that precipitated a furious eruption on 8 October. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, home to 264 islanders and 31 expatriates, began to shake and larva from the Peak of the volcano bubbled to the surface to start cascading down upon the single habitable area of settlement. The Administrator, Peter Wheeler, called a meeting to initiate plans for evacuation of the little town – first to the huts at the Potato Patches, then aboard two fishing boats Tristania and Frances Repetto to a shelter on Nightingale Island nearby. There was little option but to abandon home and hearth and the only patch of habitable land the islanders had known. It was the only part of the 207 square kilometer island suitable for sustaining a settlement. 

Tristan da Cunha is situated in the mid-Atlantic – a six day voyage to Cape Town by ship. A British Overseas Territory, it is a remote archipelago of volcanic islands under the Governorship of St Helena, over 1500 miles to the north. It has no airstrip and sustains itself by the engagement of most of the residents in farming on communal land and some commercial rock lobster fishing. All 264 islanders were descended from 15 original ancestors (8 male and 7 female) and there were only about 8 family surnames on the island. The men had been of European stock, the women mixed race Afro-Asian and European. Since the initial settlement between about 1816 and 1908, they had inter-married and had resisted outsiders who, to this day may not purchase land there. A unique English dialect with hints of Afrikaans slang and Italian in the idiom, harks back to the 19th century, with little renewal and change. The quirky pronunciation of “oranges and apples” as “horanges and happles” will never be forgotten by the Smiths who found their guests’ turn of phrase to be quite endearing.

The Hagans recounted how fortunate the islanders had been to have boarded the Dutch ship Tjisadane on 11 October that had fortuitously detoured to Tristan da Cunha to pick up two young girls intent on embarking on nursing training in Cape Town. It had been able to provide sufficient berth space for all the islanders and expats and make the trip to Cape Town, arriving there on the 16th October. All would, after a brief interlude and their attendance at thanksgiving services in the city (at both Catholic and Anglican places of worship – these being the only denominations represented on the island at that juncture), be taken aboard the RMS Stirling Castle for the further trip to Southampton. They described lucidly the terror of the eruption and the grace of God in their evacuation and rescue from the remotest place on earth. They ascribed their survival to the intervention of a Higher Hand.

All around the dining table acknowledged their acceptance of Divine intervention and expressed their sincere gratitude for the comforting assurance in their own souls that their faith in a personal God who steps into the affairs of men was in no measure misplaced. It was the consensus of those gathered at the Smith residence that such providence would also accompany their other guests on their missionary journey into the remote African jungle.

The Sturgeons told their story in much the same vein, but not of survival, but the accomplishment of a mission to convert indigenous people who had hitherto had no or at most little contact with outside civilization. In the deep Congo jungle the people the Sturgeons were intent on reaching reputedly included head hunters and killers averse to the presence of outsiders. Other Congolese groups gave these remote tribesmen a wide berth and would do their best to warn the brothers of the dangers they were intent on facing. Stories of dismemberment and even cannibalism abounded, but would not deter the Sturgeons in their quest for souls they deemed lost beyond redemption should they not reach out to them, reliant on the same Grace the Hagans had so clearly experienced in their personal encounter with imminent expunction.

The consensus at the dining table was that the Supernatural was exactly that – able to overcome that which was deemed to be a natural or likely event. All agreed that their faith was greater than anything nature or man could pitch at them. They were in little doubt that their lives were and would be spared as they served a greater purpose.

So the evening drew to a close with a final prayer and the departure of the Hagans to the United Kingdom and the Sturgeons to the remote jungle area of the Congo. The Hagans would return to Tristan da Cunha in 1963 when the danger had subsided and the “Settlement” could once again accommodate the intrepid islanders. The Sturgeons encountered the tribes their Congolese guides warned them about. Barry managed to escape the clutches of the tribes even the Congolese Africans feared, but not before witnessing the untimely and brutal death of his brother. Sadly, Bill was eaten by cannibals before he could share his message of redemption with the tainted tribes of the remote jungles that would take several decades to emerge from their own “Heart of Darkness” (so described in the Joseph Conrad novella by that name).

The Reverend George Smith and his dear Anna continued to serve congregants in his parish. They extended hospitality and kindness throughout the years they taught about the fallibility of man, redemption, grace and mercy. Their brief interaction with the Islanders and the Missionaries lingered in their memories. Into their retirement years they continued to reflect the goodness they preached and shared with such alacrity.

In so many ways all of the folk around that dinner table were significant people whose stories deserve to be recalled and retold. None achieved fame. None came into any kind of fortune. All, including Bill, fulfilled a mission – even if it was only to have been an inspiration in the fleeting encounter at the Smith residence.

©Paul M Haupt