A Good View
Sometimes the most unlikely and overlooked place in a city provides the best setting for quiet, contemplative reflection, or even just a good view. Just such a locale is the fort from which the harbour city of Port Elizabeth grew.
It was built in 1799 on a knoll above the mouth of the Bakens River, to protect the natural harbour in the crook of Algoa Bay from a possible French landing during the Napoleonic wars. Although the stronghold might seem fairly puny now, you have to imagine how things looked back in the late 18th century when being posted to Fort Frederick was like being sent to a wintry Antarctic today.
By the time the 1820 Settlers arrived, the threat from the sea was over and the guns of the British Empire were turned eastwards, towards the Xhosa people who lived between the Great Fish and Kei rivers. To this day the guns of Fort Frederick have not fired a single shot.
Sentimentality about animals isn't a modern thing: at the corner of Cape and Russell roads in Port Elizabeth there's a memorial to the horses of the Anglo-Boer War. It's a life-size bronze statue of a horse about to drink from a bucket being held by a kneeling soldier, sculpted by Joseph Whitehead in 1905 after funds were raised by a local animal lover, Harriet Meyer. PE was the main port through which horses for the British army were shipped.
By David Bristow