01 Jun 2009
Eddy Grant's Anti-apartheid anthem 'Gimme Hope Joanna' contains the lyrics:
She's got supporters in high-up places,
who turn their heads to the City Sun,
Joanna [South Africa] gives them the fancy money,
Oh! to tempt anyone who'd come.
This neatly describes South African immigration policy during the period and Union-Castle's importance in ferrying immigrants to the republic.
Finally, the National Maritime Museum Brass Foundry, Woolwich Arsenal is where the principal photographic research material for the project is located.
An exploration of a key 20th-century British shipping company, my thesis, Accommodating the Passenger, examines the interior design of the Union-Castle liners in the period 1945-77. In addition to its core - a focused design historical study - this project argues the use of an interdisciplinary approach to design history. It discusses the crucial need to address the political economy of this UK-South African shipping route for an understanding of the design of the ships which sailed it. In contextualising its research in the political and social history of the period it also covers new ground; its overarching theme will be to investigate the impact of Apartheid upon design.
At the heart of the thesis lie ideas about representation and issues around design as cultural practice. Was there a Union-Castle aesthetic and what did it represent if there was? Did this vary according to place on board, or passenger class? Embedded within contemporary social and political culture, does the design of these ships represent their place of origin in the UK, their destination ports in South Africa or both? How might the liners have embodied concepts of national identity and if so, what does this say of British-South African relations in the post war period? Finally to what extent did the ties that Nelson Mandela has described as 'a special relationship and its mutual benefits, which history has bound us in' affect the look of the Union-Castle liners interiors? This project will argue that Union-Castle's passenger accommodation was very much influenced by South African culture and politics of the post-war years.