A Twist of Sand

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It is a fact that the German U-boat High Command tested experimental U-boats in Cape waters in 1941. Captain Johann Linbach, master of the German freighter Hastedt, was reported by The Star, Johannesburg, on 6th September, 1957: "During 1941, when Germany was testing a new model of submarine engine, six U-boats so equipped were sent to Cape waters…. only one returned."

The phenomenon of the "double sun" was recorded by meteorologists of the Pretoria Weather Bureau at Swakopmund, South West Africa, on 11th December, 1957.

Adiabatic warming of winter winds is an authentic meteorological occurrence in South West Africa. The colouring of the sea by the autumn bloom on plankton is also vouched for. It occurs in conjunction with gymnodinium, a deadly poison.

I have taken a liberty with the actual date on which the Dunedin Star was lost.

Pretoria, 1959

Twenty-one and a half feet. I shivered.

The movement shook loose from the edge of my duffle-coat a bead of icy moisture which skidded down my cheek and splashed in a tiny bright spangle on the chart under the concentrated glare of the angled light. I shivered again, half in fear, half in discomfort. The fog was condensing everywhere, and I could feel its sharp tingle in my throat. Dawn in fog is the time for any skipper's fears; dawn in fog off the Skeleton Coast is the time of nightmares.

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