Ships Coming to Anchor, South Africa

Enticing amateur snapshot of South Africa before the outbreak of the Boer War.

Amateur filmmaker Robert A. Mitchell’s record of South Africa before the outbreak of the Boer War consists of many enticing fragments, among which are a gang of labourers and an ox-train. This film, however, has more in common with the other subject Mitchell is known to have favoured: boats of all kinds. Purporting to be a ship coming to anchor in South Africa, it can be taken, along with 'The ‘Bluff’ Durban,' as the opening chapter of Mitchell’s idiosyncratic document of the country in 1898.