Sarah BaartmanConstruction of the all steel Fishery and Environmental Protection Vessel Sarah Baartman commenced in July 2003 at the Damen Galati shipyard in Romania. The near completed ship was towed to Vlissingen in the Netherlands during August 2004, where final fitting out and commissioning was carried out. Following sea trials in November, the vessel sailed from Vlissingen on 4 December and arrived in Cape Town on December 21.

Sarah Baartman carries 18 crew, seven fishery inspectors and four cadets. The ship is 83 metres in length and has a beam of 13 metres. Range is 7500 nautical miles at 15 knots and the vessel can remain at sea for up to 45 days. Top speed is in excess of 20 knots. In addition to its fishery protection duties the Sarah Baartman is also equipped to carry out oil pollution countermeasure work. The vessel is further equipped for Search and Rescue work, fire fighting and limited towing duties. There are two 7.5 metre SOLAS approved RIBS to ferry the boarding parties. There is a helicopter deck and a capability to refuel craft up to the size of an Oryx. In addition there is a small hospital and facilities for accommodating survivors in the event of a marine casualty. The vessel is classified for unrestricted service and will be deployed for duties within South African and SADC waters, as well as off Marion and Prince Edward Islands. Annual sea time will be 250 days.

Fisheries Protection Vessel

Propulsion is by two Wartsila M26A V12 engines, each delivering 4080 kW and driving Wartsila Lips variable pitch propellers. The engine room is unmanned. There is a fully equipped Machinery Control Room, with a secondary control and monitoring station on the Bridge. The after section of the Wheelhouse is dedicated to an Operations Room housing a variety of surveillance systems.

The Galley

The Bridge

Department:Agriculture, Forestry and FisheriesREPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

agriculture,forestry & fisheries

For any further information please contact:

Department of Agriculture, Forestry and FisheriesBranch: Fisheries ManagementPrivate Bag X2,Rogge Bay 8012Cape TownTel. (021) 402 3911Fax. (021) 402 3663

Website: www.daff.gov.za

The Officer’s Mess

She spent four years in London, then moved to Paris, where she continued her degrading round of shows and exhibitions. In Paris she attracted the attention of French scientists, in particular Georges Cuvier.

Once the Parisians got tired of the Baartman show, she was forced to turn to prostitution. She didn’t last the ravages of a foreign culture and climate, or the further abuse of her body. She died in 1815 at the age of 25.

The cause of death was given as “inflammatory and eruptive sickness”, possibly syphilis. Others suggest she was an alcoholic. Whatever the cause, she lived and died thousands of kilometers from home and family, in a hostile city, with no means of getting herself home again.

Cuvier made a plaster cast of her body, then removed her skeleton and, after removing her brain and genitals, pickled them and displayed them in bottles at the Musee de l’Homme in Paris.

Some 160 years later they were still on display, but were finally removed from public view in 1974. In 1994, then-president Nelson Mandela suggested that her remains be brought home. Other representations were made, but it took the French government eight years to pass a bill - apparently worded so as to prevent other countries from claiming the return of their stolen treasures - to allow their small piece of “scientific curiosity” to be returned to South Africa.

In January 2002, Sarah Baartman’s remains were finally returned, and remained in Cape Town pending a decision on her final burial place.

Marang Setshwaelo, writing for Africana.com, says that Dr Willa Boesak, a Khoisan rights activist, believes that a poem written by Khoisan descendant Diana Ferrus in 1998 played a major role in helping bring Baartman home. Boesak says: “It took the power of a woman, through a simple, loving poem, to move hard politicians into action.”

Whatever the reason, Sarah Baartman is home, and has finally had her dignity restored by being buried where she belongs – far away from where her race and gender were so cruelly exploited.

Sarah Baartman, at rest at lastLucille Davie

Sarah Baartman, displayed in Europe as a freak because of her unusual physical features, was finally been laid to rest 187 years after she left Cape Town for London. Her remains were buried on Women’s Day, 9 August 2002, in the area of her birth, the Gamtoos River Valley in the Eastern Cape.

Baartman was born in 1789. She was working as a slave in Cape Town when she was “discovered” by British ship’s doctor William Dunlop, who persuaded her to travel with him to England.

It’s clear what Dunlop had in mind – to display her as a “freak”, a “scientific curiosity”, and make money from these shows, some of which he promised to give to her.

Baartman had unusually large buttocks and genitals, and in the early 1800s Europeans were arrogantly obsessed with their own superiority, and with proving that others, particularly blacks, were inferior and oversexed.

Baartman’s physical characteristics, not unusual for Khoisan women, although her features were larger than normal, were “evidence” of this prejudice, and she was treated like a freak exhibit in London, where she was called the “Hottentot Venus”.

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