South African training school offers local lifeline

摘要

Tankers are fun!' wrote navigation cadet Paulette Maswanganyi, currently aboard a 40,000dwt products tanker. 'I have been to North Africa, Malta, and we are now heading to France... Many ask what made me choose a career at sea, to which my response is that it began at Lawhill Maritime Centre, Simon's Town.' Like Paulette, many young South Africans - some from sprawling townships or squalid shantytowns - are now in worthwhile careers at sea or ashore stemming from their maritime education at Lawhill Maritime Centre in Simon's Town, in the western Cape. Sponsored by Safmarine and the National Ports Authority of South Africa, the school takes its name from the four-masted South African barque in which many of the country's senior maritime figures sailed in the 1940s.