Missing piecesInvestigations of my family history, which illuminates huge themes and burning issues—race, class, migration, globalisation, war and peace. “Missing pieces” is both about the making of white South Africa and the making of me. |
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This is the only photograph that I have of any of my St Ives ancestors: great-grandfather John Roach, born in 1849 to Ann and John Roach. Like all John Roaches before him, he was a man of the sea.
I never heard tell of him: my grandfather (his son) died long before I was born, and my grandmother was a person of few words. But this photograph found its way into our family archive, such as it was.
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In days gone by, pilchards were the “silver darlings” of St Ives, supplying “meat, money and light all in one night”. Meaning a healthy diet, oil for lamps and reliable incomes. Throughout the 19th century, the pilchard catch drove the St Ives economy, providing fishing jobs and other industries that served them—the boat builders, coopers, rope and net makers. Women were central to the salting and curing of the fish, the majority of which were exported to Italy in sailing ships. The local folk described the journey as “going to the burning mountain” and were said to drink a toast to the Pope at the end of each fishing season.
By 1847 export of pilchards from Cornwall amounted to 40,883 barrels or 122 million fish.
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Research on the lives of my ancestors began as a quest to find a place of belonging in my adopted home of England.
In African culture one is taught to honour one’s ancestors. But as a young white South African I found it more comfortable to edit them out of my own narrative. So it was that in 2008 I began researching my ancestry with almost no knowledge about my forebears.
Going back and back and back through the generations was like being a child looking up at the clear night sky and wondering at unknown galaxies, the meaning of human life...