Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

It took the combined might of the army, air force and navy to get a wheel back onto the trolley of a 17th century Portuguese cannon at the Castle of Good Hope.

The three arms of the SANDF joined forces on Wednesday to lift the huge bronze cannon off the trolley in order to carry out urgent repairs. The right front wheel became loose because of rotten wood.

Staff jokingly referred to it as the cannon “with the flat wheel” as the dejected-looking war machine stood tilted slightly forward, due to the damage, in front of the entrance to the Castle’s military museum.

The air force provided the crane and operator and the army the truck with which to transport the crane. The navy was represented by retired Commander Gerry de Vries, South Africa’s top expert in historic guns.

The cannon was cast in 1638 in the Far East island colony of Macau, now part of China, by the Portuguese master Pedro Diaz Bocarro, said De Vries.

It was being transported to Portugal on one of three ships, the Attalaia do Pinhero, Sacramento or Nossa Senhora, when all three came a cropper in bad weather off Port Elizabeth and were blown ashore.

The gun, with most of its critical markings still visible, was recovered, with others, by salvors in the mid-20th century.

The solid oak trolley was made about 50 years ago, probably by the SA Navy, De Vries said.

“We would not be able to build it like this again,” he said.

“The oak would probably cost about R15 000.”

The repair had to be made in a day, in order to have the crane handy to place the gun back on the trolley.

De Vries and his team used a section of Balau wood for the repair and also planned to sand the trolley down and preserve it.

And while the three “executive” arms of the SANDF busied themselves with the repair, the fourth was at hand, too, just in case.

The SA Medical Corps would certainly have come running had the cannon fallen on someone, a spokesman said.