Photos of the first British royal tour south of the equator, 1860

As a member of the Commonwealth, Australia has warmly welcomed the British Royals on their Australian tours. Each visit has seen us turn out in our thousands to catch a glimpse of a member of the Queen's family, or occasionally the Queen herself. Monarchist or Republican, for many of us, these Royal visits have bookmarked particular moments in our collective history: Prince Harry and Meghan Marklel's visit in 2018; the visit by the Prince and Princess of Wales with their son Prince William in 1983; and the 1954 visit of Queen Elizabeth II, the first reigning monarch of Australia to set foot on Australian soil.?

There were of course many other royal visits to many destinations around? the world but it may be a surprise to know only six of these were made to Australia before 1954, and the first of these, with its associated assassination attempt, was made in 1867. The reason for this appears to be because it was not until the 1850s that Britain recognised the importance Royal tours could play in maintaining control of an empire spread across the globe. Queen Victoria was one of the first to grasp the significance, sending members of her family to Britain’s far-flung colonies as a way of reinforcing her family’s position at the apex of a system which sought to control settlers and indigenous populations alike. It also provided a face and physical presence of the Queen’s authority in an age when rumour, gossip and newspaper headlines were the nearest most people got to these near mythical beings.?

The Queen’s second son, fifteen-year-old Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the first royal to tour to the colonies on this side of the globe, he steamed out from England on board HMS Euryalus, in 1860, bound for the Cape Colony in South Africa. ?

This Royal Tour has a special significance for the State Library of New South Wales. Rare photographs of the tour were collected by a young navy Lieutenant, Arthur Onslow, who, while returning from Australia, passed through Cape Town after the Prince’s tour and his photographs are now held in the Library as part of the Macarthur family collections. In the image above we can see the young Prince (third from the right) with Governor Sir George Grey (fourth from the right) in outback South Africa.

The stereo-photographs of Cape Town may have been taken by Onslow himself but most, including those documenting the Prince’s travels in South Africa remain unidentified. While Albert took his own photographic equipment with him, no images appear to have been taken by the Prince.? This is perhaps no surprise as he would have had little spare time given the Tour’s gruelling schedule which took him on horse-back, carriage and train through the Cape Colony, Kaffraria, the Orange River Free State, and Natal before returning back to Cape Town, in just over a month.?

The image above captures the scale of the operation. We can see a large number of covered wagons unhitched from their horses, these were managed by the regiment of the Port Elizabeth Volunteer Rifle Corps who rode alongside the Prince. In early August they started their overland journey to Grahamstown. Outdoor photography, particularly away from major townships, was still relatively difficult for photographers so travelling with the Prince’s entourage provided security, storage and a place from which to develop and process the heavy, and delicate, glass plate negatives. It also provided the photographer with a chance to travel overland to places which were too remote to get to without this kind of assistance.

After stopping at King Williamstown they rode over the grassy and woodless plateaux of Kaffraria before cutting their way through deep, wooded ravines to Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State. On 19 August the Prince met with the South African chief Moshoeshoe I at Aliwal North. Moshoeshoe was not a hereditary chief but at the time this picture was taken he was recognised as a political leader who had built his reputation by astutely navigating shifting local politics and colonial intervention. The meeting at Aliwal North, like other royal encounters, was set up by colonial officials and the meeting place was the same place Moshoeshoe had signed a deal brokered by Governor Grey in 1858. By the time of this meeting however, Moshoeshoe's requests for continued protection were being ignored, so Moshoeshoe, circumventing protocols, handed his requests directly to the Prince to pass on to the Queen. The wonderful photo of Moshoeshoe in Onslow’s album was taken after he had given the letter to Alfred and shows him wearing his distinctive top hat, cape and carrying a cane.?

After this the Royal party proceeded north to Winburg and on 31 August they made their way to Natal. Their final stop was D'Urban on 5 September and from here they returned on the Euryalus to Cape Town. They landed at Simon’s Town on 14 September 1860. In all they covered some 2000 kilometers during their month-long trek. Alfred's last official duty of the Tour was completed on 17 September after which he sailed with the Euryalus for the West Indies; eventually reaching England on 18 August 1861.

Geoff Barker, 2024