Breakwater

Arthur Worthington was educated at the famous school in Rugby to which the popular game owes it's name.  In later life he trained students of Naval Engineering at Devonport.  This was in the 1880's, roughly the time when William Duncan Baxter sailed to Cape Town.  During his lecturing days, Arthur Worthington experimented with photography.  In those days photography was very much a novelty and not always well received in polite circles.   The research was primarily for naval purposes and one can guess that impact and trajectory of cannon shot would have been of particular interest.  Combining the two disciplines, Arthur Worthington used the early camera to observe the splash of small objects crashing into water.  Incredible as it seems, the picture shown here was taken before the Boer War.

And now for a mystery.  Russian sailors have been buried in Simonstown.  Very rudimentary research has not unraveled a full story.  Beautifully carved in tomb stone is a cross dedicated to the Russian Sailors.  The tombstone cross is not the typical cross of the Russian Orthodox Church.  It is in fact the cross of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Christian denomination of the majority of middle eastern and Slavic countries.  This is a clue.  The Russian Orthodox Church is a sub-section of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  Inscriptions on the tombstone are scant, a list of names numbering about 17 carved in the Cyrillic alphabet.  Date of departure, 1880's.

Is Arthur Worthington linked to the Russian Sailors of Simonstown?