John Clark Collection
This statue commemorates a 15-year-old boy named John Ross who made a long and dangerous round trip of 600 miles (about 960km) from NAtal to Delagoa Bay (later Lourenco Marques, now Maputo) to obtain medicines and ship supplies for the Port Natal settlers. Apprenticed to Lieut. J.S. King, Ross was a Scots youth of great courage and adaptability who accepted the task without a murmur although it entailed walking through unexplored territory crossed by rivers and full of wild creatures. Thanks to Nathaniel Isaacs' friendship with Tshaka, the boy was given an escort of ten Zulus who acted as porters for goods obtained. Ross returned to Port Natal in the phenomenal time of three weeks. Thereafter he disappears from the Natal newspaper he revealed that his true name was Charles Rawden Maclean and that he had taken the name 'John Ross' when he ran away to sea at the age of twelve. However, the statue erected outside the John Ross House on the Victoria Embankment, Durban, commemorates him under his assumed name.