page_title: John Paterson (Cape politician)
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: John Paterson (Cape politician) / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Port Elizabeth MP Jock Paterson lectures the MPs from the rest of the country on budgets and finance. Cape Observer newspaper, Impey Lithographers, Port Elizabeth, Cape Colony
context_page_description: John Paterson was a prominent politician and successful businessman of the Cape Colony, and had a great influence on the development of Port Elizabeth where he was based. He ran newspapers, established the Grey Institute and played a significant role in founding South Africa's Standard Bank. As a politician "there is no doubt that, as leader of the opposition triumvirate of himself, Sprigg and Southey, he would have been elected Prime Minister when the Molteno Ministry fell"{ffolliott and Croft|1960|p=207}
context_section_description: Paterson died suspiciously on his way back to the Cape in May 1880 in a bizarre double-shipwreck. He initially twice delayed his departure, missing ships, before he boarded the ship the Union R.M.S. American. The American was then dramatically wrecked off West Africa, when its propeller-shaft snapped, bent and tore open part of the ship's plating. The passengers evacuated the ship in an ordered way before it sank but, adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, the lifeboats became separated. The passengers were all later found and rescued. However, Paterson's lifeboat was separately picked up by the Senegal which then ran aground on the coast of Grand Canary Island. In the chaos following this second shipwreck, Paterson was reported to have been struck by a hard object (reportedly the ship's propeller) and killed. He was the only casualty from the two shipwrecks.
  Upon news of Paterson's death, flags across the Cape were flown at half mast. His obituary in the Cape Argus, while acknowledging the political controversy and hostility he sometimes caused, paid tribute to his zeal for what he believed to be right, and to his enormous achievements. The village of Paterson in the Eastern Cape, South Africa was named after him.
  Writer Stanley Little commented on Paterson's death and political style in his 1887 work on the Cape's political leaders. 
  He never attained to the position to which his ambition led him to aspire, but lost his life, in a sad manner, on his voyage out to the Cape. The American, in which vessel he took his passage, sustained shipwreck, but he escaped in the Senegal, which ship grounded a few days afterwards, and Mr Paterson went to the bottom. He represented Port Elizabeth in the Assembly, and was for some time the leader of the Opposition. He was an able man, but some severe things were said about him, which on the wholesome principle de mortuis nil nisi bonum, I shall not repeat. He was a firm Confederationist, and took the Eastern view of matters in the East versus West controversy. He could speak well, and would have been worth listening to, had it not been for a certain ugly mannerism. His delivery too, was dry and cold, and very trying, and he had moreover, been unsuccessful in his efforts to cure himself of the sing-song tin-kettle brogue of the bourgeoisie Scotchman. Mr Paterson had been a schoolmaster, and in good sooth, he retained a pedagogic style to the last.
  — James Stanley Little, South Africa: A Sketchbook of Men, Manners and Facts (1887) Swan, Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co. London. pp.333-334
caption: Paterson's "pedagogic" approach is alluded to in this 1878 cartoon by the Port Elizabeth Observer (a newspaper that supported him). Paterson is shown lecturing the MPs of parliament on budgeting and finance.
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