Tours in Cape Town

Posts Tagged ‘Robben Island’

Cape Columbine Lighthouse

On the west coast between Cape Town and St Helena Bay a distance of about a hundred and fifty kilometres you will find no fewer than eight lighthouses.

Shelley Point situated on the shores of St Helena bay is the most northerly lighthouse along this stretch of coastline. It fortunately does not have a list of shipwrecks lying on its doorstep as some of the other lighthouses along this stretch of coast do.

Paternoster

Cape Columbine near Paternoster a few kilometres south of Shelley Point is a known burial ground for ships most of them wrecked before the lighthouse was built in 1936. The lighthouse was erected on Castle Rock which is a massive granite boulder on a hillside a few hundred metres above the sea.

A number of ships ran aground near the lighthouse, the first being in 1876 when the troopship SS Saint Lawrence landed up on the rocky coastline. Fortunately no lives were lost when the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Buffs were forced to abandon ship and make their way ashore

A second ship, the SS Lisboa, a Portuguese twin screw steamship ran aground in October 1910. This ship was en route from Angola to Cape Town when she ran aground on Soldiers Reef near Paternoster. There were 250 passengers and 50 crew on board as well as a number of bulls and a cargo of olive oil and wine.

When the ship ran aground many barrels of wine were washed overboard and were smashed on the rocks apparently turning the seawater around the ship red. Not all of the barrels that were washed overboard were smashed and these landed up on the beaches in the area and were hurriedly buried by the locals before customs officials arrived in the area to monitor the wreck. Once the customs officials had returned to Cape Town the barrels were dug up and the wine consumed by the locals.

Three more ships had to run aground near Cape Columbine before a decision was taken to erect a lighthouse in the area. They were the SS Haddon Hall which ran aground in 1913, the SS Malmesbury which ran aground in 1930, and the SS Haleric which ran aground in 1932.

This lighthouse is still in operation today and is one of the few that are still manned. Cape Columbine Lighthouse is one of the first lighthouses along the South African coastline to receive three navigational safety devices, namely a foghorn, a radio beacon and a lens designed for use with incandescent lightbulbs.

Saldanha Bay Lighthouse

Travelling southwards towards Cape Town the next two lighthouses we come across are the North Head Light and the South Head light at the entrance to Saldanha Bay. A number of shipswrecks lie buried in the sands of the bay.

The first ship to founder in the bay was the Nagel which sank 27th May 1709. The Nagel was anchored in the bay just off the Saldanha Buitepost or outpost as it was known in the early days of the Cape.

At the time of the accident the captain and four of his crewmen were ashore fixing their fishing nets in their tent on the beach.

As night fell the first officer and the “meester” who were still on board ship lit a lamp in the main cabin in the stern of the ship and then returned to their quarters near the bow leaving the lantern unattended.

Somehow the lantern must have fallen over and soon the whole ship was ablaze. The captain on shore seeing the blaze rowed out to his ship to try and put out the fire but arrived too late and the only option he had was to scuttle the ship.

Dassen Island Lighthouse

The next lighthouse along the west coast is the offshore lighthouse which was built on Dassen Island and commissioned in 1893.

It is the loneliest lighthouse along the coastline and today is manned by a solitary lightkeeper who is visited once every six weeks when supplies are delivered to the island.

The island being close to shipping lanes has had its fair share of ships foundering on its rocky shores. Two of the wrecks on the island’s coastline are still visited by divers today as they make excellent dive sites.

The ships are the RMS Windsor and the MV Southern Author.

Between Dassen Island and the Robben Island is a very rocky coastline. At Ganzekraal a small holiday resort on the west coasttwo bodies were discovered by workers when erecting buildings in the area, When discovered the bodies were fully clothed and wrapped in a burial shroud. Both bodies had been mummified by the sand.

At the time of the discovery the graves were unmarked and the authorities were eager to find out who the bodies were.

The boots and the buttons on the clothing found on the men provided some clues and eventually led to the discovery of a long forgotten shipwreck being rediscovered off the coast. It was the ship “The British Peer ” which had been wrecked off the coast in 1896.

After an investigation by the SA Museum’s archaelogical division the two bodies were found to be part of the ship’s crew and were then returned to the area and were buried on a farm nearby.

Robben Island Lighthouse

Robben Island lighthouse is the next lighthouse we find along the west coast on our journey southwards. It’s one of the oldest lighthouses on the coast and was established by van Riebeeck way back in the 1650’s when he hung a burning pitch ring on a pole each evening to warn approaching ships of the dangers of the island.

Unfortunately this early attempt at warning ships did not always have the desired effect and many ships foundered on the rocky shores of the island.

The “Cape Packet” ship the Dageraad ran aground on the island in January 1694.  She was returning to Cape Town from St Helena Bay where she had been assisting with the salvage of the ship the Gouden Buis which had run aground near the mouth of the Berg River after most of its 190 crew members had died from scurvy.

One of only two survivors from the Gouden Buys was on board the Dageraad when it ran aground on Robben Island and he managed to swim ashore when the ship foundered with the loss of 16 lives.

The Dageraad had a number of chests filled with coins on board at the time of its sinking and these chests most probably still lie on the seabed within the prison security area of Robben Island.

Milnerton Lighthouse

Milnerton lighthouse on the eastern shores of Table bay is the last lighthouse between Cape Town and St Helana bay and is built on a sandy island between the sea and the Milnerton lagoon which looks out over Table Bay and the most treacherous stretch of coastline in South Africa.

Since the arrival of European explorers to the South African coastline in the late 1400’s more than 150 ships have succumbed to the sea on this very innocent looking stretch of coastline.

Celi 1 Shipwreck arrived early to watch the world cup.

Many of the wrecks are still buried in the sand along the seashore. Proof of this was found when the Sealand Express which ran aground a short way from the Milnerton Lighthouse in 2005 was refloated and bits and pieces of old cast iron cannon balls were found lodged in her hull.

Unfortunately many of the wrecks in Table Bay have been lost forever as land has been reclaimed from the sea and is now covered in concrete.

For many years lighthouses around our coastlines were manned but with the improvement of technology they have been automated.

The result being that the houses once utilised by lighthouse personnel are now standing empty.

The authorities to recover some of the costs of maintaining the properties have opened up eight lighthouses to the public and have converted the empty houses into self catering units for use by the public.

Interested in staying at one of the lighthouses along our coastline. Contact “Salato” The South African Lighthouse Adventure Tourism Organisation for more information

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Cape Point

The West Coast of Southern Africa stretches from Cape Point the most south western tip of Africa to the mouth of the Orange River on the Namibian border.

The coastline is a very interesting one and over the next few months I will try and enlighten folk on different places you can visit along this interesting coastline.

The whole coastline is washed by the Atlantic Ocean and the cold Benguela current. The current,  a branch of the west wind drift of the Southern Hemisphere,  flows northwards up the coastline from the deep south ( close to Antartica) until it nears the Equator where it merges with the Atlantic South Equatorial current and then flows westwards towards the Americas.

During the summer months the Western Cape’s southern and western coastlines are buffeted by strong southerly and southwesterly (we know them as the south easter) winds which produce an upwelling of water with a cool temperature and relatively low salinity. These upwellings have a high concentration of plankton and thus create excellent fishing grounds with an abundance of fish.

Yzerfontein harbour

Snoek is the main catch and is landed for about nine months of the year commencing in June and going through to March.  Sixty percent of all line fish caught on the west coast is landed at Yzerfontein which is the main fishing harbour on the west coast.

Between Cape Point and Saldanha Bay there are only four fishing harbours which can be utilised by small boat fishermen to land their catches.

They are Hout bay, Granger Bay, Yzerfontein and Saldanha Bay.

Granger Bay pointed out by the red arrow

Granger Bay situated on the Table Bay coastline less than two hundred metres from the new Cape Town stadium is the smallest of the harbours and has a small slipway and very little parking for fishermen’s vehicles and their trailers.

A year or two ago there was great consternation when the authorities decided to close Granger Bay thus cutting off any access to Table Bay for fishermen.

Closing the only slipway with access to Table Bay for the fishermen would have meant that the fishing boats would either have had to launch at Hout Bay harbour and make their way along a very dangerous coastline by sea to gain access to their fishing grounds near Robben island.

Hout Bay harbour

The alternative to Hout Bay was to drive all the way to Yzerfontein (about 90 kilometres from Cape Town) to launch and then to make their way back by sea to Table Bay to fish near Robben Island and then with fully laden boats have to make their way back to Yzerfontein to land the catch.

Fortunately an agreement was reached and Granger Bay remained open.

With the World Cup playing itself out at the Cape Town stadium during June and July and the closing of roads in and around the stadium from early May until mid July I can see another clash looming between the fishermen and authorities as Granger Bay will once again be closed to fishermen during the fishing season.

The authorities have set up an exclusion zone around the stadium and fishermen will most probably not be allowed to enter it.

I don’t think anyone has given Granger Bay or the fishermen a thought but they had better wake up if they don’t want fishermen parking their boats and trailers across the Western Boulevard during the world cup and stopping all traffic going to the stadium if they cannot gain access to their fishing grounds.

The west coast is a great place to visit but it is not the best place for a football stadium to be built. Green Point where the new stadium is located is not on any public transport routes. Access to the area is difficult with normal motor traffic without a world cup event playing itself out.

During the world cup event and especially on match days the Western Boulevard and Somerset road leading to the stadium will be closed to the public which is likely to cause havoc on all the approach roads to the city.

Not even the fishermen with their boats will be allowed to enter the area. Can you imagine the chaos and the language if a fisherman is told to go to Hout Bay when there is a snoek run off Robben Island and he wants to launch from Granger Bay.

Thankfully its not my problem although I might just get caught up in the traffic jam.

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