Tours in Cape Town

Posts Tagged ‘St helena bay’

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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St Helena Bay

About 150 kilometres north of Cape Town is a large bay which was named St Elena after the mother of Constantine the Great. It was named by a Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama who was sailing down the coast of Africa looking for the sea route to India following the yet unknown route around the southern point of Africa. When he sailed into the bay on the 8^th November 1497 he was struck by the beauty and tranquility of the bay.

Today the name has changed slightly and it is known as St Helena Bay.

Vasco da Gama after leaving St Helana Bay continued on his voyage and sailed on around the Cape of Good Hope and eventually found the sea route to India.

After discovering the sea route to India many other nations followed in da Gama’s footsteps and made their way to India along the same sea route. One of these nations was the Dutch who had the misfortune of one of their ships, the Niewe Haarlem running aground on the coastline in Table Bay. The crew managed to reach the shore and after salvaging the cargo of the ship had to fend for themselves on the shore until another Dutch ship on its way back from India entered Table Bay and found them living on the beach.

On board the rescue ship was a man named Jan van Riebeeck. He took note of the conditions at the Cape and when he got back to Holland advised the HereXVII that one could live safely at the Cape and that they the Dutch should start a halfway station to provide fresh meat and vegetables for their passing ships. This idea was eventually agreed upon and Jan van Riebeeck was sent back to the Cape arriving on the 6^th of April 1652 to start the vegetable gardens which were to supply the passing ships.

As ship’s captains found out about the halfway station at the Cape many of them sailed into Table Bay to look for fresh food and water. To enable van Riebeeck to cope with the demands he had to plant larger gardens and therefore required more labour to tend them.

The only way to do this was to introduce slave labour to the Cape. Even this did not solve his problems and eventually he offered his staff who had finished their stint of duty at the Cape farms if they stayed and farmed them for their own account. There were obviously conditions applied to the contracts and these farmers had to supply vegetables to the Dutch East India company for whom van Riebeeck worked.

It was these free farmers who were eventually sent to St Helena Bay to look into the potential of the bay and especially the fishing propects.

Fish Factory Stompneusbaai

As a result of this visit, many years later a fish factory was founded on the coastline of St Helena bay.

There are some interesting facts available on the bay. Not only is it the largest bay in Africa, it is one of only three in the world where the sun rises and sets over the same bay.

As the bay is relatively shallow there is little wave action and hence not much salt in the atmosphere which has the effect that things don’t rust in the area, something that happens eveywhere else along the west coast.

Because of the abundance of fish in the area there are no fewer than 11 fish factories along its shores today.

Stompneusbaai

The large bay of St Helena has a number of smaller bays along its coastline and it is on the edges of these bays that the new housing developments flow into each other almost unnoticeably. The area is not over developed as one would think it should be and one can find luxury homes and fishermens cottages standing next to each other and churches and factories competing for the same piece of the coastline. It all blends well together to enhance the beauty of the bay.

When we recently visited the area it was a beautifully warm day and we made our way down to a beach near the large factory belonging to St Helana Bay Fishing. This factory is situated on one of the smaller bays called Stompneusbaai. If translated into English the name would be stumpnose bay. There are no real features in the area for it to get such a name but being a fishing village I imagine that the bay is home to the white Stumpnose fish, hence the name.

Circular Beach Stompneusbaai

Once on the beach we decided to take a walk along the circular bay which to the west has a promontory with houses and a whole lot of palm trees planted along it. All very pretty, but, unfortunately for us it would not stay that way for much longer.

While walking along the beach a small fishing dinghy came motoring past and the people on board were very friendly and waved to us as they went by.

Gill net floating in the bay

As we walked further around the bay towards the west we noticed a gill net floating in the bay about 30 metres off the beach. The net was between a 100 and a 150 metres long and was set there to catch mullet which frequent the bay.

I did not know that these nets were still used today but the dinghy had obviously laid the net and so I imagine that they are still allowed.

Seal eating a stolen fish

Being a casual fisherman myself I wanted to see what they would catch so I positioned myself on the beach close to where the net was set. As I watched a seal came swimming along and when he found the net which obviously had fish caught in it, he started raiding the net and eating the fish which he pulled out.

Boat pulling in the net

The fishermen in the dinghy must have seen the seal and what was happening so started lifting their net. As we watched not many fish were landed as the seal swam ahead of the boat and took every fish it could out of the net before the fishermen could pull the net into the boat. This obviously annoyed the fishermen as it would have annoyed me if it was my net that the seal was raiding. I could see that there would eventually be some type of confrontation between the fishermen and the seal.

What happened next shocked me and my wife.

As the boat got to the end of the net, all the rest of it having been recovered and pulled into the boat the seal dived into the net to grab the last fish. As the seal did so the fishermen lost their patience with it and decided to sort it out. This they did by using a large plastic spade and a wooden club to club the seal with.

I was so taken aback by what I saw happening that I forgot to take photos as I had never witnessed anything like that before. The seal took the hint and swam away most probably with a number of large bruises on its body and head. Unfortunately this left us both a bit stunned as we made our way back around the beach to our car.

What however stunned us even more was when we came across a signpost on the beach that warned us that the bay we were looking at was polluted and that we should not walk in the water or swim in it.

What a pity that such a beautiful bay has met such a fate.

Fortunately as far as I can make out it was only Stompneusbaai that was polluted. The other smaller bays in the area seemed to be unpolluted with people utilising them.

If you are travelling along this stretch of the west coast do yourself a favour and visit the area. You might even find yourself a new home as there are many of them in the various estates that are for sale.

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