Local wrecks
Category Branch Article
The Cape of Good Hope has been famous for more than 500 years as the 'graveyard of ships'. And sea captains of yore also talked about another danger spot: the 'mountains of water' off the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. Indeed, the 3 000km South African coastline has claimed perhaps 3 000 vessels over the centuries, with known records dating back to the 1500's - one for every kilometer of coastline.
That's without any information on the sea-going Phoenicians who might have come earlier, or any other sailing civilisation possibly Arab traders - that may have passed these shores and almost certainly lost some of their ships to misadventure, bad visibility and treacherous reefs.
It is believed that the ships that were wrecked came from as many as 37 nations, and that their sites are invaluable heritage and historical assets. Everything that went down with a ship tells a story of how people lived, what they did, what they traded in, and what they achieved during their times. The modern attitude to shipwrecks especially along the South African coastline is to preserve the sites instead of indulging in the frenetic kind of 'treasure hunting' that took place in the 20th Century.
Indeed, all shipwrecks are protected by South African law, and it is illegal to remove any
part of them or object associated with them.
The names of famous shipwrecks off South Africa's coast include the Grosvenor, the Arniston, the Waratah, the Birkenhead, the Sacramento and, in more recent times, the Oceanos. Even the mythical Flying Dutchman is sometimes 'spotted' on a foggy day down at Cape Point. Many ships that sailed these waters simply disappeared without
trace - the most famous being the Waratah in 1909. Because of the numerous shipwrecks, lighthouses were put up along the South African coast, and thousands of castaways suddenly found themselves on forbidding African soil for the first time in their lives. As they wandered up and down the coastline, they were killed by starvation, animals and hostile locals, or simply assimilated into whatever village system existed in the area. There are some colourful accounts of European castaways being integrated with local communities of people, even marrying into them, and living out their days not far from where their ships went down.
https://www.stfrancistourism.co.za/directories/general-info-on-local-wrecks
Author: 7928
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