Dive on the wild side

When Portuguese sailors first rounded the Cape in 1488 they called it Cabo Tormentosa for the storms that buffeted their medieval vessels. Now the trials and tribulations of those early mariners — people who could in fact be called the first new South Africans — are providing a major drawcard for modern-day adventurers on the Wild Coast.

The first of the great Portuguese navigators to make it round the Cape and to the East was Vasco da Gama in 1497, and it was just eight years later, in 1505, that the first known maritime disaster in South African history took place.

Known only as the Soares wreck, the ship ran aground somewhere west of present day Mossel Bay. At least 12 other great galleons carrying thousands of men, women and children and invaluable cargoes were wrecked over the next 150 years, during the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century, sending these early scatterlings on terrestrial voyages of adventure from the southern Cape coast to northern Mozambique and beyond.

The ships that were plying the route to the East, the Carreira da India, were not the tiny caravels of the 15th and early 16th centuries. They were some of the biggest ships afloat at the time. These were galeão, galleons and carracks that were heavily armed (there was a lot of competition from the Dutch out there), four-masted multi-deckers (from two, up to as many as seven) with prominent fore- and aft-castles. Some were 2 000-tonners.

Most of the ships were wrecked in winter, usually because they had left the East too late on the voyage home and because they were overloaded. This meant that the survivors (and there were sometimes up to 400 of them) were cast ashore on an inhospitable coastline inhabited by not particularly hospitable people.

After gathering what they could from the wreck, most parties headed north towards Portuguese trading posts on the East Coast on a journey in which an interesting phenomenon was to occur — considerable numbers of these rag-tag survivor groups actually stayed behind to settle with the local communities.

This happened with both slaves and Portuguese. It might have been a more obvious move for the slaves, particularly those Africans who had been picked up further north along the coast, at least there would have been some cultural and linguistic similarities. They would abscond from the marching party (although it was apparently the rather cynical tradition to give the slaves their freedom when it was seen that the ship was in real trouble), and join a community.

The Portuguese who tarried and settled were mainly sailors, who would have had far less to lose than the officers and noblefolk by never making it back to Portugal, and for whom the life of an African husband and father must have appeared somewhat idyllic compared to life at sea.

Once settled, these new South Africans (in fact the first Europeans to settle in what was to become South Africa, predating Jan van Riebeeck by 100 years) stayed put. Subsequent parties of shipwreck survivors would occasionally come across them, and the settlers would steadfastly refuse to rejoin the arduous march back to Europe and “civilisation”.

Whether these new South Africans left any of their cultural heritage among succeeding generations of Pondo people is an under-researched hypothesis. There is a rare species of wild palm tree (Jubaeopsis caffra) that is unique to the sandstone cliffs close to the mouths of the Msikaba and Mtentu rivers in Pondoland, which may have come in aboard early slave ships. There are also some four-horned sheep in Transkei which, local rumour has it, may also have come off an early shipwreck. Pondos, like most Africans, enjoy chilli-hot food.

So, if on a trail along a Pondoland beach or on horseback in the interior of Transkei and a local wrapped in a matching turban and shawl, smoking a long beaded pipe, cries out to you, “Bom dia! Ouça-lá?” you’ll know you’re in shipwreck country.

Take a dive

Diving on wrecks is becoming increasingly popular. For more information contact: