S TAT I O N N E W S
Happy birthday,
MOSSEL BAY! Station 15 (Mossel Bay) celebrates its 50th anniversary on 1 May 2021. This milestone is being commemorated with an exciting, emotional and personally charged collection of stories about the station’s history, crew and supportive community. By Wendy Maritz
M
OSSEL BAY HAS A rich story to tell. The history of the settlement as
we know it today dates back to the 15th century when the trailblazing Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed at these shores. Although others are said to have sailed along this coastline even earlier, Dias was the first European seafarer that rounded the southern tip of Africa and is credited with opening up the sea passage that would link Europe to the East, making possible the bountiful trade that has lasted ever since. Then, as now, the waters off Southern Africa have thwarted and challenged mariners of all kinds. In fact, Dias himself might not have landed at Mossel Bay if it weren’t for the heavy offshore winds, so typical in this region, that made him overshoot Cape Point and the southern-most tip of the continent completely. 18 |
SEA RESCUE AUTUMN 2021
This stretch of ocean is notoriously turbulent and dangerous, largely due to the convergence of cold and warm water currents around Cape Agulhas (‘agulhas’ is the Portuguese word for ‘needles’, a reference to the sharp rock formations that line the coast there). Dias achieved what few explorers in his time were able to: navigate the force of two currents that had wrecked the hopes of his seafaring rivals (and often their vessels as well). In the early days, Mossel Bay, initially known as St Blaize, was used as a stopover for bartering fresh produce and water with the resident communities, dropping off mail (the milkwood believed to be the original Post Office Tree remains preserved and is located at the Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex), as well as the occasional – and unfortunate – ill sailor or two.
