Cape of Good Hope

A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, based on the misbelief that the Cape was the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. In fact, the southernmost point of Africa is Cape Agulhas about 150 kilometres (90 mi) to the east-southeast. The currents of the two oceans meet at the point where the warm-water Agulhas current meets the cold-water Benguela current and turns back on itself. That oceanic meeting point fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point (about 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mi) east of the Cape of Good Hope).

When following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, however, the Cape of Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus, the first modern rounding of the cape in 1487 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was a milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish direct trade relations with the Far East (although Herodotus mentioned a claim that the Phoenicians had done so far earlier). Dias called the cape Cabo das Tormentas ('Cape of Storms'; Dutch: Stormkaap), which was the original name of the cape.

As one of the great capes of the South Atlantic Ocean, it has long been of special significance to sailors, many of whom refer to it simply as "the Cape". It is a waypoint on the Cape Route and the clipper route followed by clipper ships to the Far East and Australia, and still followed by several offshore yacht races.

The term Cape of Good Hope is also used in other ways:

• It is a section of the Table Mountain National Park, within which the cape of the same name, as well as Cape Point, falls. Prior to its incorporation into the national park, this section constituted the Cape Point Nature Reserve.
• It was the name of the early Cape Colony established by the Dutch East Indies Company in 1652, on the Cape Peninsula.
• Just before the Union of South Africa was formed, the term referred to the entire region that in 1910 was to become the Cape of Good Hope Province (usually shortened to the Cape Province).
• It was also a British colony known as the Cape Colony which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910.

History

Around 600 BC, Necho II reputedly commissioned an expedition of Phoenicians, who are said to have sailed for three years from the Red Sea around Africa back to the mouth of the Nile; and this would thereby be the first completion of the Cape Route. Herodotus' account was handed down to him by oral tradition, but is seen as potentially credible because he stated with disbelief that the Phoenicians "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right"—to the north of them (The Histories 4.42). Pliny reported that Hanno had circumnavigated Africa, which may have been a conflation with Necho's voyage, while Strabo, Polybius, and Ptolemy doubted the description; at the time it was not generally known that Africa was surrounded by an ocean (with the southern part of Africa being thought connected to Asia).

Eudoxus of Cyzicus (fl. c. 130 BC) was a Greek navigator for Ptolemy VIII, king of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. In or about 116 BCE, while returning from a voyage to India, Eudoxus found the wreck of a ship that appeared to have originated in Gades (later Cádiz), in what was then Roman Hispania Baetica. At the time, the only way such a vessel could have reached the Indian Ocean was by rounding the Cape.

When Eudoxus was returning from his second voyage to India, the wind forced him south of the Gulf of Aden and down the coast of Africa for some distance. Somewhere along the coast of East Africa, he found the remains of the ship. Due to its appearance and the story told by the natives, Eudoxus concluded that the ship was from Gades and had sailed anti-clockwise around Africa, passing the Cape and entering the Indian Ocean. This inspired him to repeat the voyage and attempt a circumnavigation of the continent. Organising the expedition on his own account, he set sail from Gades and began to work down the African coast. The difficulties were too great, however, and he was obliged to return to Europe.

After this failure, he again set out to circumnavigate Africa. His eventual fate is unknown. Although some, such as Pliny, claimed that Eudoxus did achieve his goal, the most probable conclusion is that he died on the journey.

In the 1450 Fra Mauro map, the Indian Ocean is depicted as connected to the Atlantic. Fra Mauro puts the following inscription by the southern tip of Africa, which he names the "Cape of Diab", describing the exploration by a ship from the East around 1420:

Around 1420 a ship, or junk, from India crossed the Sea of India towards the Island of Men and the Island of Women, off Cape Diab, between the Green Islands and the shadows. It sailed for 40 days in a south-westerly direction without ever finding anything other than wind and water. According to these people themselves, the ship went some 2,000 miles ahead until—once favourable conditions came to an end—it turned round and sailed back to Cape Diab in 70 days.

The ships called junks (lit. "Zonchi") that navigate these seas carry four masts or more, some of which can be raised or lowered, and have 40 to 60 cabins for the merchants and only one tiller. They can navigate without a compass, because they have an astrologer, who stands on the side and, with an astrolabe in hand, gives orders to the navigator.

—Text from the Fra Mauro map, 09-P25

Fra Mauro explained that he obtained the information from "a trustworthy source", who traveled with the expedition, possibly the Venetian explorer Niccolò da Conti who happened to be in Calicut, India at the time the expedition left:

What is more, I have spoken with a person worthy of trust, who says that he sailed in an Indian ship caught in the fury of a tempest for 40 days out in the Sea of India, beyond the Cape of Soffala and the Green Islands towards west-southwest; and according to the astrologers who act as their guides, they had advanced almost 2,000 miles. Thus one can believe and confirm what is said by both these and those, and that they had therefore sailed 4,000 miles.

Fra Mauro also comments that the account of the expedition, together with the relation by Strabo of the travels of Eudoxus of Cyzicus from Arabia to Gibraltar through the southern Ocean in Antiquity, led him to believe that the Indian Ocean was not a closed sea and that Africa could be circumnavigated by her southern end (Text from Fra Mauro map, 11, G2). This knowledge, together with the map depiction of the African continent, probably encouraged the Portuguese to intensify their effort to round the tip of Africa.

In 1511, after Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca, the Portuguese recovered a chart from a Javanese maritime pilot, which, according to Albuquerque, already included the Cape of Good Hope. Regarding the chart Albuquerque said:

"... a large map of a Javanese pilot, containing the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal and the land of Brazil, the Red Sea and the Sea of Persia, the Clove Islands, the navigation of the Chinese and the Gores, with their rhumbs and direct routes followed by the ships, and the hinterland, and how the kingdoms border on each other. It seems to me, Sir, that this was the best thing I have ever seen, and Your Highness will be very pleased to see it; it had the names in Javanese writing, but I had with me a Javanese who could read and write. I send this piece to Your Highness, which Francisco Rodrigues traced from the other, in which Your Highness can truly see where the Chinese and Gores come from, and the course your ships must take to the Clove Islands, and where the gold mines lie, and the islands of Java and Banda, of nutmeg and mace, and the land of the King of Siam, and also the end of the land of the navigation of the Chinese, the direction it takes, and how they do not navigate farther."

— Letter of Albuquerque to King Manuel I of Portugal, 1 April 1512.

European exploration

Etymology

In the Early Modern Era, the first European to reach the cape was the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias on 12 March 1488, who named it the "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East.

First Dutch settlement

The Khoikhoi people lived in the cape area when the Dutch first settled there in 1652. The Khoikhoi had arrived in the area about 1,500 years before. The Dutch called them Hottentots, a term that has now come to be regarded as pejorative.

In 1652, the Dutch East India Company's administrator Jan van Riebeeck established a resupply camp for the Dutch East India Company some 50 km north of the cape in Table Bay on April 6, and this eventually developed into Cape Town. Supplies of fresh food were vital on the long journey around Africa and Cape Town became known as "The Tavern of the Seas".

French refugees in the Cape Colony

On 31 December 1687, a community of Huguenots (French Protestants) arrived at the Cape of Good Hope from the Netherlands. They had fled from France due to religious persecution and gone to the Netherlands, before making the journey to the Cape Colony. Members of this group included Pierre Joubert, who came from La Motte-d'Aigues, as well as Jean Roy. The Dutch East India Company needed skilled farmers at the Cape of Good Hope and the Dutch government saw opportunities to settle Huguenots at the Cape. The colony gradually grew over the 150 years that followed until it extended hundreds of kilometers to the north and the north-east.

Effects of European coalitions and the Napoleonic wars

During the French Revolutionary Wars, the Dutch Republic was occupied by the French in 1795. The Cape Colony then became a French vassal and enemy of the British, who were at war with France. British troops invaded and occupied the Cape Colony that same year. The British relinquished control of the territory in 1803, under the peace of Amiens, but reoccupied the colony on 19 January 1806 following the Battle of Blaauwberg. The Dutch formally ceded the territory to the British in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. It would remain a separate British colony until its incorporation into the Union of South Africa in 1910.

Route explorations and commemorations

The Portuguese government erected two navigational beacons, Dias Cross and da Gama Cross, to commemorate Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama, who were the first modern European explorers to reach the cape. When lined up, these crosses point to Whittle Rock, a large, permanently submerged shipping hazard in False Bay. Two other beacons in Simon's Town provide the intersection.

Contemporary

The Cape of Good Hope saw an increase of ship activity after the 2021 Suez canal obstruction, and the Red Sea Crisis with ships needing a different route from the Indian Ocean. The Cape of Good Hope route took a toll on the sea freight industry—stretching the transit time, reducing carriers availability, and skyrocketing shipment cost and container hire. Carriers' attempts to resort to the Red Sea route came at the expense of vessels and seafarers' safety as the Red Sea witnessed multiple sunken carriers struck by Houthi rebels. Many large shipping companies and industries were afflicted by the situation such as IKEA, Amazon, Automotive companies, and Maersk.