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Beacons of life and death

(Written for the June 2015 edition of The Intrepid Explorer)

Text by Stef Terblanche

Pictures by Karl Andre Terblanche

Adventure, the great outdoors, spectacular sea and land scenery, a taste of life and death dramas, the isolation and romance of a bygone era that somehow endures, fascinating history, and now also a unique form of hospitality…all rolled into one experience. Rare but true.

Visit any number of South Africa’s 45 fascinating lighthouses dotted along 2,954km of some of the most breathtakingly beautiful, rugged  and treacherous coastline in the world and you will get all this and more, while also getting to see how this indispensable service to the maritime industry operates.

Many of these were built in isolated, inhospitable terrain without the aid of modern technology and testify to man’s ingenuity and perseverance. In almost every case the sea had mercilessly claimed many lives, cargo and vessels before it was decided to build a lighthouse. Some of these lighthouses have accumulated their ghosts and spellbinding tales over two centuries.

South Africa’s lighthouses are maintained and operated by Lighthouse and Navigational Systems (LNS), a business unit of the Transnet National Ports Authority. They cover the coast from the diamond and copper country of Port Nolloth on the far northern West Coast right around to Jesser Point at Sodwana Bay near the border with Mozambique. All are automated these days and only 17 are still manned.

As eight of these lighthouses are open to the public with a number of them offering lighthouse tours, self-catering accommodation or conference facilities, today’s lighthouse keepers, or lighthouse officers as they are now known, sometimes have to be as adept at seeing to tourist needs as making sure the powerful light beams keep on guiding ships safely to their destination.

But many more of these lighthouses can fairly easily be reached, making a tour of South Africa’s lighthouses a unique experience that will take you to unforgettable, out of-the-way places. We did just that, but because of time constraints limited our tour to the lighthouses of the Western Cape.

Our journey started with lighthouse number six down from Port Nolloth on the awesome West Coast, a few kilometers from the historic fishing village of Paternoster in the Columbine Nature Reserve. Here the Cape Columbine lighthouse was commissioned in 1936 and is probably the only South African lighthouse built in something of an art deco style aptly resembling a square, buttressed castle – instead of the usual round, tapered shape - as it is built on what is known locally as Castle Rock. 

This was the last manned lighthouse to be built and the last lighthouse designed by Harry Claude  Cooper, Lighthouse Engineer for the Cape Colonial Government and subsequently the first Lighthouse Engineer of the then South African Railways. Cape Columbine, painted white with a red lantern house, stands 15m high on a prominent, windswept headland from where every 15 seconds its 1.5Kw lamp flashes a beam of some 5,040,000 Candelas visible from 32 nautical miles away. It is usually the first lighthouse to be sighted by ships coming from South America and Europe.

Originally lighthouses were painted in different, unique colours and patterns to make them easily identifiable from the sea. For the same reason  the flashing light of each lighthouse has a different character or sequence.

The history of the area around Cape Columbine is steeped in maritime tragedy. Legend has it that the picturesque village of Paternoster, which means “Our Father”, derived its name from the prayers of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors. The lighthouse was named after the barque Columbine which ran aground here on 31 Mary 1829.  But the many submerged rocks and reefs along this coast first had to claim many more victims before the lighthouse was finally built more than a hundred years later.

For lighthouse buffs this lighthouse offers an interesting array of ‘firsts’, such as its particular lens system and being the first to receive all three navigational safety features, namely a light, a fog signal and a radio beacon. A steep climb up its spiral staircase into the lantern house will reward you with spectacular views of the surrounding nature reserve, Britannia reef and the Atlantic Ocean.  

From Paternoster the road takes us south to Saldanha Bay and Langebaan Lagoon, to two lighthouses guarding the sea entrance to the bay and lagoon, named North Head and South Head lighthouses. Both had humble beginnings in 1969 first as 23m high aluminium lattice towers with lanterns atop, and were only converted to concrete towers more recently. North Head can be reached through along a nature trail through the naval base property next to the harbour. South Head can be reached through the West Coast National park and Postberg Flower Reserve but is out of bounds to the public as it stands behind locked gates on military  property.

Giving the Dassen Island lighthouse at Yzerfontein a miss, our next stop was the Cape Peninsula which, as the infamous Cape of Storms, naturally abounds with lighthouses and has a history filled with spectacular maritime disasters. No fewer than six lighthouses are located around the peninsula in vastly differing settings.

The rugged isolation of Slangkoppunt lighthouse at Kommetjie, painted white from top to bottom, stands in stark contrast to the urban setting of the Green Point lighthouse at Mouille Point which is dwarfed by high-rise apartment blocks. Green Point lighthouse was built between 1821 and 1824 as the first operational and solid structure lighthouse in South Africa. The building with its red and white diagonal stripes is a Cape Town landmark. It is also the place where generations of lighthouse keepers received their training. Today it serves as head office for the lighthouse service but is still operational and its loud foghorn, installed in 1926, is still a frequent irritation to some nearby residents. Another old lighthouse at nearby Mouille Point has long been demolished.

Despite its role in safely guiding ships in and out of Table Bay, the Green Point lighthouse has borne  witness to many a tragedy on the waters in front of it. In one of the worst storms ever to hit Table Bay, some 30 ships were blown ashore and wrecked in 1858, with many lives lost. In another severe storm in May 1865 the RMS Athens, a mail steamer was driven onto the rocks by huge waves, with its entire crew of 29 perishing.  And in 1966 the SA Seafarer ran aground close to the lighthouse which used its strong light beam to assist three air force helicopters to airlift crew and passengers to safety without loss of life. This was the first such rescue operation in South Africa.

A short distance across the busy waters of Table Bay is the Robben Island lighthouse built in 1864, but which in a sense is the oldest in South Africa. The current lighthouse stands on Minto Hill, the same site where the first Dutch governor at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck, in 1656 ordered a huge bonfire to be kept burning as a navigational aid for ships. Despite this many ships foundered on the rocks around the island over the years, among them a 17^th century Dutch ship laden with gold coins meant as payment for Dutch East India Company employees in Batavia. Over the years some gold coins have washed up, but the bulk of the treasure has yet to be found.

As a young child the later Archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley, lived on the island as his father was lighthouse keeper until 1923.

Across the water from Robben Island is Milnerton lighthouse, also in an urban setting surrounded by restaurants and a golf course.

Next we go south to Simonstown and Roman Rock lighthouse, one of the most unique lighthouses in South Africa. The lighthouse, a circular cast iron structure on top of a concrete base with two metal landing areas jutting out, is perched precariously on two rocks in False Bay near the entrance to the naval harbour. At high tide the rocks are fully submerged, with strong Southeasters in summer and gale force Northwesters in winter sending an endless succession of waves crashing into it.

These conditions made the mere construction of this lighthouse between 1861 and 1865 quite a feat, allowing for only 96 working days over the four years. Because of its unique location its lighthouse keepers were the highest  paid in the service, but after 1919 automation replaced them.

The Cape Point lighthouse sits spectacularly atop a rocky headland of sheer cliffs surrounded by a restless sea at the southern tip of the Cape Peninsula. It is within the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve which is part of the larger Table Mountain National Park. The first lighthouse was built in 1857 in the “wrong place” at the highest point of the headland. After a Portuguese ocean liner, the Lusitania, ran aground directly below the lighthouse in 1911, a new lighthouse was built lower down, almost at the tip of the point, in 1914. Boasting the most powerful beam of all South Africa’s lighthouses, it can be seen from 34 nautical miles away.

The area is so littered with wrecked ships that there is a special shipwreck trail here. It is also a place of myths, such as “sightings” of the ‘Flying Dutchman” ghost ship. Or the incorrect story that the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet here, when in fact they meet all along the Southern Cape coast and not at any particular point. In the Simonstown Museum is a photograph of a quaint handwritten notice that was nailed to the lighthouse door in the early 1900s and which read: “Any Person caught rolling down the cliff will be prosecuted, by order Lighthouse Engineer”. Presumably only if the culprit survived the roll.

From Cape Point we follow the scenic road around the False Bay coast to Kleinmond and the Cape Hangklip lighthouse, located on a beautiful little peninsula covered in fynbos from where it overlooks a number of picturesque bays. This is also prime whale-watching territory.

Then it is on to Gansbaai and the Danger Point lighthouse which was commissioned in 1895. Danger Point is also the location of one of the most tragic cases of outstanding chivalry in maritime history. When the HMS Birkenhead struck a rock and sank here in February 1852 while carrying troops to Algoa Bay, there were not enough serviceable lifeboats for all on board. Allowing women and children to use the lifeboats, the soldiers famously stood to attention on the decks as the ship broke up and went down. Many of them were taken by Great White sharks that inhabit these waters, which led to locals to this day calling them ‘Tommy Sharks’. Of the 643 people on board only 193 survived. After this tragedy the “women and children first” protocol was adopted throughout the maritime world.

More than 140 shipwrecks litter the coast between Danger Point and the Breede River mouth some 150km further east. Between Danger Point and Cape Agulhas, on a small peninsula the Quoin Point lighthouse overlooks the graveyard of a number of these wrecks. This lighthouse can only be reached by 4WD vehicle.

Our next stop is Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa which like Cape Point also dubiously claims to be the meeting point of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. But it is home to one of South Africa’s most iconic lighthouses, and was South Africa’s third lighthouse having been commissioned in 1849. Like the Cape Columbine lighthouse it is built in an unusual style based on the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The structure was declared unsafe in 1966 and replaced with a steel lattice structure. However, the local community restored their beloved lighthouse themselves and it was put back into service in March 1988 and now also houses a lighthouse museum. The lighthouse is also said to be haunted with a non-existent man seen painting the stairs leading up to the lighthouse on a number of occasions.

After Cape Agulhas there are two more lighthouses at Cape Infanta and Ystervarkpunt at the mouth of the Gouritz River, before one arrives at our last stop, the Cape St Blaize lighthouse at Mossel Bay. In service since March 1864, the lighthouse gets its name from the Portuguese seafarer Bartolomeu Dias who in 1488, named the bay the Bahia (Aguada) de Sao Bras, or ‘the watering place of St Blaize’.

The lighthouse has been built on top of a cave which is an important archaeological site where Khoisan people lived from about 200,000 years ago to about 1400.

Cape St Blaize is the starting point of an awesome cliff-face hiking trail with breath-taking views. Most of the other lighthouses we visited also have stunning coastal and inland hiking trails nearby, while a number are located in or near nature reserves. Other activities on offer in the vicinity of a number of these lighthouses include kite-surfing, kayaking, shark cage diving, rock and boat angling, scuba diving and snorkelling, surfing, game and bird watching, and mountain-biking. Camping sites and a range of good accommodation is available close to all of them.

Of the 22 lighthouses between Port Nolloth and Cape St Blaize, 9 are manned. Cape Columbine, Green Point, Slangkoppunt, Danger Point, Cape Agulhas, and Cape St Blaize are open to the public while a number of them offer self-catering accommodation. For more details Transnet National Ports Authority’s Lighthouse and Navigational Systems unit can be contacted at telephone 021 449 2400 or by email at lighthouse.tourism@transnet.net.