South Africa: Lusitania, Corbis, Manaar, A Caisson & Bella Theresa shipwrecks

SAHRA Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage

April 18:

“This day in our shipwreck and aeronautical wreck history”

1911: Lusitania, this Portuguese steam-powered passenger liner got stuck and wrecked on Bellows Rock in fog, just off Cape Point in the Western Cape. Of the 774 people on board, 8 lives were lost when a lifeboat capsized.

The collapsed hull of the Lusitania (1911) in 2011

Two days later the Lusitania slipped off the rock and found its resting place in 40 m deep water. The wreck is a popular dive spot, but at a depth of 30-40 m with strong currents and breakers on the nearby reef, it makes for a challenging dive.

1943: Corbis, this motor-powered tanker was struck by two torpedoes fired from U-180 about 800 km east-south-east from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. Two further torpedoes were fired, with the Corbis evading the first by reversing, but the second hit the foreship and it caught fire and started sinking rapidly.

Corbis (1943), date and location unknown

Only one of the four lifeboats did not swamp after launching. This lifeboat, with only 10 of the original 60 on board, was only picked up 13 days later by a SAAF crash launch who landed the survivors at East London. 

1943: Manaar, this British steam-powered cargo ship was attacked and sunk about 300 km east of Port Edward in KwaZulu-Natal by the Italian submarine Leonardo de Vinci. After the first torpedo struck at 03:15, the ship was abandoned. The second torpedo only struck at 04:30, but the Manaar remained afloat. From 5:45 to 7:20, the submarine fired its gun intermittently to eventually sink the Manaar. Of the 98 that were on board, three were killed and 94 survivors (including one survivor from the Sembilan) reached Port St Johns on the 21st of April in four lifeboats. The master, or second officer in some reports, was taken as prisoner on board the submarine.  

1974: A Caisson, destined for East London, came off the tow rope and sunk around 8 km east of Cape Point in the Western Cape.

1977: Bella Theresa, this South African fishing vessel foundered approximately 30 km off St. Helena Bay in the Western Cape.

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South Africa: Cape Point Lighthouse - Lawrence G. Green

 "Cape Point ranks as one of the world’s great lighthouses, a bright lamp-post on that road to London that is marked further on by Finisterre and Ushant. The old light stood so high above the breakers that it was often covered by clouds; so a new lighthouse was built in 1914 close to Vasco da Gama’s pillar, where a mass of rock juts out to sea.

I was standing there with the keeper one day when a black-funnelled, grey-hulled Portuguese liner steamed past and gave three siren blasts. It was a salute to a lost ship of the same company, a wreck in which a Cape Point lighthouse-keeper played a gallant part. The ship bore the ill-fated name of Lusitania, and she was homeward bound from East Africa in 1911 with nearly eight hundred souls on board. Two miles southward of Cape Point lies Bellows Rock, just awash, and on that death-trap the Lusitania crashed at midnight in misty weather.

Distress rockets were seen by the lighthouse-keepers. They telephoned to Simon's Town, then one of them hurried down to the beach below the lighthouse where, it was said, no boat had ever landed safely. And there, as he expected, were the heavily loaded lifeboats from the Lusitania about to risk the surf. Climbing out on the rocks, the frantic keeper yelled and whistled his warnings and waved his lantern to keep the boats away. One boat failed to grasp the meaning of the signals and came roaring in on the crest of a wave, slewed round, capsized.

The lighthouse man dragged all the half-drowned Portuguese from the water. Meanwhile the other boats headed seawards and were picked up by an Admiralty tug from Simon's Town. Thanks to the lighthouse-keeper, only two lives were lost that night. Mr. J. E. Allen, who was then a keeper at the Cape Point lighthouse, received a silver medal from the Portuguese Government and a cheque for fifty pounds. Many times in later years the sound of a mail steamer’s siren reminded him of the rainy night when his efforts probably saved hundreds of lives. At one period, long ago, the Simon's Town magistrate paid regular official visits to Cape Point lighthouse. The hospitable keepers, who entertained most of the famous men of South Africa and many celebrated travellers, dislike the idea of inspection by one outside their own department. It became known to them, however, that the magistrate had recently been operated upon for appendicitis; and whenever the magistrate called they persuaded him to show them the scar. “He comes to inspect us - why shouldn’t we inspect him?” they told visitors.

The lighthouse-keepers at Cape Point started a visitors’ book in 1877, and visitors have filled three more books since then with their signatures and remarks. In the pack mule days one weary traveller wrote: “We want a road”. All the admirals stationed at Simon's Town made the journey. Men like Baker, the architect, and Milner, the governor, passed this way. Between the great names schoolboy campers recorded their presence. But there were only a few score visitors a year before the road was built in 1915. The books reveal the change that has come about in handwriting, from the copperplate Victorian calligraphy to the modern scrawl; from classical remarks such as “the Hades of an ascent” down to the American slang “some climb”. Dozens of visitors, not content with the book, left their names on the white-washed walls of the old lighthouse. In the early days the lighthouse-keepers signalled to Simon's Town with Morse lamps. As far back as 1881, however, a telephone was installed." - Lawrence G. Green

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