Bartholomeu Dias, the Portuguese seafarer, was the first to sail around the Cape. This was in 1488. On his return voyage, which must have been particularly stormy, Dias stopped at the south-western tip of South Africa, and named it Cabo Tormentoso, or Cape of Storms. King John of Portugal later gave it the name Cabo da Boa Esperança, or Cape of Good Hope. Another Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, rounded the Cape on 22 November 1497 on his way to India.
The journeys of these explorers led to the establishment of the Cape sea route. This meant more regular sailings around the tip. It also indirectly to led to a number of casualties along these unpredictable shores
LIGHTHOUSES
The lighthouse at Cape Point is the most powerful on the South African coast. It has a range of 63 kilometres, and beams out a group of three flashes of 10 million candlepower each, every 30 seconds.
A lighthouse was built In 1857, on Cape Point Peak, 238 metres above sea level. The equipment for the lighthouse had been shipped from England. However, because of its high position, clouds and fog often obscured the lighthouse. In fact, for an alarming 900 hours per year on average, its light was invisible to ships at sea at a certain angle.
After the Portuguese liner Lusitania ran aground on 18 April 1911, the lighthouse was moved to its present location above Cape Point, only 87 metres above sea-level
GLOBAL ATMOSPHERE WATCH STATION:
The South African Weather Bureau, together with the Fraunhofer Institute in Garmisch, Germany, maintains a research laboratory at Cape Point to monitor long-term changes in the chemistry of the earth's atmosphere, which may impact upon climate. The laboratory, which was architecturally designed to blend into the western slopes of Cape Point, is one of the World Meteorological Organisation's 20 Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) stations.
