Maritime Heritage

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie reveals the discovery of a wonderful piece of maritime heritage in the Eastern Cape. The article was first published on the Brand South Africa website on 10 July 2013. Click here to view more of Davie's writing.

It’s not often that a historically valuable item washes ashore at Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. But on a lazy Sunday in mid-February this year, an octant appeared on the beach.

It was found by local resident Jenny Rump at Bluewater Bay, who at first thought it was just a piece of black plastic protruding from the sand. But then she took the instrument to retired maritime archaeologist Jenny Bennie. “I was absolutely thrilled,” says Bennie, who explains that very few ship artefacts are washed up on the beaches around the city. 

An octant is a navigational instrument, and this one probably dates to between 1780 and 1810, explains Bennie.

She is almost certain that the octant belonged to the Dutch sailing ship the Amsterdam, which was run aground almost 200 years ago, on 16 December 1817. Bennie says that she has collected other odd objects from the ship, such as a glass sky light or bits of rope, so that’s why the octant find is so special.

The ship, recorded captain Hermanus Hofmeijer in his journal, hit a fierce storm in 1817, the wind ripping apart the sails and snapping the masts, and it began to take on water. Eleven hours later, with an...

Dr Bruno Werz from the African Institute for Marine and Underwater Research, Exploration and Education (AIMURE) is leading a team to try and find the wreck of the Haerlam (or Haarlam) - click here for details. The wrecking of the Haerlam is recognised by many as the catalyst that led to the establishment of a refreshment station which later developed into the City of Cape Town. In 1975 Mervyn Emms used various archival sources to estimate the location of the wreck. His findings were published in the first edition of Restorica (1975) and are republished below with the kind permission of the University of Pretoria.

On the 25 March 1647 the Dutch ship Haerlem ran aground in the surf at Table Bay. There is considerable vagueness about the exact position of this wreck and writers generally refer to it as being at or near the mouth of the Salt River. In attempting to assess its position let us look at the evidence of its position as stated by various sources. Here we must however bear in mind that the distances given are rough estimates and that a Dutch mile is actually about three English miles and may be as much as four on land.

Tracing of hydrographical chart by Admiralty 1933 shows wreck of Haerlam

In the diary of Leendert Janssens for March 26 1647...