1640s in South Africa | ||
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List of years in South Africa |
The following lists events that happened during the 1640s in South Africa .
Cape Agulhas is a rocky headland in Western Cape, South Africa. It is the geographic southern tip of Africa and the beginning of the traditional dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans according to the International Hydrographic Organization. It is approximately half a degree of latitude, or 55 kilometres (34 mi), further south than the Cape of Good Hope.
HMAS Swan, named for the Swan River, was a River-class destroyer escort of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Constructed in Melbourne following the loss of HMAS Voyager, Swan entered service in 1970.
The Mahogany Ship is a putative early Australian shipwreck that is believed by some to lie beneath the sand in the Armstrong Bay area, approximately 3 to 6 kilometres west of Warrnambool in southwest Victoria, Australia. In many modern accounts it is described as a Spanish or Portuguese caravel after the wreck was associated with the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia by Kenneth McIntyre in his 1977 book The Secret Discovery of Australia. The most recent research has questioned this theory and provided other explanations.
Algoa Bay is a maritime bay in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It is located on the east coast, 683 kilometres (424 mi) east of the Cape of Good Hope.
HMS Pelorus was an Algerine-class minesweeper built for the Royal Navy (RN) during World War II. Upon completion, the ship became the flotilla leader of the 7th Minesweeper Flotilla, clearing mines off the east coast of England. In June 1944, the flotilla was assigned to sweep one of the beaches during the Normandy landings until she struck a mine the following month. After her repairs were completed, Pelorus was reassigned to the English Channel and the 6th Minesweeping Flotilla. The flotilla was transferred to the Indian Ocean in 1945 and spent some time escorting convoys. They participated in Operation Collie, a bombardment of Japanese positions in the Nicobar Islands, in July and then swept the Strait of Malacca and the approaches to Singapore in August.
Over 1400 ships have been wrecked on the coast of Western Australia. This relatively large number of shipwrecks is due to a number of factors, including:
HMS Porpoise was a 12-gun sloop-of-war originally built in Bilbao, Spain, as the packet ship Infanta Amelia. On 6 August 1799 HMS Argo captured her off the coast of Portugal. Porpoise wrecked in 1803 on the North coast of what was then part of the Colony of New South Wales, now called Wreck Reefs, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
The wreck of the Grosvenor, an East Indiaman, occurred on 4 August 1782 on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the Umzimvubu River. The shipwreck was close to the place where the Portuguese ship São João had gone down more than two centuries earlier on 8 June 1552. The Grosvenor was a three-masted ship of 729 tons on her return voyage to England when she was wrecked, carrying a crew of 132 and 18 passengers, and a cargo valued at £75,000. Of the 123 survivors, only 18 reached Cape Town and were repatriated, the remainder dying of their privations or joining with tribes. Four survivors, Robert Price, Thomas Lewis, John Warmington, and Barney Larey, eventually got back to England.
Ussukuma was a German passenger ship named after a location in the central highlands of German East Africa . On 6 December 1939, only a few months into the Second World War, she was scuttled off the coast of Argentina. In January 2008 her wreck was identified by the Argentine Navy in 70 metres (230 ft) of water, 62 miles (100 km) off Necochea.
Port St. Johns is a town of about 6,500 people on the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated at the mouth of the Umzimvubu River, 220 kilometres (140 mi) northeast of East London and 70 kilometres (40 mi) east of Mthatha. Port St. Johns was the birthplace of Capital Radio 604.
São Bento, commanded by captain Fernão de Álvares Cabral, the son of Pedro Álvares Cabral, was a Portuguese carrack of 900 tons wrecked in April 1554 near the mouth of the Msikaba River, midway between Port Edward and Port St. Johns on the Transkei coast of South Africa. The ship had left Cochin on 1 February 1554 and was en route to Lisbon with a cargo of spices, coconuts, silks, porcelain, cornelian beads, cotton cloth and other luxury goods. There are no hull remains at the site.
The São José Paquete Africa was a slave ship from the Kingdom of Portugal that sank in 1794 off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Close to shore, but in deep water, 212 of the 400 to 500 African slaves who were aboard died when the ship sank. In 2015, the Smithsonian's African American History Museum, South Africa's Iziko Museums, the Slave Wrecks Project, and other partners, confirmed discovery of the wreck near where it sank. The ship and its slaves were headed from Portuguese Mozambique to Colonial Brazil, during the height of the international African slave trade. Few other former slave ships have been found, but the São José is the first and only shipwreck discovered, as of June 3, 2015, of a working slave ship, which sank in transit with its human cargo aboard.
Maritime archaeology in East Africa spans the range from the horn of Somalia south to Mozambique, and includes the various islands and island chains dotting the map off the coast of Somalia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya. Primary areas along this coast include the Zanzibar, Lamu, and Kilwa Archipelagos. Although East African societies developed nautical capabilities for themselves, most of the maritime artifacts point to external merchants from Mediterranean cultures like Egypt and Greece, Indian and Chinese from South and East Asia in the early stages, to the great European powers during the Ages of Colonization and Imperialism.
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Wikipedia's articles on recreational dive sites. The level of coverage may vary:
Recreational dive sites are specific places that recreational scuba divers go to enjoy the underwater environment or for training purposes. They include technical diving sites beyond the range generally accepted for recreational diving. In this context all diving done for recreational purposes is included. Professional diving tends to be done where the job is, and with the exception of diver training and leading groups of recreational divers, does not generally occur at specific sites chosen for their easy access, pleasant conditions or interesting features.
See Years in South Africa for list of References