SOUTH AFRICA'S FATEFUL SHIPWRECK

A seventeenth-century vessel foundered off the coast and transformed a nation’s history

- Marley Brown

Perhaps inspired by classical texts hinting at the possibility of reaching the Indian Ocean by sailing around the southern tip of Africa, and eager to exploit the riches of the East, Portuguese explorers Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama became the first Europeans to round the Cape of Good Hope—Dias in 1488 and da Gama on his journey to India in 1497. The success of da Gama’s voyage revolutionized global trade, quickly rendering the millennia-old land routes of the Silk Road obsolete and spurring centuries of mercantile competition. European royal courts and merchant houses began to jostle for shares of land and goods on the African continent and all around the Indian Ocean. It was in this context that, in 1647, a Dutch East India Company ship ran aground in Table Bay, off the coast of what is now South Africa. Survivors of that shipwreck established a campsite that grew into a permanent way station for vessels traveling between Europe and the East Indies and, eventually, became the modern city of Cape Town. After decades of archival research, excavations, and geophysical survey, archaeologists now believe they have found the locations of both the wreck and the survivors’ camp, providing an opportunity to reexamine the founding of the city and a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa.