History
To modern visitors in their comfortable four-wheel-drives, the Skeleton Coast shows its romantic face. Yet the harshness of the environment is omnipresent and the stories of the people forced to survive here are ones of mixed fortunes, hardships and terrible losses. Still, through the millennia, people actually chose to live intermittently along the Skeleton Coast, leaving a variety of inconspicuous and obtrusive marks. This coast is not some pristine wilderness. It is a landscape imbued with the often dubious exploits of man.
Stone circles, shell middens, pottery and other archaeological records sprinkled along Namibia’s northern coast speak of human activity here for millennia. Accurately dated finds go back around 2,000 years, yet the intermittent presence of people – always tied to fresh water – is likely to reach back much further into prehistory. The Namib is significantly older than Homo sapiens, but even in more recent times there were shifts in climate and periods of exceptional rain, when ephemeral rivers could sustain life for longer intervals.
Fascinating stone circles in the Uniab Delta are accessible to visitors on a short unguided walk. Such circles were made by hunter-gatherers as the bases for domed driftwood or whalebone huts, and as hunting blinds. The coastal dwellers are widely referred to as Strandlopers, a term from South Africa that literally means beach walker. They are believed to have been part of the Khoe language group.
European seafarers first sailed along this coast over 500 years ago, beginning the tales of adventure and misfortune that continue to the present day. One of the oldest shipwrecks from Namibian waters was discovered near Oranjemund in 2008 and is thought to have been lost around 1533. Documented shipwrecks along what is today the Skeleton Coast Park date back to Portuguese sailing ships that came to grief here over 300 years ago. In all, around 330 shipwrecks are known from the Namibian coast, of which around 60 per cent are found north of Walvis Bay. Another 160 ships are estimated to have been lost without definitive records in Namibian seas. Victims continue to be added: The Japanese fishing vessel Fukuseki Maru became a casualty in 2018, when it ran onto rocks just south of the Ugab River mouth.
Depending on their location, most wrecks are reclaimed by nature in a century or less, leaving little other than a few pieces of rusted metal or worn wood. In rare cases (like the find from the southern coast) wrecks may be well-preserved in sand for centuries. There are a number of accessible shipwrecks in the Skeleton Coast Park, including the Monterose, stranded in 1973.
In 1896, a party of explorers lead by the geologist Georg Hartmann was the first to systematically explore and map most of the northwestern coastal reaches between Cape Cross and the Kunene. Two decades earlier, in 1878, a group of Dorsland Trekkers led by Gert Alberts had undertaken a reconnaissance ride from Namutoni all the way to the coast and back, reaching the area of Rocky Point. They did not extend their journey along the coast, and decided it was too inhospitable to warrant further investigation.
Besides shipwrecks, the skeletons of numerous other human exploits litter this landscape. Diamond tales, an intrinsic part of Namibian lore, reach across the land from the Orange to the Kunene. They’ve been mined along the northern coast since the 1950s, spurred by legends of pea-sized gems. Only small diamonds in even smaller quantities were ever found, but the search continues today. The remnants of prospecting, mining and other exploits litter the park.
As is often the case with remote, legendary reaches, the Skeleton Coast has a rich tradition of adventurous tales. Some are exaggerated, others invented. The true story of the rescue operation for the Dunedin Star is famous like no other, and epitomises the nature of this coast. In 1942, the 530-foot British vessel was on its way from Liverpool to Cape Town with a cargo of war supplies and 106 people on board when it ran aground north of Cape Fria. All 21 passengers and half the crew could be brought safely ashore by motor launch, but the small boat then capsized in rough water, leaving the two groups isolated. After three days, rescue ships arrived and managed to retrieve the remaining crew from the stricken vessel. Rough seas ruled out attempts to reach the people on the shore. One of the rescue vessels, the Charles Elliot, ran aground itself just north of Rocky Point, with the loss of two lives.
A Ventura bomber aircraft landed safely near the original castaways, but got bogged in soft sand. Provisions were later air-dropped and floated to shore by other planes and ships. An overland rescue party finally reached the castaways after 13 days and managed to evacuate all. An attempt to retrieve the Ventura bomber a month and a half later provided more drama. While the plane could be freed and took off, it crashed-landed in the surf due to engine failure less than an hour later. All three men survived and managed to walk 50 kilometres to Sarusas Spring, where they caught up with the ground team.
The ‘Skeleton Coast’ was apparently first coined as a name in 1933 by the late Namibian journalist Sam Davis. Reporting on the disappearance of the Swiss pilot and explorer Carl Nauer, Davis wrote that Nauer’s bones might one day be found on the Skeleton Coast. The pilot had vanished on a trip from Cape Town to London, having last been seen refuelling at Walvis Bay before flying north along the coast. Much of the Namib coastline is littered with whale and seal bones, as well as shipwrecks, making Skeleton Coast a fitting name.
.png?width=82&height=85&name=Navigate%20Namibia-03%20(1).png "Navigate Namibia")