Dassen Island – a maritime graveyard

Quite understandably, many interesting maritime practices have changed over the years. One such practice came to an end about 50 years ago.

As school terms drew to a close, a harbour tug would sail from Cape Town in the early morning light, take the passage inside Robben Island, and continue along the coast to Dassen Island. Apart from masses of stores, stowed in every available space, on board were the lighthouse keeper’s children, returning home for the holidays, and perhaps technicians or others en route to maintain buildings or equipment on the island.

Once the tug had anchored off the island, the crew used good old-fashioned seamanship to operate the goose-necked davits to lower the heavy clinker-built, wooden lifeboat to ferry the children and stores to the island. Before the advent of motorised lifeboats, the crew took to the oars to pull the lifeboat ashore.

By the time the tug had reached the island on some occasions, the weather had deteriorated to the extent that operations had to be suspended, necessitating a longer stay at the island.

A helicopter service replaced the tug voyages in 1969, a quicker and easier way to transport personnel and stores to the island.

Apart from ships that foundered near the island or those that were sunk by mines or submarines during wartime, 38 vessels were wrecked on the island itself, many during fog that frequently shrouds the island.

The first recorded wreck was the Dutch whaler, Haagman, that took to the rocks in 1683. Although fishing vessels or leisure crafts comprise about half of the island wrecks, prominent ships also came to grief on the jagged Malmesbury shale reefs that skirt the island. Only one ship was refloated from the island, but sank a few miles off.

Among the earlier casualties was Castle Line’s mailship Windsor Castle that in the wee hours of October 19, 1876 was approaching the Cape, inward from Dartmouth, the company’s last British port of call on the southbound service. She was regarded as one of the “crack” Cape liners of the time, having made a record run (23 days) from Dartmouth to Cape Town three years earlier.

Visibility was good as she steamed slowly towards Cape Town and, although her master Captain John Hewat altered course to starboard on seeing the island in the gloom, he was horrified when she grounded on a reef, and immediately the engineers down below reported an ingress of water.

Realising his vessel was doomed, Hewat ordered the lifeboats away, and the chief officer to launch a gig to find a safe landing place for the boats, all of which reached the safety of a small beach that he had located. Later, the all-important mail bags that the ship was carrying were also brought ashore, undamaged.

An officer and two volunteers from among the passengers went to the mainland, and trudging across the veld, they eventually found the village of Darling, where they hired horses for the dash to Cape Town to report the wreck of the liner.

Castle Line immediately dispatched the coaster Florence to bring the stranded passengers and crew to Cape Town.

Given the number of shipwrecks on the island, the authorities decided to build a lighthouse whose beam first swept across the sea in April 1893, and even with sophisticated equipment currently available to ships’ officers, lighthouses at Cape Columbine to the north and on Dassen Island remain important aids to navigation, particularly for inward ships. The light from the island’s 47m lighthouse can be seen 27 nautical miles away.

Despite the prominence of the lighthouse itself and the strength of its light, 26 vessels of various sizes have left their bones on the island since 1893, mostly because of fog.