Mossel Bay
Mossel Bay is a harbour town of about 170,000 people on the Garden Route of South Africa. It is an important tourism and farming region of the Western Cape Province. Mossel Bay lies 400 kilometres east of the country's seat of parliament, Cape Town, and 400 km west of Gqeberha, the largest city in the Eastern Cape. The older parts of the town occupy the north-facing side of the Cape St Blaize Peninsula, whilst the newer suburbs straddle the Peninsula and have spread eastwards along the sandy shore of the Bay.
The town's economy relied heavily on farming, fishing and its commercial harbour, until the 1969 discovery of natural offshore gas fields led to the development of the gas-to-liquids refinery operated by PetroSA. Tourism is another important driver of Mossel Bay's economy.
Etymology
The origin of the name Mossel Bay has to do with the ascendancy of the Dutch shipping merchants in the late 16th and the early 17th centuries. In one account, the explorer Cornelis de Houtman named the place Mosselbaai when he stopped there in 1595, whilst in another, the Dutch Admiral Paulus van Caerden named it when he came ashore on 8 July 1601. Whatever the case, though, the mussels and oysters on the shore would have been a welcome addition to the limited diet on which ship's crews were expected to survive in those days.History
Although it is today best known as the place at which the first Europeans landed on South African soil, Mossel Bay's human history can – as local archaeological deposits have revealed – be traced back more than 164,000 years.The modern history of Mossel Bay began in February 1488, when the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed with his men at a point close to the site of the modern-day Dias Museum Complex. Here they found a spring from which to replenish their drinking water supplies. Dias had been appointed to search for a trading route to India by King John II of Portugal, and, without realising it, actually rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The expedition then landed at Mossel Bay – which he named Angra dos Vaqueiros. Dias is also credited with having given the Cape the name Cabo das Tormentas, although King John II later changed this to Cabo da Boa Esperança.
Dias' excursion ashore ended hastily when the local people chased him off in a hail of stones.
By the time the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached the area in 1497, the Bay had been marked on the maps as Aguada de São Brás, the Watering Place of St Blaize - whose feast is celebrated on 3 February.
Da Gama bartered successfully for cattle with the local Khoi people in what is generally regarded as the first commercial transaction between Europeans and the indigenous people of South Africa.
Post Office Tree
In 1501, another Portuguese navigator, Pedro d'Ataide, sought shelter in Mossel Bay after losing much of his fleet in a storm. He left an account of the disaster hidden in an old shoe which he suspended from a milkwood tree near the spring from which Dias had drawn his water. The report was found by the explorer to whom it was addressed – João da Nova – and the tree served as a sort of post office for decades thereafter. More recently, a boot-shaped post box has been erected under the now famous Post Office Tree, and letters posted here are franked with a commemorative stamp. This has ensured that the tree has remained one of the town's biggest tourist attractions.João da Nova erected a small shrine near the Post Office Tree, and although no traces of it remain, it is considered the first place of Christian worship in South Africa.
European settlement
Although the Dutch governor of the Cape Colony, Jan de la Fontaine, visited Mossel Bay and erected a possession stone here in 1734, the first permanent European building – a fortress-like granary – was built only in 1787. In July of the following year, the first shipment of wheat grown in the area was shipped from the Bay.Although a British force had invaded the Cape in 1806, and Britain had taken permanent possession of the Colony in 1814, the Mossel Bay area retained its Dutch-given name until its declaration as a magistracy in 1848, when it was renamed Aliwal South, after the Battle of Aliwal in India, where the then governor of the British-held Cape Colony, Harry Smith, had won victory over the Sikhs on 8 January 1846. The name Aliwal South never stuck, however – even when the town was officially proclaimed in 1848, and when it became a Municipality in 1852.
From the earliest days of the Dutch settlers, Mossel Bay acted as the major port serving the Southern Cape region and its hinterland, the arid Klein Karoo, and during the ostrich feather boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, more than 800,000 kg of feathers were exported through the port every year – which may have been the impetus that led to the construction of the first breakwater in 1912.
Fishing and farming remained the main activities of the area during the early years of the 20th Century, and the growth of the port reflected this. The discovery of natural gas fields offshore in 1969, of the FA gas field in the Bredasdorp Basin in 1980, and of the nearby EM field in 1983, led to the development of the Mossgas gas-to-liquids refinery, commissioned in 1987 and renamed the PetroSA Refinery in 2002.
This changed the nature of the port so that its major business now comes from serving supply ships for PetroSA's offshore platforms, and from export via its offshore single buoy mooring, which is located in about 21 metres of water in an unsheltered roadstead at Voorbaai, in the lee of the St Blaize Peninsula.
The development of the refinery led to a marked increase in property development in Mossel Bay, with the number of houses growing rapidly to accommodate the workforce during the construction period.
Many of the people who came to work on the project remained in the town after commissioning, and it would appear from the changing economy of the town that they found work in tourism, light industry or commerce.
Whilst the Port and the Refinery have, of course, had a major influence on the development of Mossel Bay, they have always worked in tandem with the growth of tourism and general commerce so that the town now boasts a balanced and vibrant economy. Tourism in particular has influenced much of the growth since 1994, although the town has been a popular resort destination for South Africans since as early as the late 1800s.
The Afrikaans Language and Cultural Society, also known as the ATKV, bought the farm Hartenbos, east of what was then the town of Mossel Bay, in 1936, and developed it into a holiday resort. This was a significant step in the development of the town's tourism economy as it positioned Mossel Bay as a beach holiday destination. Beach tourism remains a major focus for incoming tourism in the 21st century.
South Africa installed its first democratically elected government in 1994, which brought about sweeping changes in the structure of local government throughout the country - one of the results of which was that Mossel Bay merged with the smaller, neighbouring villages of Friemersheim, Great Brak River and Herbertsdale to form the present-day Mossel Bay Local Municipality in December 2000.
Geography
Climate
Mossel Bay has an ocean-moderated semi-arid climate.Mossel Bay's climate is mild throughout the year as the town is situated in the area where the winter rainfall and all-year rainfall regions of the Western Cape Province meet. Its weather is influenced by the Agulhas Current of the Indian Ocean to the south, and by the presence of the Outeniqua Mountains to the north. Mossel Bay receives 80% of its rainfall at night.
Frost is rare or almost absent and snow has never been recorded on the coastal platform. Snow does, however, occasionally fall on the mountain peaks and can be seen from the town on rare occasions. Prevailing winds are westerly in winter and easterly in summer, and rarely reach storm- or gale-force strength. The average days of sunshine are 320 days per year.
Topography
Mossel Bay straddles the Cape St Blaize peninsula, and spreads out along the sandy shores of the Indian Ocean, eastwards towards the town of George. The Outeniqua Mountains, which form part of the Cape Fold Belt, lie to the north of the municipal area. These mountains of sandstone and shale are characterised by gentle slopes to the seaward side, and rise to a height of 1,578 metres at Cradock Peak, near George, and 1,675 metres at Formosa Peak near Plettenberg Bay.To the east, the land slopes upwards towards the wave-cut platform that characterises the more lush all-year-round rainfall area of the Garden Route. Here the land is mostly covered by grass and farmlands. The deep sandy soils of the western portion of the municipal area also give way to grass and farm-lands, with large stands of typically dry fynbos which are characterised by, amongst others, the Aloe ferox from which skin-care products are made locally, and the Chondropetalum tectorum which is used for the roofing of traditional Cape-Dutch buildings.
The municipal area's boundaries are the Gouritz River in the west, the Outeniqua Mountains to the north, the Maalgate River in the east, and the Indian Ocean to the south.
Demography
According to the South African National Census of 2022, the population of Mossel Bay is 140,075 people. Of this population, 40.9% described themselves as "Coloured", 40.1% as "Black African" and 17.6% as "White". 57.4% spoke Afrikaans as their first language, 30.7% spoke Xhosa and 6.9% spoke English.In the 1936 Census the town had a total population of 7,227 people making it the 39th largest settlement in South Africa; 3,782 of whom were recorded as "Coloured," 3,260 as "European," 93 as "Asiatic," and 92 of whom were recorded as "Native" or "Bantu".