Saldanha Bay

- 33.01666666666717.95Koordinaten: 33 ° 1 '0 "S, 17 ° 57' 0" E

The Saldanha Bay is a bay on the southwest coast of South Africa and is the largest and deepest natural port in South Africa, which can be run by large cargo ships with a draft of up to 23 m. On the northern shore lies the city of Saldanha.

The bay is partially protected by a 3.1 km long artificial breakwater and therefore can be run even in bad weather ships.

History

The bay is named after the Portuguese captain António de Saldanha in 1503 as the first Europeans came ashore here.

Twice it came in the Saldanha Bay end of the 18th century, the confrontation between the British Royal Navy and Dutch naval units, in both 1781 and 1796, the Dutch documents ( capitulation in the Saldanhabucht ).

At an industrial port, the Port of Saldanha, the northern part of the Bay developed only in recent decades, when it was necessary to facilitate the export of iron ore from the Northern Cape. This necessitated the construction of the railway line Sishen - Saldanha, a more than 800 -kilometer route to the mines at Sishen in the Northern Cape Kathu respectively, and building a deep-sea jetty at the Saldanha Bay. Since September 1976 up to now about 400 million tons of iron ore were shipped through this port.

Hominin fossils

In 1997, the discovery of fossil hominin footprints of two individuals of the species Homo sapiens, it was announced that had been discovered on the edge of Langebaan Lagoon to southeast, and dated to an age of 117,000 years. About 15 kilometers east of Saldanha Bay beginning of the 1950s had already been discovered by a relatively well-preserved cranium of Homo erectus.