The wreck of the SS Kakapo is one of the few shipwrecks around Cape Town that you don’t need a diving qualification to visit. It’s located on Long Beach, Noordhoek, and is a striking sight, high and dry on the sand.
For some reason I have never interrogated why so little of the hull, decks and superstructure of the Kakapo remain. Her boilers, ribs, and some other parts of her structural stick out of the sand, but there isn’t much else to distinguish her. Reading an issue of The Cape Odyssey, however, I was enlightened as to what happened to the rest of the ship… And I realised that Tony and I have probably walked past piece of the Kakapo more than once without realising it.
After World War I, pieces of the Kakapo‘s hull were used to shore up the railway line as it crosses the Silvermine River at Clovelly. Also, in addition to 44 gallon drums filled with concrete, pieces of metal from the Kakapo were used to strengthen the river banks at the same location. A visit to the Clovelly end of Fish Hoek beach reveals not only expanses of rusty metal alongside the railway line, but also, emerging from the river banks near the bridge, other mysterious metal sheets mixed in with metal, concrete-filled drums.
There’s a nifty, nearly one hundred year old bit of recycling for you!
