The Antipolis lies against the shore in a small rocky bay
The oil tanker Antipolis ran aground off Oudekraal during a July storm in 1977. She and the Romelia, which is wrecked near Sandy Bay, were both under tow by the tug Kiyo Maru No. 2 from Greece to be scrapped in Taiwan. The wreck lies pointing shoreward, a couple of hundred metres south of the 12 Apostles Hotel. She can be viewed from a vantage point above a storm water drain between the hotel entrance and a small parking area on the opposite (seaward) side of the road. Walk along the Armco barrier from the parking area, looking to your left (while also looking out for cyclists). The storm water pipe is about twenty metres from the parking area and is marked by a gap in the bushes through which the wreck can be seen.
There is also the option of climbing down an impossibly steep and slippery path onto the rocks adjacent to the wreck. The view from here is slightly better, but it is not a climb for the faint hearted.
Bow section of the Antipolis at low tide
View of the Antipolis from the rocks
View of the Antipolis from the road
She is now a beautiful dive site if you visit in clear, calm conditions. Most divers shore dive off the rocky beach in front of the wreck, after climbing over the traffic barrier and walking over the boulders on the shore.
There are some pictures of the tanker just after she grounded here and here (the comments are also worth reading). Her superstructure was cut off some time later for scrap. The entire shape of the wreck can be discerned on aerial images, as much of her lies just below the waterline.
Being (in midlife) a creature of the south peninsula, I tend to focus my attentions on False Bay and the Atlantic coast from Hout Bay southwards. But there are rewards for the shipwreck hunter who ventures further north, and even for the shipwreck hunter who doesn’t necessarily want to get their feet wet. A visit to Milnerton beach, and a walk north from Milnerton lighthouse, reveals two shipwrecks in the surf zone. Milnerton beach is surpassingly filthy, but while I was there a beach cleanup was making some headway on the mounds of rubbish tossed off ships in Table Bay that ends up on the beach. The view of the lighthouse from the beach is also far more fetching than the view from the car park, if you can overlook the garbage.
Milnerton lighthouse
About one kilometre north of the lighthouse, where the beach is cleaner and pebbles roll euphoniously in the waves, you will come across the massive boilers of the Hermes in the surf. The NSRI gets calls every year from concerned locals worried that a whale is stranded near the beach; the sea spray sometimes pushes through holes in the top of the wreck creating an illusion of a whale’s blow. The Hermes was a liner, built in 1899, on her way to Cape Town with a large cargo of livestock, forage and a few passengers. When she arrived in May 1901 the harbour was full, and she was forced to drop anchor for the night. A north westerly gale came up, she dragged her anchors, and when the captain ordered her engines started, they failed.
Hermes (front) and Winton (back)
Seawards and to the north of Hermes, the engine block of the Winton is visible, in much the same way as the SS Clan Stuart can be seen at Glencairn in False Bay. The Winton came aground in July 1934, carrying a cargo of wheat from Port Lincoln in Australia to Liverpool, England. Her captain was unfamiliar with Table Bay and had mistook the red lights on top of the radio mast at the Klipheuwel Wireless Telegraph Station near Milnerton for the harbour lights. Attempts were made to pull her off the beach and some of her cargo was salvaged, but the wheat ignited and efforts to refloat her were to no avail.
The visible remains of the Hermes
Hermes (left) and Winton (right)
Hermes in the surf zone
On a calm day, an aerial view of the site reveals the full outline of both vessels surrounding the parts that protrude from the water. When I visited, it was rough after a large swell, but the tide was low. At high tide the view will be considerably less impressive.
The boilers of the Hermes in front of Table Mountain
It is possible to scuba dive this site, and Underwater Explorers dives the Winton every year during their summer Table Bay wreck diving jamboree. Obviously very calm, low swell conditions are required because the wreck is so shallow and so close to the beach.
Saturday: Early double tank dive, weather permitting
Spring is around the corner and we are still waiting for the weeks of crystal clean water we should have in False Bay. There have been very few real winter visibility days this winter. (I may have had this complaint last winter too…)
Buffels Bay at Cape Point
The weekend looks to be another let’s wait and see situation. Tomorrow’s wind should improve the visibility, which is currently not that great, for some good diving early on Saturday. By midday on Saturday the wind is strong and on Sunday it will be close to gale force. I hope to launch early on Saturday for a double tank dive but it’s low tide at 9.00 and there is a forecast 3 metre, 14 second swell so deeper sites will be better. I would imagine that the Roman Rock area will be our best bet. Text or mail me if you want to be on the list for Saturday and I will make a call tomorrow afternoon.
The wharf street parking at the Simon’s Town jetty is a paid parking area again from tomorrow. A slip is placed on your car when you arrive… Make sure the time is recorded correctly.
The second visible shipwreck along the Cape Point Shipwreck Trail, about three kilometres from the start in the Olifantsbos parking area, is the Nolloth. She was a Dutch coaster carrying a cargo of (mostly) liquor, and struck a submerged rock (probably Albatross Rock, nemesis of many ships) off Olifantsbos in April 1965. Her captain ran her aground to save the cargo and prevent loss of life. Customs officials swiftly salvaged the cargo!
Engine block of the Nolloth
The Nolloth lies just in the waves at high tide. We visited a couple of hours after high tide, and were able to walk all the way around the wreckage without getting our feet wet. She lies at an angle, with much of her seemingly buried in the sand. Her engine block is partially exposed, and for the mechanically minded, prolonged examination of the cogs and gears will be rewarding.
Ribs of the Nolloth
The wildness of the location lends a very special quality to this wreck that is lacking in Cape Town’s visible shipwrecks that are situated in more urban environments – RMS Athens comes to mind. It is a remote and very beautiful spot, but would be possessed of far fewer benign qualities on a dark and stormy night.
There are some fantastic pictures of the Nolloth in Brian Wexham’s Shipwrecks of the Western Cape, taken, I suspect, within 20 years of her running aground. There is far more of her visible – she looks like a ship on the beach rather than a ship in the beach! There is also evidence of some low wreckage in the shallows that might still be visible when the tide is at its nadir, but I would caution against too much barefoot exploration of rockpools unless the water is very clear and your tetanus shots are up to date.
The Nolloth on the beach south of Olifantsbos
The Nolloth signals the point at which one turns back along the Shipwreck Trail to head towards Olifantsbos once more. Tami, Maria and I spent a wonderful morning on the Shipwreck Trail exploring the Thomas T Tucker and the Nolloth. As an aside, I would like to apologise to the resident chacma baboons for disturbing the peace when I realised that – with the help of a Slingsby Map – I had in fact successfully navigated us (along a marked and named trail, mind you) to not one, but two shipwrecks.
The first boiler of the Thomas T Tucker you’ll come across
If you’re a fan of visible shipwrecks, may I recommend the Shipwreck Trail in the Cape Point section of Table Mountain National Park? I’ll write a separate post just about the trail, but this post and the one that follows (about the Nolloth) concern two shipwrecks, high and dry on the shore, that can be see on the route.
Three large pieces of the Thomas T Tucker on the rocks
TheSS Thomas T Tucker was an American-built Liberty ship. These cargo vessels were of a standardised design and were built in great numbers, and at great speed, during World War II. They were used to transport war materiel to the Allied troops, and this is what the Thomas T Tucker was busy doing when she found herself off Olifantsbos in November 1942. She was on her maiden voyage from New Orleans to Suez, hugging the coast in a thick fog for fear of German U-boats.
The Thomas T Tucker’s second boiler, high on the beach
When she ran aground on 27 November (our wedding anniversary!), her captain reported that the ship was aground on Robben Island, which is over 40 kilometres to the north. The ship’s compass was found to be out by 37 degrees, which may have contributed to the accident.
The wreck of the Thomas T Tucker
Receding tide on the Thomas T Tucker
Funnels from the midsection of the Thomas T Tucker
Shards of metal high on the beach
Pieces of the Thomas T Tucker on the shore
The “bonus wreckage” of the Thomas T Tucker further along the beach
Today the Thomas T Tucker is beautifully spread out on a beach about two kilometres from the parking area at Olifantsbos, inside the Cape Point Nature Reserve. She was 135 metres long, so there was a lot of ship to distribute. There are some great pictures in Shipwrecks of the Western Cape by Brian Wexham, from (I think) the 1980s. They give a good idea of how the wreck has deteriorated.
You will first come upon one of her boilers, high up on the beach, close to a small headland. If you look back the way you’ve come (first photo, above) you can see Misty Cliffs, Scarborough and – perhaps – Slangkop Lighthouse. Beyond that she is in several large pieces on the rocks, and higher up the beach. A third (bonus!) section of wreckage lies a couple of hundred metres further along the Shipwreck Trail (also called the Thomas T Tucker trail), so isolated from the rest of the wreck that I at first thought that it came from a different ship.
The “bonus wreckage” of the Thomas T Tucker further along the beach
We visited the wreck of the Thomas T Tucker an hour or two after high tide. At low tide, all the pieces of the wreck are accessible; we could not reach the most distant piece without getting our feet wet! There is some wreckage that isn’t visible, lying in the shallow water, which you can visit on a scuba dive if you get the appropriate permission to have dive gear on a boat within the exclusion zone around Cape Point. We were lucky to have fairly dramatic skies for photography. The way in which the wreck is scattered is a testament to the exposed nature of this coast, and the power of the Atlantic Ocean.
Here’s a small sandy and rocky beach, guarded by a huge, almost cubic boulder. It’s located on the route between Muizenberg and St James. I think it’s rather striking. When the tide is out, you might be able to climb on top of it.
We spent a sunny day at Buffels Bay in the Cape Point Nature Reserve, facilitating some boat dives to Batsata Maze and an unnamed reef to the south of Smitswinkel Bay for Old Mutual Sub Aqua Club (OMSAC). We met a whale on one of the dives – he was fascinated by the divers’ orange SMB that they were using while safety stopping, and circled back repeatedly to have a look. It also took quite a bit of doing (in the form of multiple phone calls, emails and an early morning meeting with a ranger) to get permission to drive a boat full of divers and gear through the exclusion zone around Cape Point… But those are other stories.
Waiting to put the boat on the trailer at Buffels Bay
The slipway at Buffels Bay is a civilised place, with no jockeying for position or aggressive fishermen. It is in a very rocky part of the bay, however, and at low tide it’s a tricky proposition to avoid clipping your motors on the bottom. On approaching the slipway, I asked the divers to hop off the boat into the water, and we moved slowly towards the shore. The water was slightly deeper than some of them were expecting!
After bringing the divemobile down and putting the trailer into the water, we manoeuvered the boat onto the trailer and winched and pushed it on. It was too shallow to drive the boat on, as I would usually. This is a hyperlapse video so it’s joyfully speeded up to make me look like Superman.
Conditions that make for great surfing generally mean poor diving, and vice versa.
The second point above is exactly why reading a book on what makes waves turned out to be an extremely enlightening experience.
Dr Tony Butt lives in Spain on the exposed north Atlantic coast (good waves), but apparently spends the southern winter in Cape Town, surfing Dungeons where possible I imagine! He is a physical oceanographer. In Surf Science he explains where waves come from, and what leads to different kinds of surfing conditions.
His explanation of the origin of the waves that reach the coast starts at the very beginning, with an explanation of the drivers of weather systems. This section caused me to jump up and down with excitement, and to speak many long sentences to long suffering husband Tony. His expository method is easy to follow at each step, and for the first time I feel that I have a grip on . First we build up a mental model of the earth as a stationary globe with no land, and then gradually add rotation about its own axis, rotation around the sun (seasons), and the presence of continents to the model. At each step further understanding of the average world weather patterns (north Atlantic high, roaring forties, and so on) is improved.
The book goes on to cover the propagation of swell, and what happens when waves arrive in shallow water, break, and possibly allow surfing. Butt also deals with water temperature, tides, and rip currents, and concludes with a few chapters on surf forecasting models and how to read them. Throughout the concepts are illustrated with straightforward diagrams, and end-of-chapter boxes contain formulae for the mathematically inclined.
This is a shorter and more richly illustrated book than The Wavewatcher’s Companion, serving a different audience. Both surfers and divers can benefit from Surf Science, as well as the yachting fraternity, NSRI crew members, and anyone else who has an interest in the mechanics of the ocean. This volume has more the flavour of a textbook, with no unnecessary information, anecdote or humourous asides. There is a place for both books!
You can get a copy here or here, or here (if you’re in South Africa).
Lighthouses are beautiful and captivating, often positioned in lonely, windswept locations at the very edge of human settlements. The idea of being a lighthouse keeper, custodian of a light that is a warning against the might of stormy seas over submerged reefs, seems romantic and heroic. It is for these reasons that I am surprised there aren’t more books about lighthouse life; perhaps we are fortunate that there aren’t.
Sentinel of the Seas is about the St Georges Reef Light, situated on a rock about 10 kilometres off the northern Californian coast. The subject was researched in painstaking detail by the author, and he provides a great deal of colour to the process of constructing the lighthouse and its subsequent manned use as a warning to shipping. The cover photograph at left shows the small size of the rocky outcrop on which the lighthouse stands. The challenges of construction work at this location, combined with frequent salty inundations and fluctuating tides, were considerable. The main theme related to the St Georges Reef Light is, however, interwoven with several other ideas and story lines and the entire book is poorly edited, rendering the overall thread of the narrative disorganised and difficult to follow.
Today the lighthouse is in disuse after being replaced by a floating light buoy (apparently these days all but one or two lighthouses off the American coast are unmanned), but has been the subject of efforts to restore and preserve it. It has an official website, and at various times tours to the facility by helicopter have been offered.
There are no photographs in this book – I thought it could have done with some, even if they were only of the lighthouse as it appears today (although historical photos do exist). I was struck by the similarity between this light and Roman Rock, although I suspect Roman Rock’s location is a little more sheltered. Since the rock on which Roman Rock is built isn’t visible (the lighthouse base may cover it completely – I’m not sure), I wonder how it was constructed. Something to find out!
Pretor-Pinney is not concise or reverent, and frequently errs on the side of too much witty banter; this may irritate those who are seeking a serious scientific work, and I’d point you in the direction of something like The Power of the Sea if that’s what you’re after. The Wavewatcher’s Companion also does not focus exclusively on waves that are found in water – a fact which initially bothered me, as those are the waves that I’m interested in. My frustration was forgotten, however, because the sections on electromagnetic waves, sound waves and shock waves, for example, were very interesting, and helped me to understand some phenomena that I’m familiar with from other contexts.
I particularly enjoyed the sections on tides (despite Rachel Carson’s efforts, I still don’t completely understand them) and big wave surfing. The author goes surfing in Hawaii with Andrew Marr, a South African big wave surfer, much as Laird Hamilton took the author of The Wave with him on surf trips. Did you know that there’s a surf spot on the Eisbach River in Munich, Germany? Check it out.
The book is well illustrated with photographs and diagrams, and one of the photographs and the related text cleared up a question I’ve always had regarding a peculiar cloud formation that appears over the mountains around False Bay (there was a picture of it). It turns out to be a lenticular cloud, which is as a result of a standing wave that develops on the downwind side of the mountain under certain conditions.
I recommend this book for all but the purist who wishes for Serious Science, Seriously Presented. It is a perfect holiday read, digestible in bite sized chunks. Some of the more technical sections required repeat readings, which perhaps justifies the author’s efforts to channel Bill Bryson in the intervening paragraphs.
Get a copy here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here or here.
