saldanha bay

One of the best natural harbours in the world and certainly the deepest and safest in South Africa,  Saldanha Bay Is a jewel on the West Coast.

Despite the swashbuckling past of the bay, until early in the 20th century the population comprised mostly fishermen struggling to make a living by making bokkems (dried herrings) and selling these to farmers as rations for their labourers.  

The abundance of fish in the bay, with its prodigious supply of plankton supplied by the Atlantic ocean, gradually began to attract the attention of fish canners and by the start of the Second World War a few canning plants were in operation.

One obstacle to the development of the town was a lack of fresh waterwhich was alleviated by a pipeline to supply water from the Berg River. Also, a new naval base was built at Saldanha in 1944, to relieve the pressure on Table Bay and Simonstown. Today SAS Saldanha with its training gymnasium is one of the more important facilities of the South African Navy and in 1958 the Military Academy of the SANDF was moved to Saldanha Bay, where students now read for the B Mil degree.

The economic development of the town and bay has been boosted by the fishing industry which is big business.  There are several plants canning fish, manufacturing fish-meal or processing lobster, mullet and tuna for export.  In the 1970s Saldanha acquired new strategic significance when it was developed into an iron ore export harbour.

* Aquaculture or sea farming, is practised on a large scale in the bay.  The enterprise was started in 1962 by one of the civil engineers involved in the construction of the harbour who decided to lease the large tidal basin for a sea farm.  Constantly fed by the cold Benguela current, the basin turned out to be ideal for farming with mussels, clams and oysters, which feed by filtering plankton from the water. Four more sea farms have since started production.  Main products are the Mediterranean blue mussel, foreign oysters (Japan, Chile, Canada and the US) and indigenous clams.  The floats of the sea farms in the bay are a fascinating sight.

* On the farm Kliprug (stone ridge) there is the grave of Simeon Cummings, third engineer of the Alabama, the Confederate raider which put into Saldanha Bay in July 1863 during the American Civil War.  The crew were lavishly entertained by the locals and many hunting trips were arranged.  It was on one of these trips that Cummings accidentally shot himself in the heart.  To this day his grave is tended by the American government.

* There is also the doctor's cave in which, according to tradition, a doctor treated smallpox sufferers.  When a smallpox epidemic struck the Cape in 1871 patients were shipped to a quarantine camp at Saldanha.

The other story is that an old medical doctor stayed in the cave, at the time of the great Quarantine. From the cave he treated the patients who arrived in small dinghies, who were banned from setting foot on land.
Between the 1870’s and 1880’s the Bay of Saldanha became a Quarantine Station. A ship carrying people with contagious diseases had to be removed as far and as fast as possible from Cape Town. The name of one of the first ships was the “Celt”. What better place than the isolated and deserted harbour of Saldanha. At the southern horn of the bay, at Salamander, there was a large group of tents spread over the little headland, for the victims. Smallpox victims were regularly sent there and the graveyard at Salamander is proof of this. It was only after the Anglo Boer War that the bay was finally cleared of being a quarantine station.

* There are various hiking trails through the 1800ha military area.  In spring this area is ablaze with colour as the wildflowers explode into bloom and cover the area with a vibrant natural carpet.

* Saldanha stages an annual marine harvest festival in September.