History
Swakopmund and the Skeleton Coast, the German town and the seals of Cape Cross
On Namibia's desert coast, between the Namib's dunes and the cold Atlantic, stands a small German colonial town that should not really be here. North of it lies the Skeleton Coast, and Cape Cross, where a Portuguese navigator raised a stone cross and where the seals now gather in their thousands.
By Walter Pellow2 November 20265 min read
Swakopmund is a surprise. You cross the Namib, mile after mile of gravel and dune, and arrive at a seaside town of German colonial buildings that looks as though it has been set down in the desert from somewhere much further north. In a sense it was. The story of why it is here is the story of a harbour that never quite worked.
A harbour in the wrong place
Swakopmund was built for the colony of German South West Africa, because the natural deep-water harbour on the coast, Walvis Bay, belonged to the British. On 4 August 1892 Captain Curt von François set up two beacons at the mouth of the Swakop River, and Swakopmund, the mouth of the Swakop, was founded. The site was chosen because there was fresh water and a workable route inland towards Windhoek.
The trouble was the sea. There was no natural shelter for ships, so a breakwater, the Mole, was built and completed in 1903; the harbour behind it promptly silted up. A wooden jetty followed in 1905, and work began on an iron one a few years later. None of it solved the problem, and when South Africa took control of the territory in 1915, Walvis Bay took over as the port. Swakopmund was left as a town with a harbour that never quite worked and a great many handsome buildings.
They are the reason to walk around it. The old railway station, built in 1901 for the line inland, is now a hotel. The Woermannhaus, built for a trading company in the early years of the century, has a tall look-out tower, the Damara Tower, from which, it is said, the company watched for ships at sea and ox-wagons coming in from the desert; it is now a library and arts centre. The Mole is still there, too, a reminder of the harbour that was meant to be.
It is a town of cool, foggy mornings. The cold Benguela current keeps the coast cooler than you would expect of a desert even in the warmest season, and a fog bank forms off the sea on many days of the year.
The Skeleton Coast and Cape Cross
North of Swakopmund the road follows the coast into the long, empty shore known as the Skeleton Coast. The name is newer than it sounds: it was the title of a book by John Henry Marsh about the wreck of the Dunedin Star, and it stuck because it fitted. Over the centuries many ships came to grief on this shore, and wrecks and the bleached bones of whales still lie along it.
A Portuguese navigator raised a stone cross here, and the seals now gather in their thousands.
The first European to come this way left a mark. In the mid-1480s the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão, sailing south along the African coast, landed on a rocky point and raised a padrão, a stone pillar topped with a cross, to claim the coast for his king. The place has been called Cape Cross ever since. The original pillar was taken to Germany in 1893 by the commander of a German warship and went to Berlin; Namibia formally asked for its return in 2017. Replicas now stand where it stood.
What most people come for, though, is the seals. Cape Cross is home to a huge colony of Cape fur seals, described by the Namibian government as the largest in the world, with up to 210,000 animals at the peak of the breeding season in November and December. It is an extraordinary sight, a beach and rocks covered by seals as far as you can see, and an extraordinary sound. It is also, everyone agrees, an extraordinary smell.
Tours that go there
Two Explore Worldwide tours in the catalogue include both Swakopmund and the seals at Cape Cross.
The Namibia Lodge Safari is eleven nights, with departures in every month from April to December. Its places include Windhoek, the Namib Desert, Sesriem, Sossusvlei, Sesriem Canyon, Solitaire, Kuiseb Canyon, Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, the Cape Cross Seal Colony, Brandberg Mountain and Damaraland.
Upgraded - Highlights of Namibia is thirteen nights, running in April, June, July, September, October and November. Its places include Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Walvis Bay, Damaraland, the Cape Cross Seal Reserve, Twyfelfontein and Etosha National Park.
G Adventures' Southern Africa Northbound: Dunes, Deltas & Falls is a twenty-night journey across four countries, with the Fish River Canyon, Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Etosha National Park, the Okavango Delta, Chobe National Park, Victoria Falls and Cape Town among its places. It includes Swakopmund but does not list Cape Cross, so it is the one to choose for the German town rather than the seals.
Whichever way you come, take a jumper. It may be the desert, but on this coast the mornings belong to the Atlantic.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
