Background
The first known European to visit Walvis Bay was Bartholomeu Diaz who entered the bay on 8 December 1487 in his flagship, the São Christovão, while searching for the tip of Africa and a possible sea route to Asia. He named the sheltered lagoon the Golfo de Santa Maria de Conceição. The bay was one of the finest natural harbours along a barren coast, having been formed by the floodwaters of the Kuiseb River, before the natural silt load blocked the delta.
The modern town of Walvis Bay is located on the edge of this deep-water bay and tidal lagoon. An 18-km-long sandspit forms a natural breakwater against the Atlantic Ocean, and the tip of the spit is marked by an automatic lighthouse, Pelican Point, which doubles as a small seal colony. The spit joins the mainland to the south of Walvis Bay forming a shallow lagoon famous for its superb variety of bird life, an important wetland providing many species with feeding and breeding grounds. In all, a total of 45,000 ha are now protected as a nature reserve.
Back in 1487 it was not the bird life that was of interest to the Portuguese sailors, it was the shelter from the ocean, but when they landed they found no surface fresh water. Accordingly Diaz named the area the Sands of Hell. For the sailors this was not the wealthy country they were seeking to trade with and so they quickly pushed on further towards the cape.
The name Walvis Bay, or bay of whales, originates from the 16th-century Portuguese maps which showed the bay as Bahia das Bahleas, due to the large numbers of migratory whales passing this way. In 1487 Diaz and his crew had taken note of the abundance of fish in the coastal waters and when the first chart of the area was drawn up he had called the area around the bay Praia dos Sardinha, the ‘coast of sardines’. During the 17th century, British and American ships frequented the area in search of whale meat and seals, from time to time using the natural harbours at Walvis Bay and Sandwich Harbour, but no attempts were made to explore the interior. Eventually the Dutch in Cape Town decided to investigate the hinterland, prompted by the rumours of great cattle and copper wealth. On 26 February 1793 Captain F Duminy, in the ship Meermin, landed and annexed the Bahia das Bahleas, renaming it Walvis Bay. But the land remained in Dutch hands for only a few years; in 1795 the British occupied the cape and Captain Alexander travelled up the coast to Walvis Bay, where he hoisted the British flag.
The growth of the settlement was very slow; a few traders made the epic journey from Cape Town and some missionaries passed through for the Rhenish Missionary Society. Up until the time that the Germans started to develop Swakopmund, the small community at Walvis Bay prospered on the cattle trade, and copper from the Matchless Mine in the Khomas Hochland close to Windhoek. The coast at this time was linked with the interior by a road known as the Baaiweg, built by Jan Jonker in 1844. Most of the early traffic consisted of ox wagons.
During the 1870s, unrest in the interior led to the British government in the cape being asked to intervene to protect missionaries and traders. However, the British concluded that the lands were too poor and not worth adding to the territory of the British Empire. Instead they decided to consolidate their position at Walvis Bay: by controlling the movement of goods and people to the interior they hoped to be able to influence or even control the events inland. On 12 March 1878 Commander RC Dyer formally annexed the area, the boundaries being described as follows: “on the south by a line from a point on the coast 15 miles south of Pelican Point to Scheppmansdorf; on the east by a line from Scheppmansdorf to the Rooibank, including the Plateau, and thence to 10 miles inland from the mouth of the Swakop River; on the north by the last 10 miles of the course of the said Swakop River”. Rooibank had been included since it was the closest place with fresh water and greenery. The rest of the 750 sq km enclave was desert.
For the next 50 years the fortunes of Walvis Bay were influenced by the development of the German colony of South West Africa; as Swakopmund grew and prospered so the amount of traffic using Walvis Bay declined. The outbreak of the First World War was to change everything for good. Once the South African troops had built the broad-gauge railway the port was quick to develop, and in 1927 a newly dredged harbour was opened by the Earl of Athlone, governor-general of South Africa. At the same time a new source of fresh water was discovered in the bed of the Kuiseb River, which helped guarantee the future of the town.
At the end of the First World War, Walvis Bay was given to South Africa to govern as part of the mandated territory of South West Africa. This remained the case until 1977 when South Africa declared Walvis Bay to be part of the Cape Province. Despite pressure from the United Nations, South Africa refused to give up the small enclave as it served both as an important commercial port and as location of a South African military base. In 1992 South Africa relented and agreed to a joint administration without any border controls; on 28 February 1994 South Africa returned Walvis Bay to Namibia.
The port represents a great asset for Namibia which, if properly developed and well managed, could challenge ports such as Durban and Maputo for trade destined for countries such as Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia and even Malawi. In 1996 the private Walvis Bay Export Processing Zone Management Company, was established to attract more businesses to Walvis Bay and to take advantage of the port and its improved access to the hinterland. Both the Trans-Kalahari and Trans-Caprivi highways have been completed, thus reducing the transport time of commodities to and from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa by up to 14 days. The port now handles about 150 per month. If you would like to visit the port, entry permits to the harbour are available at the police office at the harbour entrance on 13th Road. Slowly the town is starting to benefit from the improved economic climate, and this and the increased volume of tourists choosing to visit the town and surrounding area are providing the local population with grounds for optimism.
