Kwaaihoek is a rocky headland on the coast of
Algoa Bay, at
Boknesstrand near
Bushman's River Mouth in the
Eastern Cape province of
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
. It is a section of the
Addo Elephant National Park. It is here that the Portuguese navigator
Bartolomeu Dias erected the ''Padrão de São Gregório'', his first
padrão
A ''padrão'' is a stone pillar left by Portuguese maritime explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries to record significant landfalls and thereby establish primacy and possession. They were often placed on promontories and capes or at the mouths o ...
, or stone cross on 12 March 1488. First visited by
Robert Jacob Gordon
Robert Jacob Gordon (29 September 1743, in Doesburg, Gelderland – 25 October 1795, in Cape Town) was a Dutch explorer, soldier, artist, naturalist and linguist of Scottish descent.
Life
Robert Jacob Gordon was the son of Maj. General Jacob ...
on 13 February 1786, remnants of the cross were rediscovered in 1938 by E. Axelson and transferred to the
University of the Witwatersrand
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( or ). The university ...
in
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...
.
away, shortly after midnight on 17 July 1755, the
East Indiaman ''Doddington'' struck the south-eastern corner of the low-lying
Bird Island (or Chaos Island as it was then known). She went down within 20 minutes, with only 23 of the 270 passengers and crew surviving.
They were marooned on the island for seven months, before they managed to make their way to India on a sloop they built on the island.
See also
*
Dias Cross Memorial
References
Landforms of the Eastern Cape
Headlands of South Africa
{{EasternCape-geo-stub