Salisbury Island is located inside the

Port of Durban The Port of Durban, commonly called Durban Harbour, is the largest and busiest shipping terminal in sub-Saharan Africa. It handles up to 31.4 million tons of cargo each year. It is the fourth largest container terminal in the Southern Hemisphe ...

on the east coast of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

; it is a

former island A former island is a mass of land that was once an island, but has been joined to a mainland, another island, or engulfed by a body of water. The process of joining might be the result of volcanic activity, moving tidal sands, or through land re ...

until the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

when construction of a

naval base A naval base, navy base, or military port is a military base, where warships and naval ships are docked when they have no mission at sea or need to restock. Ships may also undergo repairs. Some naval bases are temporary homes to aircraft that us ...

connected it to the mainland by a

causeway A causeway is a track, road or railway on the upper point of an embankment across "a low, or wet place, or piece of water". It can be constructed of earth, masonry, wood, or concrete. One of the earliest known wooden causeways is the Sweet Tra ...

. The island, then a

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evoluti ...

-covered sandbank, was named after , the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

ship that surveyed the future harbour area for the newly established Port Natal Colony in the 1820s.

Second World War and after

Naval Base Durban Naval Base Durban in Durban harbour is a naval base of the South African Navy, situated on Salisbury Island, which is now joined to the mainland through land reclamation. It was formerly a full naval base until it was downgraded to a naval statio ...

was constructed for the Royal Navy during the Second World War in response to the threat of Japanese attacks on shipping along the east coast of Africa. It was during this construction that the island became a peninsula through the construction of a causeway. After the war the base was turned over to the South African Naval Service (SANS), which has since maintained a fluctuating and intermittent presence. With the signing of the

Simonstown Agreement The Simonstown Agreement (sic) was a naval cooperation agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the (then-officially) Union of South Africa signed . Under the agreement, the Royal Navy (RN) gave up its na ...

in 1957, the

gave up its control of the SANS in exchange for the use of the base at Simon's Town. The SANS became the

South African Navy The South African Navy (SA Navy) is the naval warfare branch of the South African National Defence Force. The Navy is primarily engaged in maintaining a conventional military deterrent, participating in counter-piracy operations, fishery prot ...

(SAN) and Salisbury Island its main base. When the Simonstown Agreement ended the SAN moved most of its operations to Simon's Town and Durban became a secondary facility.

University College for Indians

In 1961, the University College for Indians was established on Salisbury Island. It closed down in 1971, when it was replaced by the

University of Durban-Westville The University of Durban-Westville (UDW) was a university situated in Westville, a town situated near Durban, South Africa, which opened in 1972. It is now one of the campuses of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It was initially established for ...

. Under

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

the different population groups in South Africa had to have separate facilities. The college was the first fully fledged tertiary educational institution for

Indian South Africans Indian South Africans are South Africans who descend from indentured labourers and free migrants who arrived from British India during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The majority live in and around the city of Durban, making it one of the l ...

. Students used to commute to the college by ferry or boarded in hostels on the island. Alumni of the college include

Pravin Gordhan Pravin Jamnadas Gordhan (born 12 April 1949) is a politician and anti-apartheid activist who has held various ministerial posts in the Cabinet of South Africa. He served as Minister of Finance from 2009 until 2014 and again from 2015 until 2017, ...

, the former

Minister of Finance A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation. A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names around the world, such as "treasury", " ...

Roy Padayachie Radhakrishna Lutchmana "Roy" Padayachie (1 May 1950 – 5 May 2012) was the Minister of Public Service and Administration of the Republic of South Africa. He died in the early hours of 5 May 2012 in an Ethiopian hotel room, while on an offic ...

, the former

Minister of Public Service and Administration The Minister of Public Service and Administration is a Minister in the Cabinet of South Africa. As of April 2022, the Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi, has been acting in the position following Minister Ayanda Dlodlo's resignat ...

, and author and curator

Sarat Maharaj Sarat Maharaj (born 1951 in Durban, South Africa) is a writer, researcher, curator, and professor. Maharaj's family was part of the large group of Indians who migrated to the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the nineteenth century. The grandfather o ...

Naval base again

From the mid 1970s until the early 1990s, it was the home base of the Minister class strike craft flotilla. Even after the closure of the college, the island maintained a link with the Indian community in the form of which was the main training facility for Indian South African sailors. Upon the retirement of the strike craft, all combat ships of the navy were based at Naval Base Simon's Town and the Durban base was reduced to a

naval station A Naval Station was a geographic command responsible for conducting all naval operations within its defined area. It may consist of flotillas, or squadrons, or individual ships under command. The British Royal Navy for command purposes was separ ...

in 2002. Some of the facilities of the base were then taken over by the army as a general support base. In 2012, a decision to base the navy's

offshore patrol The Offshore Patrol (OSP) also known as the Mosquito Fleet was a small naval branch of the United States Army, intended for Littoral zone, inshore defense of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. It was active from February 9, 1939 to June 30, 19 ...

flotilla in Durban led to a programme of renovation to restore the facility back to full naval base status. In December 2015, it was redesignated a naval base as the home port of the patrol flotilla.

References

{{coord missing, South Africa Indian Ocean islands of South Africa Former islands Ports and harbours of South Africa