The "Royal Mail Ship Athens" was an iron steam screw barque of 739 tons, built in 1856 by Denny of Dumbarton and operated by the Union shipping company. It was wrecked between Mouille Point and Green Point on 17 May, 1865. This occurred at night, after the boiler fires were extinguished by heavy seas during a North-West gale while trying to steam out of Table Bay. The ship had been lying at anchor while preparing for a voyage to Mauritius. The site can be identified by the remains of the engine-block, which is visible above the water. This site is not in a Marine Protected Area.

It was in South Africa that Gandhi developed, between 1910 and 1913, his Satyagraha philosophy of passive resistance, and it was on Tolstoy Farm that he and his followers lived out this philosophy. The Farm was named after Russian novelist and philosopher Leon Tolstoy. Hermann Kallenbach, a white farmer, was so impressed with the peaceful way of life at Phoenix that he offered Gandhi his own big Farm near Johannesburg to start another colony. He suggested that all those who had lost their jobs and homes by their participation in the Satyagraha could be settled there.