It was named Aguada de Sao Bras, by
Vasco de Gama in 1497, when He set off with 170 men on an expedition to find a sea Route to India. This was in order to develop the spice route and spread Christianity. After a few miscalculations, he landed in Mossel Bay, eventually reaching Calicut in India in May 1498.
A
Stone Pillar surmounted by a cross, was erected by Da Gama and is the earliest navigational marker in
South Africa. Mission accomplished , Da Gama returned to Portugal and was handsomely rewarded for His voyage was an extra ordinary maritime achievement, if one considered the small size of his Carvel, a replica of which is housed in the
museum at Mossel Bay.
Of the original 170 men only 54 returned. It was given another name;
Golfo dos Vaqueiros by,
Joan da Nova in 1501. Later named
Mosselbaai by the Dutch navigator,
Paulus van Caerden in July 1601, this name is Dutch/ Afrikaans for mussels.
As the Dutch sailors replenished much needed food stocks, with fresh mussels! Aliwal South was the alternative name, for Mossel Bay in 1850, to avoid confusion with Aliwal North, near Bloemfontein. It became a Municipality in 1852. (The form Mosselbaai is preffered for official purposes!)
Mossel Bay is a Harbour Town between Fish Bay and Victoria Bay with a population of about 130,000, people. It is an important tourism and farming region of the Western Cape Province. Mossel Bay lies 400 km, East of the Country's seat of Parliament,
Cape Town and 400 km West of
Port Elizabeth, the largest city in the
Eastern Cape Province. The older parts of the Town occupy the North-facing side of the
Cape St Blaize Peninsula, whilst the newer suburbs straddle the Peninsula and have spread Eastwards, along the sandy shore of the Bay.
The Town's economy relied heavily on farming, fishing and its commercial Harbour (the smallest in the Transnet Port Authority's stable of South African commercial Harbors), until the 1969 discovery of natural offshore gas fields led to the development of the gas-to-liquids refinery operated by PetroSA. Tourism is another driver of Mossel Bay's Economy.
Pinnacle Point Site Complex in Mossel Bay forms part of the Cradle of Human Culture and is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. Unlike other sites that can be remote, dry and downright inhospitable, the archaeological findings here are set against a stunning backdrop of seaside caves so cosy that generations of families sought shelter in them. Furthermore, as the sites you can visit in Mossel Bay form part of on-going excavation and advanced research projects, new discoveries are taking place all the time, and since one of the discoverers of the sites at Pinnacle Point in 1997 is a local archaeological tour guide, visitors may be among the first to hear about it.
The Cradle of Human Culture traces the origins and development of human culture over the past 160 000 years and, in the process, it also uncovers what it means to be human.
The latest news (in March 2018) from the Mossel Bay sites is the discovery of microscopic shards of volcanic glass from a super-volcano eruption on Sumatra about 74000 years ago, about 9000km away. While the event was believed to have devastated Stone Age human populations around the world, indications at Pinnacle suggest the existence of a thriving community sheltered from the devastation.
