Cape Point's Lighthouses

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I suppose we'd better get the tourism stuff over with and visit Cape Point lighthouse — the replica lighthouse at the top and the operating lighthouse on the rocks below.

Many visitors, and Capetonians, are unaware that the lighthouse "up top" is a facsimile built on the base of the original iron tower, erected in 1860. The old light, at 2,000 candlepower, relied on 16 metallic silvered reflectors and a 12-seond beam every minute to light a path for ships around the Cape of Good Hope. It saw 50 years of service, but was declared inadequate following the sinking of the 5,537 ton Portuguese liner, the Lusitania, which struck Bellows Rock in 1911.

Today, the "old" lighthouse has no light and serves as a control centre for all South African lighthouses. A plaque at the Dias lookout point between the two sites offers the following information of the "new", inaccessible brick-and-mortar lighthouse, commissioned 90 years ago, on March 11, 1919:

Operating Lighthouse 1919

The lighthouse below is the most powerful on the south African coast. This site, at 87 metres above sea level, was chosen to avoid the frequent cloud and mist that covered the original lighthouse, behind you on Cape Point Peak. The original light was a paraffin vapour mantle of 500 000 candlepower which was electrified in 1936. The light has an intensity of 10 000 000 candlepower, a range of 63 kilometres, and gives three flashes every three seconds.

As for the area, Heather Valence relates the memories of one of the "new" lighthouse's early residents:

One of my first memories was of Cape Point lighthouse, the old tower which was turned into a watch room for the light keepers. I would walk up to the tower to visit my father and from there wander about as wild and free as the Cape Point reserve animals. I feared only the cobras because they made no friends.

When I was growing up the only tourism Cape Point saw was the occasional Cape Town sightseer, lots of Japanese visitors and pilots paid to fly out the dead from the Belgium Congo. The only shop was a small kiosk run by my mother at the bottom of the hill. She sold sweets and cold drinks and cigarettes.

Japanese tour guides supplied their clients with food they ate while looking out to sea. Baboons raided the visitors’ day packs but left the sushi for reasons only baboons understood. I was fascinated with the left over sushi as everything in our house was cooked to death before it was served and eaten.

A work shift in the lighthouse perched on cliff below consisted of two men who trekked up and down the precarious footpath in sunshine and gales, summer and winter, twice a day.

Note: This blog will take shape slowly over the next few weeks. For now, like every blog, it remains very much a work in progress.