Named for whale and seal bones that used to litter the coast, partly due to
whaling, and for the thousands of
shipwrecks
Dimensions
• Length
310 miles (500 km)
The Skeleton Coast is the northern part of the
Atlantic coast of
Namibia. Immediately south of
Angola, it stretches from the
Kunene River to the
Swakop River, although the name is sometimes used to describe the entire
Namib Desert coast. The indigenous
San people (formerly known as Bushmen), of the Namibian interior called the region "The Land God Made in Anger", while
Portuguese sailors once referred to it as "The Gates of Hell".
On the coast, the
upwelling of the cold
Benguela current gives rise to dense ocean
fogs (called cassimbo by the Angolans) for much of the year. The winds blow from land to sea, rainfall rarely exceeds 10 millimetres (0.39 in) annually, and the
climate is highly inhospitable. There is a constant, heavy
surf on the beaches. In the days before engine-powered ships and boats, it was possible to get ashore through the surf, but impossible to launch from the shore. The only way out was by going through a marsh hundreds of kilometres long and only accessible via a hot and arid desert.
The coast is largely made up of soft sand occasionally interrupted by rocky outcrops. The southern section consists of
gravel plains, while north of Terrace Bay the landscape is dominated by high
sand dunes.
Skeleton Bay is known as a great location for
surfing. The Salty Jackal, a backpackers lodge located in
Swakopmund, and Surf Guide Namibia, a local tour guide and surf school are currently the only groups that run guided surf trips along the Skeleton Coast.[1]
Etymology
The area's name derives from the whale and seal bones that once littered the shore, partly due to the
whaling industry, although in modern times the coast also harbours the skeletal remains of the
shipwrecks caused by offshore rocks and fog.[2] More than a thousand such vessels of various sizes litter the coast, notably the Eduard Bohlen, Benguela Eagle, Otavi, Dunedin Star and Tong Taw.
The name "Skeleton Coast" was coined by John Henry Marsh as the title for the book he wrote chronicling the shipwreck of the Dunedin Star. Since the book was first published in 1944, it has become so well known that the coast is now generally referred to as "Skeleton Coast" and is named so on most maps today. See
§ In popular culture, below.
One of the oldest shipwrecks in the Skeleton Coast region is that of the Bom Jesus, near the town of
Oranjemund. It ran aground during the 1530s and is known to be one of the oldest discovered shipwrecks of the Iberian Atlantic tradition in Sub-Saharan Africa.[3] On Thursday, 22 March 2018, a Japanese registered fishing vessel, MVF Fukuseki Maru, got into trouble and ran aground near Durissa Bay, south of the Ugab River mouth, lying 2 km from the Skeleton Coast beach in the ocean. All 24 foreign crew members were rescued by Namibian authorities.[4]
In 1942 the British
refrigeratedcargo linerDunedin Star ran aground. All her 106 passengers and crew were eventually rescued, but at the cost of a
tug, an
SAAF aircraft and the lives of two rescuers. The account is recorded in a book Skeleton Coast by John Henry Marsh.
The coast has been the subject of a number of wildlife
documentaries, particularly concerning adaptations to extreme aridity, including the 1965 National Geographic documentary Survivors of the Skeleton Coast.[5] Many of the plant and insect species of the sand dune systems depend on the thick sea fogs which engulf the coast for their moisture and windblown detritus from the interior as food. The desert bird assemblages have been studied in terms of their
thermoregulation, coloration, breeding strategies and
nomadism.
Skeleton Coast is a novel by
Clive Cussler that uses the shifting sands of the coastline as a prominent plot device in the fourth entry in the
Oregon Files.
The plot of the 1968 fiction film A Twist of Sand involves diamonds hidden in a shipwreck buried in the sand dunes of the Skeleton Coast.
Much of season 1, episode 7 of Amazon's The Grand Tour was filmed on the Skeleton Coast.
The first episode of Wonders of the Universe featured the Skeleton Coast, and the shipwrecks there were utilized as part of an analogy by
Brian Cox to demonstrate the effects of time.
Drummer
Billy Cobham has written an album inspired by his visit to the area, called Tales from the Skeleton Coast.
Punk rock band
The Lawrence Arms released their seventh LP, Skeleton Coast, named in reference to the region.
Gallery
An aerial view of Skeleton Coast
A map from 1964 to 1965 showing the
Namibian "homelands" or
Bantustans[7] when Namibia was under the rule of apartheid South Africa.