The pretty Bay of Plettenberg has been known by many names, and that quite apart from what the earliest indigenous folk may have called it. Europeans, seafarers and settlers alike, have called it Bahia or Angra das Alagoas, Formosa Bay, Baay Content, the Bay Angola, the Keurboom River Bay and the Pisangs Rivier Baay, not necessarily in that order. On the official map of the Cape Colony dated 1895, both names Formosa and Plettenberg’s Bay are used.
It was in 1576 that a Portuguese navigator and cartographer, Mesquitada Perestrelo, named the bay Bahia Formosa (beautiful bay), for reasons no-one will contest. It is truly a beautiful vista to contemplate, looking out across the blue water hemmed by 20 kilometres of golden beach and the long arm of the Robberg peninsula which stretches 4 kilometres into the sea. From his ship, the seafarer would have seen green hills rolling into the interior up to the great mountain ranges we know as Tsitsikama and Outeniqua.
Bahia Formosa it stayed for quite a few years and still was in 1630 when a Portuguese ship, the São Gonzales, was crippled during a storm at sea and sheltered in the bay for two months to repair the damage. She carried an ill-fated crew. While lying at anchor, a raging wind cast the ship ashore with the loss of a hundred lives. The remaining crew, numbering also about a hundred, had been ashore and subsequently stayed there for several months, building two boats out of the wreckage. After erecting a sandstone rock with the words Baia Formosa carved onto it, the survivors eventually set sail, one boat safely reaching the Portuguese settlement of Mozambique, while the other’s crew were picked up by the homeward-bound St Ignatius Loyola. This ship was, however, wrecked within sight of Lisbon, with the loss of all who sailed on her.
In 1778 the governor of the Cape, Baron Joachim van Plettenberg, on returning from a journey inland, came upon the bay and named it after himself. On one of the hills overlooking the bay he erected a beacon consisting of two slate slabs held together with lead, on which were depicted the monogram of the Dutch East India Company and Van Plettenberg’s own coat of arms. This beacon was taken for safekeeping to the SA Cultural History Museum in Cape Town during 1964, and a replica put up in its place.
Van Plettenberg took note of the abundant timber growing in the region and in 1788 a timber store was built just below the beacon. From this humble stone building, the ruins of which have been restored, grew the town now affectionately referred to by all and sundry as simply, Plett.
The first load of timber was exported on the ship De Meermin in August 1788. The trade continued until the first British occupation of the Cape (1795-1803), when Knysna was deemed a safer harbour. The sinking of the ship Jane in 1888 while she was loading timber may have had something to do with this decision. Incidentally, the ship’s bell on which the words “Jane 1878 Greenock” were engraved, was used for many years in a little church on the Piesang River. Her anchor is kept on a farm at the Keurbooms River.
During the 1850”s Plettenberg Bay also became a whaling station and in 1913 a Norwegian firm erected buildings to this end on Beacon Island. In 1920 the station was moved to Natal, but the slipway can still be seen.
Beacon Island lies at the mouth of the Piesang River, and is so called because a navigational beacon was erected here in 1772. This island is now home to the squat Beacon Isle hotel and timeshare - not noted for its aesthetic value - which caters mainly to the rich and/or famous. In fact, the town itself can be said to be the playground of the more than comfortably well-off, with luxurious mansions dotting the hills sloping towards the sea.
All over Plett lovely little boutiques, antique-dealers and rustic English tea gardens abound and every year-end countless holidaymakers flock to Plett to join in the richly festive athmosphere. They come to enjoy the sundrenched beach or to visit the famed Robberg Reserve, where caves of considerable archaeological signifance can be explored.
© M.E. Botha, 2005
© M.E. Botha, 2005
© M.E. Botha, 2005