Hidden Facts about The Cape of Good Hope & Cape Point + The Flying Dutchman | Cape Town

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*Time Stamps*
00:00:00 - Intro
00:36:10 - Cape Point + It's History
02:11:06 - Taking the Cape Point Funicular to the Lighthouse
03:21:23 - Walking up to the Cape Point Lighthouse
04:02:04 - The tragic history of Cape Point's Lighthouse
06:22:08 - 22 Shipwrecks at the Cape Peninsula
06:43:11 - Cape of Good Hope or Cape of The Storms?
08:25:11 - The Legend of The Flying Dutchman
09:53:05 - Scientific Explanation for the apparitions

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*About Cape Point*
Many people mistakenly believe that Cape Point is the southern tip of Africa,
but that title belongs to Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometers to the east-southeast.
Considered by many to be the most famous Cape in the world, Cape Point has always represented a danger to sailors and their ships, since the day Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias first spotted it in 1488, more than 500 years ago.
Cape Point Lighthouse is just over 2 kilometers from the Cape of Good Hope and its story is more tragic than you might think.
Shipwrecks had been a concern on the cape since the 1400s.
In 1859 a lighthouse was built to help sailors, but it caused more damage than anything else; They built it on Pico Da Gama, which is on the summit of Cape Point, 238m above sea level, which was very high and difficult to see,
It was only after the SS Lusitania was wrecked nearby in 1911 that the proposal to build a new lighthouse at a lower altitude was finally accepted.

*About The Cape of Good Hope*

On March 12, 1488, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias saw the cape for the first time on his way to India and gave it the name Cabo das Tormentas due to the frequent storms coming from the Southwest and also to a 4-knot current that creates waves giant and dangerous sweepers.
As soon as Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal and told King João II about his find, Joãozinho thought it best to rename the Cape of Storms to the Cape of Good Hope because it symbolized the opening of the sea route to the east, and now India could be reached by sea from Europe.
Renaming it “Boa Esperança” did nothing to change the fact that even the most experienced sailors feared these waters, after many shipwrecks had occurred here that took the lives of many people on board.

*About The Flying Dutchman*
Of all these shipwrecks, the most famous is the story of the Flying Dutchman; a ship doomed to sail the oceans forever after being lost in a severe storm near the Cape.

Although it is difficult to trace a legend and we cannot confirm whether the ship actually existed, it is said that in 1641 a Dutch galleon, chartered by the Dutch East India Company, sank off the coast of the Cape of Good Hope during a devastating storm and neither ship nor crew, including their captain, a Dutchman whose name varies between Bernard Fokke and Hendrick Van der Decken, were found.
After that, many sailors claimed to have seen the Flying Dutchman, floating in the air, without touching the waters.
On July 11, 1881, the young Prince George, who 30 years later would become the King of the United Kingdom, King George the Fifth, and his older brother, Prince Albert Victor, were aboard HMS Bacchante sailing off the coast of Australia.
At 4 am, the crew claimed to be surprised by the appearance of the ghost ship.
As sailors at that time were very superstitious, maritime disasters were also attributed to the Flying Dutchman who allegedly drove ships into rocks and coral.
Nowadays, we know that such apparitions were caused by a phenomenon that causes mirages on the surface of the sea.
This happens when light bends due to different air temperatures.
It's like that mirage we see on the asphalt when it's very hot.
But of course, at that time, people didn't have this type of knowledge and the legend became popular, even being turned into a book, and later, ending up on your television.

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