Old pics of Cape Town

Look what  found on flickr: the Bygone Cape Town Set by user Etiennedup, who says:

A while ago I looked for some sixties and seventies photos of Cape Town on the Net. To my amazement I could not readily find any.
Having spent some of my most memorable times in the Mother city, I undertook to do something about it, and what you see here is part of an ongoing project to share some of the images of bygone Cape Town. I start off with eleven photos of of Cape Town that must count amongst the earliest known colour images taken of the city. Also included are early post cards and b/w photos. Shall be adding more……..

He may have started with 11, but he’s now amassed 814, with almost 94,000 views at the time of writing. Wow.

There’s plenty of interesting stuff in there and it’s great for a good browse if you have a spare half hour (or more) (or less).
My particular favourite is this one of the S.A. Seafarer not faring ever so well in the S.A. Sea back in 1966.

My mother-in-law – who was living in Mouille Point at that time – was part of the crowd that watched the vessel being smashed onto the rocks. Or so she says anyway: I don’t see her there.

You might like to compare and contrast this image with the one here to see how things have changed over the past 45 years. Use the Green Point lighthouse as a reference point – it’s the red and white diagonally-striped building.
(Or, if you’re looking at the photo above, the grey and white diagonally-striped building.)

In both cases, it has a big, bright, rotating light on the top of it.

Not that that did the S.A. Seafarer much good.

7 thoughts on “Old pics of Cape Town

  1. Oh wow- I remember this night so well. I was a midshipman in the SA Navy and sailed from Saldanha to Cape Town in a small ship on the night that the Seafarer was wrecked. It was like riding a roller coaster all the way, with most of the crew seasick. Cape Town has great beaches and oceans, but they can become awesome.

  2. 50 year anniversary of the wreck approaching. this is how my wife and her family arrived in South Africa!

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