Sandwich Harbor
| Sandwich Harbor Sandwich Bay, Sandwichbaai |
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| Waters | South Atlantic | |
| Land mass | southern africa | |
| Geographical location | 23 ° 22 ′ 0 ″ S , 14 ° 29 ′ 0 ″ E | |
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| width | approx. 2 km | |
| length | approx. 10 km | |
Sandwich Harbor (rarely German Sandwichhafen or Portuguese Porto d'Ilheo ) is located on the South Atlantic , about 42 kilometers south of the city of Walvis Bay in Namibia .
Sandwich Harbor is both the name of a former harbor on the Namibian Southern Atlantic Coast , and a name for this bay itself this is very rare too. Sandwich Bay ( Afrikaans : Sandwichbaai ; English : Sandwich Bay called). Today it is usually understood as the lagoon , which is created due to the increasing silting of the bay . It is therefore no longer a bay in the classic sense. The lagoon is about 10 kilometers long.
nature and environment
Sandwich Harbor is a wetland area recognized internationally as particularly important by the Ramsar Convention . Sandwich Harbor is one of the four sections of the Namib-Naukluft-Park . Sandwich Harbor can only be reached by boat or 4x4 from Walvis Bay during the day.
The area is surrounded by reed grasses and sand dunes of the Namib , both sea and land , and the lagoon located in it due to the shifting of the sand masses is - like the larger Walvis Bay wetland - a huge colony of birds (up to 450,000 animals), which countless Provides an optimal habitat for sea birds ; including (2008 census):
- 45,000 small flamingos
- 10,000 large flamingos
- 60,000–170,000 terns
as well as cormorants , pelicans and other aquatic animals.
The area is a nationally and internationally recognized Important Bird Area .
history
The sandwich port , also called sandfish port (from afrikaans : Sandvis ), went back to a port founded by Portuguese sailors in 1486, but in the course of its history it was little more than an abandoned point between the Namib desert and the Atlantic Ocean . A padrão (stone cross ) set about 20 km to the north bears witness to this past. The inaccessible coast was annexed by England in 1796 , but the sandwich port, which dates back to the Portuguese, became part of German South West Africa in 1884 and was a brief point of contact for the colony . In 1889 the port gained political and economic relevance as a supply port for what was then German South West Africa and in the immediate vicinity of the then English Walvis Bay . At times there was a fishing facility and a slaughterhouse. However, the port itself was replaced in its function by the port of Swakopmund from 1893 .
literature
- Mary Seely, John Pallett: Namib - Secrets of a desert uncovered. Venture Publications, Windhoek 2008, ISBN 978-3-941602-06-9 .
- Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon , Volume 3, Leipzig 1920, p. 250.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Mary Seely, John Pallett: Namib - Secrets of a desert uncovered. Venture Publications, Windhoek 2008, ISBN 978-3-941602-06-9 , pp. 33-49.