One of the notable visible shipwrecks along the coast is the fishing schooner "Atlantic Pride", which lies between the Huab and Koichab Rivers.

Twelve miles to the south of Sylvia Hill are Easter Cliffs, high and rugged, with a hull of the steamer Balgowan Castle still gripped firmly by the rocks at the base. She carried many cases of candles in her cargo, and for years prospectors supplied themselves with
candles from her holds. Near here, too, a remarkable character from the Kimberley Diamond fields, "Moncole" Johnson, found a
wonderful depot of sailors clothing. It was packed away so neatly in tarred bales that the years had not destroyed it. Old fashioned it was, but good. Johnson and his labourers rigged themselves out in the warm pea jackets and loose trousers and passed on cheerfully. 

The Cawdor Castle was stranded on 30 July 1925 and its wreck is located south of the famous Eduard Bohlen wreck. Hundreds of Germans were deported on Cawdor Castle in 1919 when South Africa had taken full control over the German South West Africa (presently Namibia). Interestingly enough, Cawdor Castle cargo included large number of whiskey crates.

The København departed from Nørresundby in Northern Jutland for Buenos Aires on 21 September 1928 on its tenth, and final, voyage. The captain was Hans Andersen; 75 persons were aboard, including 26 crew and 45 cadets. The goal was to unload a shipload of chalk and bagged cement in Buenos Aires, take on another load of cargo and sail for Melbourne, and then bring a shipment of Australian wheat back to Europe.
The København arrived at Buenos Aires on 17 November 1928, impressing the locals, in particular emigrant Danes. The cargo was unloaded; however, the departure was delayed as there were no paying commissions to take the cargo to Australia. Finally, on 14 December 1928, Captain Andersen decided to ship out to Australia without a cargo. The voyage was expected to take 45 days. On 22 December 1928 the København exchanged radio messages with the Norwegian steamer William Blumer, indicating they were about 900 miles from Tristan da Cunha and that "all is well". The Blumer attempted to contact the København again later that night, but received no response. The ship was never heard from again.

There is a number of theories for the København's disappearance as well as a number of sightings.

In July 1930, the crew of an Argentine freighter sighted a five-masted "phantom ship" during a gale. The captain took their statements and wondered if this was the "wraith of the Copenhagen". Further sightings came in the following weeks from Easter Island and the Peruvian coast. Later some wreckage, including a piece of stern bearing the name "København", was reportedly found off West Australia.

A search vessel was sent to Tristan da Cunha. A large sailing ship with a broken foremast had been sighted in late January. With her sails only partly set and low in the water, the drifting vessel showed no signs of life. Locals were unable to reach her because of bad weather but had found no wreckage and thought she must have passed by the island. With the assistance of a small Australian intestate steamer, the Junee, the search continued for some months, but without result. At one point it was surmised that wreckage might drift to the Western Australian coast. A plane was chartered to fly from Fremantle to Northwest Cape, but again nothing was found. The Danish government declared the Copenhagen, her captain, crew and cadets lost.

Another version suggests that Copenhagen might have encountered a tidal wave. As her holds were empty and she sailed only in ballast she might have capsized in bad weather.

In 1934, the son of Argentina’s President visited the United States telling a strange story. Men from a whaler working off Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic had found a sealed bottle containing a ‘log’ or diary of a surviving cadet of the Copenhagen. The log told a grim story. The Copenhagen struck an iceberg. There was no option for those aboard but to take to the lifeboats. In the distance they saw their fine ship crushed between two icebergs. The diary ended with "It is snowing and a gale blows. I realize our fate. This sea has taken us beyond the limits of this world."

Whatever the authenticity of this now missing document, the story fitted the predominant theory about the disappearance of the Copenhagen, like the Titanic, victim to a drifting iceberg.

Rumours, theories and searches for the lost barque have continued ever since. In 2012 divers found a wreck on Tristan da Cunha that some believe might be the missing ship. The Danish government and the Danish East Asiatic Company were reportedly taking the suggestion seriously enough to establish the truth of this possibility. But nothing has since been reported.

The only trace of the Copenhagen disappearance were 7 skeletons, dressed in torn sea jackets, found in 1935 in the Namib Desert in the Skeleton Coast (Atlantic coast of Namibia). Anthropologists confirmed that remains belonged to Europeans judging by the skulls structure. Patterns on the copper buttons of the pea jackets which skeletons were dressed in belonged to the uniform of the Danish merchant fleet cadets as experts established.

Local tribesmen were questioned and according to them a several years earlier they found a broken boat on shore. It means that at least one boat from the Kobenhavn reached the shore, but sailors died of hunger and thirst on the deserted African coast. The owners of the East Asian company no longer had any doubts, because until 1935 only one training vessel of Denmark - the Copenhagen - was lost.

The steamboat "Maridal"
1926: Dr. Hans Merensky discovers diamonds south of the Orange river. Mining and production equipment, machinery and building material are supplied by Metje & Ziegler. The steam boat "Maridal" runs aground near Possession Island. In order to speed up the sale of the salvaged timber, Metje establishes a branch in Walvis Bay and stores part of the timber there.

1927: An event of outstanding importance is the purchase of the steamboat Maridal, which ran aground near Possession Island in 1926. Timber salvaged from the Maridal is shipped to Walvis Bay to handle the extensive business which pours in from Windhoek and the north. This results in a full branch being opened at Walvis Bay.

"The Portuguese steamer Mossamedes had been wrecked off Cape Frio in a dense fog seven years earlier. Of the 258 souls on board, six of the seven boats launched, containing 227 passengers and crew were picked up by rescue ships but the fate of the seventh boat remained a mystery. Until Suskin's party came across a large amount of flotsam on the beach at the cape. Deck chairs, ship's furniture, and dozens of demijohns of port wine - still drinkable! Suskin postulated that the boat had reached shore safely, but the survivors had died of thirst. When Suskin awoke the following morning having slept on a sand dune he noticed a pair of shoes nearby. Digging through the sand, he found a human skull. In all, they recovered thirty one skeletons amid the wreckage, and they buried them with what Christian honours they could. In a lighter moment, the porters had brought little in the way of clothing and were feeling the cold. When Suskin's party moved out, the natives were dressed in silk evening gowns from a steamer trunk. "It provided a little comic relief after the discovery of the skeletons" Suskin observed."

Read: STRIKES AT NIGHT IN ROUGH SEA

Merced Sun-Star, Volume 55, Number 23, 27 April 1923

Mystery Surrounds Wreck Of Steamer Off African Coast

LONDON, April 26. Two hundred and thirty-seven persons are missing from an abandoned Portuguese passenger steamship off the African coast, said a Capetown despatch to the Daily Express today. A vessel picked up an S O S from the Portuguese steamer Messamenes. Search revealed the ship deserted and helpless. Investigation showed she hailed from Portuguese ports and had carried 138 passengers as well as a crew of 99. All had taken refuge in lifeboats. The relief ship reported it was searching for the boats. Advices received in the late afternoon said the 237 persons from the Mossamedes were still missing. The passengers included 29 women and 35 children.
The Mossamedes, a vessel of 4,600 tons, hailed from Lisbon. The steamship Fort Victor, which went to the assistance of the Mossamedes, reported she carried dynamite in her cargo. The condition of the deserted vessel indicated she was in no immediate danger of sinking. It was assumed the seamen and passengers, fearing pounding of the high seas would explode the dynamite, decided to flee. Heavy seas were running and the Mossamedes was wallowing at a dangerous angle when the Port Victor arrived on the scene. After makingsure no one was on board, the Port Victor began a search of nearby winters and sent out wireless messages for other vessels to join the hunt.

From Mogamat Salie Saban (mogamat.s.saban67@gmail.com):

The name of this Norwegian whaler is "PENTAUR", it was part of a group whalers that have hunted whales in the Namibian waters.

This fishing trawler wrecked in Sandwich Harbour in Walvis Bay area.

The shipwreck was discovered by a Namdeb worker, Kapaandu Shatika on 1 April 2008. Diamond prospectors in Namibia nearly a decade ago stumbled upon remnants of a shipwrecked Portuguese vessel whose trading journey to India was cut short by a storm in 1533. Today the artifacts from the doomed ship, described by archaeologists as one of that era's most important finds, remain a hidden treasure. The remains of the ship owned by Portuguese King Joao III, identified by archaeologists as the Bom Jesus. While the fate of the crew of the Bom Jesus is unknown, the ship's relics include 2,266 Portuguese and Spanish gold and silver coins, pewter plates, cutlery handles, a brass medical syringe and goods that were to be traded for spices in India, ingots stamped with the trident symbol of a German trading house, and elephant ivory believed to have been transported from West Africa to Lisbon, the Portuguese capital. Wood planks from the ship's structure and weapon parts are kept in tanks of water, a conservation process that removes corrosion-causing salt. It is possible that the ship may be linked to Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias, who went missing in 1500. The sunken ship's rich treasure includes a total of 2,266 gold and silver coins that were found underneath its planks.

According to Werz (2007), the Vlissingen was a Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC ship) that was on its way to Table Bay from Middleburg in the then Dutch republic. The ship was likely carrying European goods for trade in the Far East where the Dutch had overtaken the Portuguese in controlling the lucrative trade for Chinese porcelain, Indian spices, and other commodities. Werz (2007) stresses that the Vlissingen was identified based on the coinage that washed ashore in Meob bay on the Namibian coast. It is thought that the coins were minted around 1746 in the then Dutch Republic.
Historical significance
The wrecking of this ship on the Namibian coast highlights the treacherous nature of the coast and the importance of the Namibian coast as a route for the ship that sailed from Europe to Asia. Based on the earlier contacts between indigenous people on the Namibian coast and seafarers (Kinahan 2000) there is a strong possibility that the Vlissingen might have veered close to the shore looking for trade or refreshing their ship with fresh food and water. This put the ship within an important historic period that was dominated by the Dutch in the Far East. To highlight the linkage of the Vlissingen shipwreck to the Netherlands, it was established from Mr. Von Schumann who informed that he once benefitted from funding provided by the Dutch Embassy in Namibia. This funding enabled him to receive training in the Netherlands concerning the study of this shipwreck. What this funding indicates is that the linkage of this shipwreck to the Netherlands is well known and is appreciated by the Dutch government. It is a further indication of the potential economic significance of Vlissingen that can be derived through sustainable tourism.

The Zeila was stranded on 25 August 2008 in the early morning hours near “Die Walle”, a popular fishing spot about 14 km south of Henties Bay. The fishing trawler was retired by Hangana Fishing of Walvis Bay, was sold as scrap metal to an Indian company and got stranded after it came loose from its towing line while on its way to Bombay shortly after it left Walvis Bay.

YouTube aerial video Zeila:

As the Zeila had been stripped to its shell it was decided to tow her to India. In August 2008 the Lara left Walvis Bay harbour on it's way to Bombay, with the Zeila in tow. In the middle of the night, not far beyond the Walvis Bay harbour limits, the towing line broke and the Zeila began to drift. Two Indian crewmen, who were at the mercy of the rough Atlantic waters, who were on board with nothing more than a life jacket and a handheld walkie talkie. After a terrifying night, cut off from the world and with little hope of survival, dawn finally brought some hope. During the night the Zeila had drifted close to shore and finally came to rest on a sandbank near a popular fishing spot. Being a weekday, the fishing spot would normally have been empty, but luck was on the side of the crewmen. It was a public holiday and several fishermen had decided to make the best of the day and go fishing. Frantically the two crewmen signalled the fishermen, who alerted Henties Bay authorities to the plight of the two men. In Henties Bay two well known Namibian businessmen, Quinton Liebenberg and Archie Van der Merwe, jumped into their racing rubber duck and began what was later to be described as a nail biting rescue. Heading through waves at high tide, the two men made their way to the stranded Zeila. After a struggle of close to an hour, Liebenberg and Van der Merwe finally managed to get their rubber duck along side the stranded Zeila. The two Indian crewmen now had to make a leap of faith from the Zeila into the rubber duck. To the encouraging cheers from onlooking fishermen the two jumped and landed safely in the rubber duck. Once on shore the crew were taken to hospital and treated for shock and minor injuries.
GPS coordinates: -22.241140, 14.353603
See aerial video

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