Cape of Good Hope v Cape Agulhas

choi

Patrick McGroarty, In South Africa, Rival Points Claim to Be the Place Where Oceans Meet; Many say Atlantic and Indian oceans abut at Cape Point, but Cape Agulhas wants to turn the tide. Wall Street Journal, Sept 2, 2015 (front page)
www.wsj.com/articles/where-do-th ... h-africa-1441152307
(”where do two oceans [Atlantic and Indian] meet?”)

Note:
(a) "Most people assume the prize belongs to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point, the two knuckles on the crooked arm of land stretching 30 miles south from Cape Town."

A map with Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point (a lighthouse there), Cape Peninsula, Cape Town and False Bay (to the east of Cape Peninsula). copyright: www.cybercapetown.com.
The Cape Point Nature Reserve. CapeTown Travel Advisor, undated.
www.capetown-traveladviser.com/cape-point-nature-reserve.html

(b) "But 150 windswept miles to the southeast [of Cape of Good Hope], the 440 residents of desolate Cape Agulhas disagree."
(i) Cape Agulhas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Agulhas
(section 3 Shipping hazards: Agulhas Current (qv))

Quote:

“It is the geographic southern tip of the African continent and the beginning of the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans according to the International Hydrographic Organization.  

"The cape was named by Portuguese navigators, who called it Cabo das Agulhas—Portuguese for 'Cape of Needles'—after noticing that around the year 1500 the direction of magnetic north (and therefore the compass needle) coincided with true north in the region")

* The longitude 20 degree East passes through Cape Agulhas.
(ii) Portuguese English dictionary
agulha (noun feminine; plural agulhas; from diminutive of Latin [noun feminine] acus ‎needle): "needle"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/agulha

(c) “France and Italy have squabbled over Mont Blanc’s summit in the Alps for more than a century.”

(d) “For Mr. Burger, correcting the geographical record is the best way to boost Cape Agulhas’s torpid economy.”

The adjective “torpid” has a counterpart: torpor (noun).
(e) "Three gift shops stuffed with Cape Point refrigerator magnets and pot holders revealed just a couple of claims to represent the two oceans’ nexus."

pot holder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-holder
(f) " 'We came here for some rest and quiet,' said Shaun Visagie, a Cape Tonian spending the weekend in Agulhas with his wife. 'It’s not like you can actually see where the oceans split anyway.' "

For "Cape Tonian," see Cape Town
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Cape%20Town
(Capetonian)

choi

In 1488, likely the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias somehow thought Cape of Good Hope WAS the southern tip of Africa.

(1) Bailey W Diffie and George D Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415 - 1580.  Europe and the World in the Age of Expansion. Vol 1. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1977, at pages 161-162
https://books.google.com/books?i ... 0Bay%22&f=false
("There is no logbook, no chronicle, no diary of his [Dias'] voyage -- only the sketchy account written by João de Barros sixty years later and other even less satisfactory histories. As little is chronicled about the reception of Dias on his return as about the voyage. He apparently received no honors comparable to those heaped on Diogo Cão. The pension of twelve milreis which the king gave him from the revenues of Casa da Guiné was a modest reward for one of the most important geographical discoveries ever made by man.  Nor did João II manifest great interest in what Dias had done. He made no immediate efforts, so far as records show, to send out another expedition. The next voyage of importance was made by Vasco da Gama, almost nine years later”)


(2) Explorers; Tales of endurance and exploration. Dorling Kindersley, 2010, at pages 76-77
https://books.google.com/books?i ... 0Bay%22&f=false

Quote:

“In early January 1488, the weather conditions deteriorated, so Dias ordered his ships further out to the sea/ The Portuguese chronicler João de Barros wrote some 60 years later, 'putting out to the sea, the weather forced them to run 13 days with sail at half mast.'  As Dias discovered to his satisfaction, the storm had blown the ships around the tip of the African continent. He had also discovered the principle of safely rounding the cape by sailing wide of the dangerous currents.  [section heading:] Around the Cape  Dias set an easterly course once the storm had passed, reaching present-day Mossel Bay, South Africa, on February 3. * * * Dias continued to follow the coastline eastward * * * It was on the return voyage hat Dias observed the Cape of Good Hope [for the first time], which he named Cabo [das] Tormentas (Cape of Storms) -- after the treacherous conditions in which the ships had first passed. * * * No log or first-hand account of Dias's voyage is known to have survived, but it is likely that King João II gave the Cape its current name -- 'Good Hope' --in expectation of the flow of trade with the East. Despite the importance of the route, it was to be another nine years before Portuguese sailors would round the Cape again. Vasco da Gama" reached India.

[caption: of an ancient map:] A PASSAGE TO INDIA  Dias's observations enabled the mapping of the southern African coast for the first time. A higher temperature and a coastline that bore to the northeast led him to huess, correctly, that he had found a southerly route to the Indian Ocean.


(3)
(a) Mossel Bay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossel_Bay(is a harbour town [, not a bay]).
(b) “He [Dias] called it the Watering Place of St Blaize, but it was later renamed by the Dutch as Mossel Bay, in honour of the bountiful supply of mussels in the area.”  Dias Museum, Mossel Bay.
(c) Dutch English dictionary
mossel (noun feminine/masculine): “mussel”
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mossel