The statue of Bartolomeu Dias on South Africa House, the South African High Commission in London.Image: Bartolomeu_Dias,_South_Africa_House.JPG: RedCoat (en:User:RedCoat10) derivative work: Biser Todorov (talk) · CC BY-SA 3.0Bartolomeu Dias lands at Mossel Bay after rounding the tip of Africa
For decades Portuguese captains had crept down the west coast of Africa, looking for a sea route to the spices of India. In 1487 King John II sent Bartolomeu Dias south with three ships. Off the coast of present-day Namibia a storm drove them far out to sea for days. When Dias turned east and then north again, there was no coast where he expected it: without seeing it, he had passed the southern end of the continent. On 3 February 1488 his ships put in at a bay he named São Brás, now Mossel Bay in South Africa, where the crews took on water and traded with Khoikhoi herders; the meeting ended in a clash in which one Khoikhoi man was killed. Dias’s voyage proved that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans met, and a decade later Vasco da Gama followed his route to India.
Source: South African History Online: Bartolomeu Dias reaches present-day Mossel Bay ↗
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