Walvis Bay’s Early History and the Portuguese Explorers
The written history of Walvis Bay begins at sea. In the late 15th century, Portuguese ships were pushing further and further down the west coast of Africa, searching for a sea route to India. One of those voyages brought the first recorded European visitors to the bay.
Bartolomeu Dias Arrives
In December 1487, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias sailed into the bay during his voyage south. He named it after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Soon afterwards, Dias went on to round the southern tip of Africa, opening the way for the sea route to the East.
For the Portuguese, the bay was a useful sheltered anchorage on a harsh and mostly empty coast. But with little fresh water and no obvious trade, they didn’t settle there.
A Harbour on a Difficult Coast
The Namibian coast is one of the most challenging in the world for sailors: cold currents, thick fog and endless sand dunes, with very few safe places to land. The bay, protected by the Pelican Point sand spit, was one of the few natural harbours along hundreds of kilometres of coastline.
That made it important to passing ships long before anyone built a town there.
The People of the Area
The area was not empty. Local communities, including the Topnaar people, lived along the nearby Kuiseb River, and some traded with visiting ships in the centuries that followed.
From Anchorage to Whaling Stop
In the 1700s, ships from Europe and North America began to use the bay as a base for hunting whales. That chapter gave the bay the name it still carries today.
See the History Today
The bay that sheltered Dias’s ships is the same one you look out over from the Waterfront today. Take a boat cruise across the bay toward Pelican Point to see it from the water, just as the first sailors did.
Back to: The History of Walvis Bay