26/03/2023
Cape Town illustration
Dassen island lighthouse was built during 1893 by the Chance Brothers; famously known during their time as ‘the greatest glass manufacturers of Britain.’ The island is home to some of the oldest structures in South Africa. During the 1900s the island was used for commercial penguin harvesting, though activity was stopped in 1946 due to its destructive nature towards the bird population on the island. Evidently there are records claiming that over
600 000 penguin eggs were harvested during 1919. Many endangered and rare species of birds are living on Dassen island, such as the bank and crowned cormorants.
The Enteroctopus magnificus, more commonly known as Southern giant octopus, are generally found above depths of 1000m around the coasts of South Africa and Namibia sometimes as close as the sand, or muddy banks near the coastlines. South African oceans also house the more widely known, common octopus, as featured in the Oscar winning South African documentary “My octopus teacher,” these octopus are called ‘seekat’ and ‘ingwane’ in South African languages or are scientifically known as Octopus vulgaris.
The ship steering wheel was inspired by a secret navy organisation running within Simonstown, later expanding along the South African coast, during WW2 1939-1945. British specialists were tasked with the mission to set up an accurate and efficient German u-boat locating system to locate German u-boats anywhere in the world, via radio waves, also later used to receive and translate Morse code between the Allies. Lt J S Bennett, a royal navy officer from England arrived in Simon’s Town late 1939 seeking assistance from the Royal Navy to establish the organisation. However, the operation ran under extreme secrecy to prevent German intelligence from finding out about the organisation's existence, and many local citizens weren’t aware of its existence even after the war. The u-boats were located using a technical system of high frequency direction finding known as HuffDuff, high frequency waves travelled by spreading across the ground and into an atmospheric level, ionosphere. The signals would soon reflect back on earth, but not at consistent angles, resulting in incorrect bearings, this is what led to South Africa being chosen for the operation, since it was considered a well placed geographical location with the best capabilities for the task. http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol111ns.html
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