Port Elizabeth - History

History

The area around what is now called Algoa Bay was first settled by hunting and gathering people ancestral to the San at least 100,000 years ago. A little over 2,000 years ago, agriculturalist populations ancestral to the Xhosa migrated into the region from the north, eventually displacing or assimilating the region's indigenes.

The first Europeans to have visited the area were Portuguese explorers Bartholomew Dias, who landed on St Croix Island in Algoa Bay in 1488, and Vasco da Gama who noted the nearby Bird Island in 1497. For centuries, the area was simply marked on navigation charts as "a landing place with fresh water".

One of the Portuguese's main goals in the Indian Ocean was to take over the lucrative trade of Arab and Afro-Arabian merchants who plied routes between the East African coast and India. As they took over that trade they established trading with their colony in India, Goa. The name, "Algoa," meant, "to Goa," just as the port further north in present day Mozambique, "Delagoa," meant, "from Goa." Algoa reflected that it was the port from which ships left for Goa during the season when the winds were favorable, while Delagoa was the port in Africa at which they arrived from Goa in the season when the winds for the return trip were favorable.

The area was part of the Cape Colony, which had a turbulent history between its founding by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 and the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.

In 1799, during the first British occupation of the Colony during the Napoleonic Wars, a stone Fort was built, named Fort Frederick after the Duke of York. This fort, built to protect against a possible landing of French troops, overlooked the site of what later became Port Elizabeth and is now a monument.

In 1804 the town of Uitenhage was founded along the Swartkops River, a short distance inland from its estuary at Algoa Bay. Uitenhage formed part of the district of Graaff-Reinet at that time. The city of Uitenhage was incorporated in the new Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality together with Port Elizabeth and the town of Despatch in 2001.

From 1814 to 1821 the Strandfontein farm, which later became the Summerstrand beach suburb of Port Elizabeth, was in possession of Piet Retief, who later became a Voortrekker leader and was killed in 1837 by Zulu king Dingane during negotiations about land. An estimated 500 men, woman and children of his party were massacred. After Retief the Strandfontein farm was owned by Frederik Korsten after whom another suburb of Port Elizabeth is named today.

In 1820 a party of 4,000 British settlers arrived by sea, encouraged by the government of the Cape Colony as a settlement would strengthen the border region between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa people. At this time the seaport town was founded by Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, the Acting Governor of the Cape Colony, who named it after his late wife, Elizabeth. The Apostolic Vicariate of Cape of Good Hope, Eastern District, was established in the city in 1847, and in 1861 the Port Elizabeth was granted the status of autonomous municipality. The town expanded, building a diverse community comprising European, Cape Malay and other immigrants, and particularly rapidly so after 1873 when the railway to Kimberley was built. Prime Minister John Molteno had formed the Cape Government Railways in 1872, and the massive expansion of the Cape Colony's railway network over the following years saw the harbour of Port Elizabeth servicing a large area of the Cape's interior.

During the Second Boer War, the port was an important transit point for soldiers, horses and materials headed to the front by railway. While the city itself did not see any conflict, many refugees from the war moved into the city. These included Boer women and children interned by the British in a concentration camp. Following that war, the Horse Memorial was erected to honour the tens of thousands of horses and mules that died during the conflict.