Cape of Good Hope

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The rocky headland at the south-western corner of Africa that stands, in every account of the period, for the moment the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were shown to be one body of water. It is not in fact the southern tip of the continent — Cape Agulhas, about 150 km to the south-east, is — nor is it the meeting point of the two oceans, which is a matter of hydrographic convention rather than geography. What it is, is the corner around which the wind and the current change: ships rounding it leave the South Atlantic westerlies and pick up the Agulhas current and the Indian Ocean monsoon system, and the seas where those regimes meet produce the steep, breaking conditions that gave the cape its first Portuguese name. Rounding it was the hinge of the Portuguese project, and later the site of the Dutch victualling station that became Cape Town.