Old Cape Point Lighthouse

This guide to the Old Cape Point Lighthouse in Cape Town opens with the ocean liner Lusitania rounding the point from Lourenco Marques in thick fog on the night of April 18, 1911, carrying wealthy holidaymakers above deck and hundreds of African labourers in steerage. It traces the cast-iron tower's construction in England and its shipment around the Cape in 1860, and keeper Charles Starling's account of cloud swallowing its beam for hundreds of hours a year. Stand here and consider how a light built to save ships could vanish into its own fog.