Slangkop Lighthouse

This guide to Slangkop Lighthouse follows the string of shipwrecks along this stretch of coast below Chapman's Peak, from the steamer Kakapo, which mistook the peak for Cape Point in 1900, to the Clan Monroe, which struck rock here five years later carrying cyanide and dynamite bound for the gold mines. It traces the decision by the Cape's governor, Sir Francis Hely-Hutchinson, to order a lighthouse built in 1906, and the two hundred and seventy-two cast-iron plates shipped from an English foundry and bolted together on the exposed point. Run your hand along a seam and you can still feel the bolt heads.