Swakopmund had no natural harbour,
so the ships had to anchor about one
kilometre from the shoreline. Cargo was off- loaded onto
rafts or special surf boats designed to negotiate the heavy seas. The Kroo tribesmen
had used a similar method on the Liberian coast for many years, and
teams of these skilled boatmen were brought in under contract to
Swakopmund to ‘work the surf.’ At the height of activity the Woermann
Line employed nearly 600 of these men.
The general movements of all
settlers within the colony was known. Native workers employed within
the Swakopmund Magisterial District were issued with a numbered
stamped brass identity token which had to be carried at all times.
These tokens are now collector items.
Rafts were built onto
which livestock, horses, or heavy cargo could be loaded and then towed
to the shoreline. This
method of off loading was found effective and continued even after the
jetty had been constructed. Between 1904 and 1906, 11,065 horses were
landed this way, and by the outbreak of the Great War 31,000 horses and
34,000 mules had been moved through the port of Swakopmund.
The Mole:
The need for more suitable method of offloading ships
at Swakopmund was cause for
much discussion. Some favoured the construction of a jetty while
traditionalists contended that a harbour should be built
at Swakopmund, and in 1898
FW Ortloff, an architect by appointment of the Government, landed at
Swakopmund to oversee the construction of an artificial harbour basin.
A suitable stone deposit for quarrying was found nearby, and a small
rail line along which to move the loads, and a water pipe had to be
constructed before the massive concrete blocks could be made. These
weighed in at over three hundred kilograms each.
On 2nd
September 1899 the first of these blocks was laid at the site where
the Mole was to be constructed. A point near to
where Kurt von Francois had previously placed his beacons near the
high dune at Swakopmund. The concrete and stone pier
was to extended 375 m into the sea and the cross leg at the
end of the pier was 35 m in length, and the project cost over 2.5
million Reich's Marks.
