Cape Agulhas was named by early Portuguese navigators, the first to round Africa in the fifteenth century. At the southernmost point of their journey, the sailors noticed that their compass needles were unaffected by magnetic deviation, pointing true north instead. They called this point the Cape of Needles.

At this promontory, where the tip of the African continental shelf disappears undramatically into the sea to form what is known as the Agulhas Bank, the Atlantic and Indian oceans merge. The only physical evidence of this convergence is a simple stone cairn.

This is one of the world’s most treacherous stretches of coast. The often-turbulent waters are shallow, rock-strewn and subject to heavy swells and strong currents. This is the graveyard for more than 250 once-proud vessels, including the Japanese trawler Meisho Maru 38, whose rusting wreck can be seen 2 kilometres west of the Agulhas lighthouse.