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Angra Pequena

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A bay in German South-West Africa, in 26° 38' S., 15° E., discovered by Bartholomew Diaz in 1487. F. A. E. Luderitz, of Bremen, established a trading station here in 1883, and his agent concluded treaties with the neighbouring chiefs, who ceded large tracts of country to the newcomers. On the 24th of April 1884 Luderitz transferred his rights to the German imperial government, and on the following 7th of August a German protectorate over the district was proclaimed. (See Africa, § 5, and GERMAN SOUTH-WEST Africa.) Angra Pequena has been renamed by the Germans Luderitz Bay, and the adjacent country is sometimes called Luderitzland. The harbour is poor. At the head of the bay is a small town, whence a railway, begun in 1906, runs east in the direction of Bechuanaland. The surrounding country for many miles is absolute desert, except after rare but terrible thunderstorms, when the dry bed of the Little Fish river is suddenly filled with a turbulent stream, the water finding its way into the bay.

The islands off the coast of Angra Pequena, together with others north and south, were annexed to Great Britain in 1867 and added to Cape Colony in 1874. Seal Island and Penguin Island are in the bay; Ichaboe, Mercury, and Hollam's Bird islands are to the north; Halifax, Long, Possession, Albatross, Pomona, Plumpudding, and Roastbeef islands are to the south. On these islands are guano deposits; the most valuable is on Ichaboe Island.