The sad tale of the Tigers

Baia dos Tigres (Bay of the Tigers) was once a bustling little community on a secluded peninsula off the Southern Angolan coast administered by Portugal but in March 1962 a severe storm severed the spit from the mainland – rendering the remote ’Tigres isthmus an island.

The storm also sheared a water pipeline from the mount of the Cunene River (it was officially opened the previous year) to the long sandbank. The catastrophe left the unfortunate people living and working on Baia dos Tigres even more isolated.

With their fresh water supply now completely cut off, the Tigers – as the thousand or so souls working in the fish factories on the island of nearly 35 km long and 11 km wide called themselves – were again depended on regular visits by boat or ‘plane to replenish their meagre water reserve. Even so, the workers remained.

However, in 1975, on the eve of Angolan independence from Portugal, the total population of Saint Martinho dos Tigres was evacuated from the island. The fish factories were abandoned, and the landmass became a ghost island. Most of the buildings, including a sanitary station, a school, radio-telegraph station, hospital, maritime building, and chapel, still stand forlorn and forgotten along the single, cemented street (it also used to serve as a runway) with the desert sand claiming it slowly but surely.

The name of the bay and island apparently originated from the stripes formed by sediment on the dune massif on the desolate Namib coastline, although some maintain it was due to brown hyenas scavenging the coast being mistaken for tigers. To visit the deserted island is possible but not easy, as the only passage is through the dreaded ‘Doodsakker’.