Sao Bento Shipwreck, Coffee Bay

"One of my favorite Wild Coast destinations is Msikaba. It's also relatively near the wreck site of the 900 ton Portuguese carrack, Sao Bento, which were wrecked on the night of 24 April 1554.(near Coffee Bay)

Locals have been digging and looking for treasure for generations and I've met a local who found porcelain (look like pieces of a broken plate) and gold, including a gold bar. He refused to show me the gold bar, but showed me what looks like a lid off some or other small container. Definitely gold. When I go to Msikaba, I go there to relax, to do nothing, so we spend hours on the nearby beach, swimming, walking around on the island and fishing. On one of my recent trips, I sat on the island under the beach umbrella with the cooler box next to me, enjoying a few cold ones while swambo and mini swambo tried to catch small fish with mini swambo's net in the rock pools. While sitting on the sand I took a flat stone and started digging, about half a meter down I found 2 pieces of carnelian beads which came off the Sao Bento. The tide started coming in so we had to go. The next day I went back to the island, started digging and found another carnelian bead in almost perfect shape. It was an amazing experience to find something off a ship which were wrecked more than 460 years ago. Locals can't believe I found 3 beads in two days, as many of them have been digging there for 15 years and not find anything."

The earliest known wreck is the Portuguese carrack, Sao Bento, which grounded in 1554 on the rocks of the little island where the Msikaba River meets the sea. Only 23 people survived!