Why is the skeleton coast in South Africa called so?

Answer 1

Skeleton Coast is strictly the west coast of Namibia. . . .there were many shipwrecks since the time of Portuguese and Spanish explores looking for a route to the East around the Cape. The Namib desert runs north to south and is waterless except for the river mouths running into the Atlantic. Also many prospectors and other adventurers went looking for diamonds and perished in the desert.

Answer 2

The Skeleton Coast is the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean coast of Namibia and south of Angola from the Kunene River south to the Swakop River, although it is sometimes used to describe the entire Namib Desert coast. The Bushmen of the Namibian interior called it the region "The Land God Made in Anger", while Portuguese sailors once referred to it as "The Gates of Hell."

The coast is named for the bleached whale and seal bones which covered the shore when the whaling industry was still active, as well as the skeletal shipwrecks caused by rocks offshore in the fog. More than a thousand vessels of various sizes and areas litter the coast.

Answer 3

It is not in South Africa but actually Namibia, former South-West Africa. The hot air from the Namib desert meets the cold air from the South Atlantic and produces fog banks along a coast with treacherous rocks and sandbanks. This fog has caused many ships to run aground or on rocks or get beached. Being being beached on an empty Namib coast next to the desert was not much fun either. Anyway on account of this the coast is known as the "Skeleton Coast".

Answer 4

Because of the high number of ships that have ran aground their and because of the hundreds of whale carcases that litter the coast line from the days of whale hunting in the southern Atlantic

Answer 5

It is named after the many whale skeletons beached on the shore when South West Africa was still frequented by whales and whale hunters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeleton_Coast
http://www.imagineafrica.co.uk/Namibia/Skeleton_Coast

Answer 6

I think that it's in Namibia, but as said the amount of shipwrecks. I think the desert goes all the way to the ocean so even if you survived the wrecks, then you had to walk for several hundred miles with no water.

Answer 7

It's the northern coast of Namimbia....Desolate and beautiful.....and littered with ship-wrecks..

Answer 8

There are a lot of skeletons there.

Answer 9

i will take a wild stab the following and say the Gobi. ******* Whoa! That stab change into wilder than I envisioned. Please be at liberty to down-thumb me at will. ******* i will take the Namib for 2 hundred, Alex.

Answer 10

Because of the ship wrecks and the dead sailors,,,