In May 1815, a British East Indiaman, the Arniston, was rounding the Cape in convoy on a journey to repatriate wounded English soldiers from Ceylon. The ship lacked a chronometer – an expensive instrument at the time – and consequently had to rely on other ships in the fleet to calculate the longitude of the group. After being separated from the convoy in heavy seas, the captain of the Arniston was obliged to rely solely on dead reckoning to navigate. Thinking incorrectly that he was 100 miles (160 km) west of the Cape of Good Hope, the master steered north for St Helena and ran the ship onto the rocks at Waenhuiskrans. Only six of the 378 souls on board survived the wrecking.
The survivors spent several days on the beach before being discovered by a farmer's son. A memorial, a replica of which can be seen today, was erected on the beach by the wife of Colonel Giels, whose four unaccompanied children were lost in the tragedy
