Port Elizabeth has been an important port and harbour on the South Africa east coast ever since the first British settlers began arriving from 1820. Today it is a multi-cargo port on the western perimeter of Algoa Bay, 384 n.miles southwest of Durban and 423 n.miles east of Cape Town at Longitude 25º 42′ E, Latitude 34º 01′ S.

The first recorded reference to the area was by the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias who landed and erected a cross at Kwaaihoek in Algoa Bay on 12 March 1488. Nine years he was followed by Vasco da Gama, another Portuguese explorer who became the first European to discover a sea route to India around Africa, when he passed Algoa Bay in 1497. For several hundred years thereafter the area was noted in navigation charts as a “landing place with fresh water.”