History

The town is named after the Swakop River. The German settlers rendered it Swachaub, and when in 1896 the district was officially proclaimed, the version Swakopmund (German: Mouth of the Swakop) was introduced.

The Herero called the place Otjozondjii, which means 'place of seashells'.

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Mission Church and building of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft in 1938 near a visible Nazi flag.

Captain Curt von François founded Swakopmund in 1892 as the main harbour for the Imperial German colony—the natural deep-sea harbour at Walvis Bay belonged to the British. The founding date was on 8 August when the crew of gunboat Hyäne erected two beacons on the shore. Swakopmund was chosen for the availability of fresh water and a relatively easy connection into the centre of the South West African territory, particularly Otjimbingwe and Windhoek. Other sites such as Sandwich Harbour and Cape Cross were found unsuitable due to dune belts that block the way to the hinterland.

The Swakop site did not offer any natural protection to ships lying off the coast, a geographical feature sparsely located along Namibia's coast. When the first 120 Schutztruppe soldiers and 40 settlers were offloaded at Swakopmund in 1893, they had to dig caves into the sand for shelter. The offloading was done by Kru tribesmen from Liberia who used special boats. Woermann-Linie, the operator of the shipping route to Germany, employed 600 Kru at that time.

Swakopmund quickly became the main port for imports and exports for the whole territory and was one of six towns which received municipal status in 1909. Many governmental departments for German South West Africa had offices in Swakopmund. During the Herero Wars, a concentration camp for Herero people was operated in town. Inmates were forced into slave labour, resulting in the death of approximately 2,000 Herero.​

Soon, the harbour created by the "Mole" (breakwater) silted up, and in 1905, work was started on a wooden jetty, but in the long term this was inadequate.[citation needed] In 1914, construction of a steel jetty was therefore commenced.[citation needed] Trading and shipping companies founded branches in Swakopmund.

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Namibias Independence:​

Early in World War I in 1915, German South West Africa was taken over by the Union of South Africa. With this, the logistic and political barriers disappeared to use the harbour in Walvis Bay for South West Africa, as the territory now became known. In Swakopmund all harbour activities ceased, central government services disappeared, and the jetty became a pedestrian walkway. Businesses closed down, the number of inhabitants diminished, and the town fell into decline.

However, Swakopmund had been guaranteed a lifeline in a 1923 treaty in London negotiating the aftermath of World War I. Its moderate climate and location on the Atlantic made it suitable as a holiday resort for the white population of the territory, and the town was re-shaped into a tourism destination. Having lost its military importance, Swakopmund was used for recreation even during World War II, and in the 1940s and 1950s it was expanded to serve more and more tourists.

With the opening of the Rössing uranium mine in 1976, Swakopmund changed its shape once again. While this mine 60 kilometres (37 mi) to the east eventually got its own town built, Arandis, logistics and workers' accommodation were first supplied by Swakopmund.

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After Namibian independence from South Africa in 1990 many street names were changed from their original German, or in some cases, Afrikaans names, to honour Namibians, predominantly Namibians of black heritage. For example, in 2001, then-president of Namibia Sam Nujoma renamed the main street (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße) Sam Nujoma Avenue in honour of himself.

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Weather/Climate:

Late summer rains, Swakopmund, Easter 2018

Surrounded by the Namib Desert on three sides and the cold Atlantic waters to the west, Swakopmund has a desert climate (BWk, according to the Köppen climate classification) with mild conditions year-round. The average temperature ranges from 15 to 25 °C or 59 to 77 °F. Rainfall is less than 20 millimetres or 0.8 inches per year, making gutters and drainpipes on buildings a rarity. The cold Benguela Current supplies moisture for the area in the form of fog that can reach as deep as 140 km (87 mi) inland. Fog that originates offshore from the collision of the cold Benguela Current and warm air from the Hadley Cell creates a fog belt that frequently envelops parts of the Namib desert. Coastal regions can experience more than 180 days of thick fog a year.[24][25] While this has proved a major hazard to ships – more than one thousand wrecks litter the Skeleton Coast – it is a vital source of moisture for desert life. The fauna and flora of the area have adapted to this phenomenon and now rely upon the fog as a source of moisture. The climate is cold for its latitude, which is just northern of Southern Tropics, and summer months (Dec, Jan, Feb) are even colder than 20 degrees Celsius. This means summer in Swakopmund is colder than winter in Southern Florida (for example Miami), although Swakopmund is closer to the equator.​