Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay, becoming the first European known to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of Africa.

Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese mariner and explorer. In 1488, he became the first European navigator to round the southern tip of Africa and to demonstrate that the most effective southward route for ships lies in the open ocean, well to the west of the African coast. His discoveries were later used by Vasco da Gama to establish a sea route between Europe and Asia.

Mossel Bay is a harbour town of about 170,000 people on the Garden Route of South Africa. It is an important tourism and farming region of the Western Cape Province. Mossel Bay lies 400 kilometres east of the country's seat of parliament, Cape Town, and 400 km west of Gqeberha, the largest city in the Eastern Cape. The older parts of the town occupy the north-facing side of the Cape St Blaize Peninsula, whilst the newer suburbs straddle the Peninsula and have spread eastwards along the sandy shore of the Bay.

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa.