St Francis Bay is a holiday town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, situated along the R330 Regional Route, approximately 103 km south-west of Gqeberha (formerly known as Port Elizabeth) by car.
St Francis Bay is also located approximately 21 km east of Oyster Bay, 23 km south-east of Humansdorp, 24 km south-west of Jeffreys Bay, and north-east of Thyspunt, which is a preferred site for South Africa’s next nuclear power station to be built by Eskom.
St Francis Bay falls within the Kouga Local Municipality and the Sarah Baartman District Municipality.
The building style of the village section of St Francis Bay includes white painted houses with black roofs (mostly thatch) on the canals or around the golf course, or a Mediterranean building style in Santareme and Port St Francis.
The Kromme River is navigable for 14 km upstream, and is linked to the St Francis canal system.
On 11 November 2012, a fire destroyed 76 homes in St Francis Bay, almost all of them thatched-roofed.
St Francis Bay is home to the township of Sea Vista, where most of the Black Africans and Coloured people live.
History
The town’s earliest European history of the area can be traced back to 1488 when Bartolomeu Dias named the bay Golfo dos Pastores, although the bay was also known as Golfo dos Vaqueiros.
The town’s current name is derived from the Portuguese Bahia de Sâo Francisco, given in 1575 by Manuel Perestrelo to what is today St Francis Bay and Jeffreys Bay.
