406 ANlSrUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN mS.TITUTION, 1942 



a station of the first class. So vigorously was it prosecuted that it was 

 Hearing completion when the war broke out. The submarine base has 

 been improved. A floating dock supplements the fixed dry dock. 

 Storage for petrolerim has been enlarged by building concealed tanks.^^ 



Still more ambitious has been the construction of an outer roads by 

 building a new jetty, 2,500 meters long, southeastward from Dakar 

 Point. It extends into 8 fathoms of water and provides anchorage 

 calm enough for large ships, particularly war vessels. Craft of 35,000 

 tons can ride there out of reach of tornadoes, though not well pro- 

 tected from the choppy waves of the dry season. Since the outbreak 

 of hostilities the entrance to the anchorage and harbor has been closed 

 with a boom. Fifteen kilometers of meter-gauge rails and six kilo- 

 meters of roads serve the port. 



Associated with naval expansion has been reinforcement of the land 

 fortifications on Goree, Point Bel Air, and Cape Manuel. Warehouse-s 

 on the Peanut Plain and a seaplane port in Hann Cove under Bel Air 

 Point can be used for warplanes, supplementing the naval and land 

 defense. The place is now a stronghold; it has been called ''the 

 African Gibraltar." 



A AVORLD FOCUS 



Dakar owes its cosmopolitan character to its function as a contact 

 point. Location makes it a convenient port of call for all ships plying 

 between the North and the South Atlantic, except those in the Ameri- 

 can coasting traffic. Besides French lines in the South American and 

 West African trade, one connecting France and Morocco has extended 

 its sailings from Casablanca to Dakar, twice as far from the home 

 port. (Marseilles and Bordeaux are the French termini.) ^" All ships 

 plying regularly past the Cape call, and many tramps find it a good 

 place to drop coal or pick up peanuts. 



Location at one end of the waist of the Atlantic has led to the 

 creation of a powerful naval base. For the same reason Dakar is 

 the point of departure for the oldest transatlantic air line. A weekly 

 postal plane links Paris and Rio de Janeiro, each of which is about 

 48 hours from Dakar. Two fields are used: for seaplanes crossing 

 the ocean, at Hann Cove with facilities on Point Bel Air; for land 

 planes in the European traffic, on level land near Ouakam. Dakar 

 is likewise the terminus of an air route that traverses the length of 

 the Sudan. 



Licidental to its world-wide sea and air routes, the place has been 

 linked by cable to Brazil, to the Guinea coast of Africa, and to Brest, 



^ Herman Rockel, Dakar, das Zentruin der seestratogischen Stellung Frankreichs am 

 Mittleren Atlantik. Zeitschr. Geopolitik, vol. 17, pp. 419-426, 1940. 



i*For a list of lines calling regularly at Dakar see Charles Moraz4, Dakar. Ann. de 

 G^ogr., vol. 45, pp. 607-631, reference on pp. 612-613, 1936. 



