Samson Dyer

Who is Samson Dyer?

Samson Gabriel Dyer aka Sampson Dyers was an African-American noted for his association with Dyer Island off the Cape Agulhas coast of South Africa.

As a young man Dyer moved to Nantucket where he found work as a harpooner on a whale boat. In 1806 he boarded the vessel “President” bound for Cape Town. Arrived in Cape Town, he was employed by the firm Cloete, Reitz and Anderson as a harpooner for the whaling industry in False Bay. Later he was sent to an unnamed island to prepare sealskins for the company. Here he also gathered guano which he sold as fertiliser to farmers in the Overberg area.

The greater part of the Cape Fur Seal colony was to be found on neighbouring Geyser Rock. With the guano-boom of the 19th century, guano was removed from Dyer Island regularly until the 1980s. African Penguins had previously made nesting holes in the guano, but following removal of the guano, they took to nesting on open ground, making their nests easily accessible to predators such as the Kelp Gull. The late 19th century craze for penguin eggs as a delicacy led to unsustainable exploitation until the 1960s. Records show that in 1902 alone 16 400 penguin eggs were collected on Dyer Island.