South Africa’s coast has occupied a pivotal point in global trade for hundreds of years. As a result, our maritime and underwater cultural heritage is a cross section of numerous nations trading with the East and in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Ships were the vehicles for much of that trade and also for the political, social and cultural changes that accompanied that trade, thus contributing to the creation of the modern world. Historical shipwrecks comprise the bulk of South Africa’s underwater cultural heritage and are a vast repository of information, in particular for European maritime trade across the globe during the last five centuries. In this talk I will present evidence for the types of trade, based on wrecks around the South African coast.