Port Alfred is a small town with a population of just under 26,000[1] in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

Port Alfred was established in the early 1820s by British settlers who were moved into the area by Lord Charles Somerset as there was conflict between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa people.

In 1860, when Queen Victoria's son Prince Alfred visited, the name was changed in his honour.

[3] In 1839, William Cock and George Hodgkinson started to block the natural river mouth to the east and canalise the present opening to the sea.

By 1841 South Africa's first man-made harbour was opened after completion of the stone-lined channel between the ocean and the Kowie river.