Knysna's most well known attraction is its Heads - two great sandstone cliffs guarding the mouth of the lagoon which connects the estuary with the sea. A lookout has been erected on the Eastern Head, commanding spectacular views of the lagoon, Leisure Isle and Knysna. The Western Head is a privately owned nature Reserve - Featherbed.

'Those twin pyramidical rocks defining the entrance to the Knysna lagoon from a Scylla and Charybdis, whence issues the stunning thunder of never-ceasing breakers that whirl and bellow with convulsive shocks - a bare, black, broken surface, emerging at one moment like the many-headed Hydra - at the next drinking up the white waves, and vomitting forth into a thousand fantastic cassades a frothy spume which reflects the prismatic colours of the iris'

Captain (later Sir) William Cornwallis Harris, describing the Heads, 1840

The Heads are a pair of craggy sentinels, past which the sea rushes into the lagoon to meet the Knysna river. The renowned insurance company, Lloyds of London, prides itslef on insuring anything or anyone, anywhere, at any time but at one time this was the only place on earth where Lloyds refused to insure a sailing boat.

Sailing ships in the bygone days found the Heads infinitely suitable for bogus insurance claims. If a captain sank his ship at sea, he ran the risk of losing his crew into the bargain but the Heads, with convenient landfalls, presented the ideal locality for premeditated shipwreck.

The wreck of the Emu was a fine example of seamanship. The boat was holed on the rocks entering the lagoon and all the crew made it safely onto the sand banks near The Pole. The captain of the well-known Paquita wreck (Displayed Above )was less impressive. He wrecked his sailing ship neither on entry or exit, never having reached he more dangerous waters of the inner or outer sand bars. The ill-accused Heads, no doubt, once again had to bare the brunt of his insurance claims, which apparently backfired and were never paid out. After a midnight stroll up the protected waters of the Lagoon, he simply jammed the ship across the face of beacon Rock and comfortably nestled the vessel in it preent position in front of the bath rock. His entire plot is actually given away by the obvious fact that the ship faces out to sea.