Boer History1653 at the Cape of Good Hope: War News, Hardship, and the First Cattle Raid
Stock, Gardens, and Discipline — January 1653
After the main body of the Kaapmans (Goringhaiquas under Gogosoa) left Table Valley in December 1652, small parties lingered long enough for Jan van Riebeeck to keep trade alive by sending men out with copper and tobacco. Those last weeks of barter mattered. Bread and other provisions brought from Europe were nearly exhausted; the outward-bound fleet had passed by without relief, and the return fleet still lay months away. Existence at the fort might depend on cattle. By the end of January 1653, when the last stragglers moved inland, the commander had obtained altogether two hundred and thirty head of horned cattle and five hundred and eighty sheep. [3]
The strong south-east winds had nearly destroyed the wheat and peas, but cabbages, turnips, and carrots had thriven well, and there was a good supply ready for the expected return fleet. To spare the cattle for the ships, the settlement still drew heavily on the islands and the sea: conies (rabbits), young seals, penguins and other seabirds, eggs, and fish formed a large part of the labourers’ diet. Complaints were constant. Some men plundered the gardens at night, stole and killed sheep, pretended to be sick, and ignored the general articles that governed Company servants. Very severe punishments were inflicted, but to little purpose until the root cause — scarcity of proper food — was removed. [3]
Discipline in those January weeks was not abstract. Between May 1652 and mid-January 1653 almost no ship had touched Table Bay. Hard labour fell on little more than a hundred Europeans at the Cape. Attempts to draw Khoikhoi into regular work still failed; on one Monday morning in late May the commander himself walked with a handful of Khoikhoi toward the woods behind Table Mountain, seeking cooperation that did not take hold. Gardens were sown in small experimental lots so that the best planting seasons for each crop could be learned by trial. What thrived did so against wind and thin stores, not because the first year had been easy. [2]
The Zwarte Vos and War with England
For nearly eight months there had been no vessel in Table Bay but the little yacht Goede Hoop, when on 18 January 1653 the galiot Zwarte Vos, skipper Theunis Eyssen, arrived. She had sailed from Texel on 4 September 1652 to carry intelligence that war had broken out between the Netherlands and the Commonwealth of England. Two other vessels, the yacht Haas and the galiot Roode Vos, had been despatched on the same errand; the Zwarte Vos outstripped them both. The Haas only reached Table Bay on 26 March, and the Roode Vos on 2 June. [3]
The despatches were dated 24 July 1652 with supplements of 20–21 August. They told the Governor-General and Councillors of India, the officers at Gambroon and Surat, and the commander of the fort Good Hope that since the English had beheaded their king and adopted a new form of government, they would not live in friendship with their neighbours. The Dutch ambassadors in London had proposed every reasonable arrangement for peace without effect. England, the directors wrote, was bent upon appropriating all trade and claiming dominium maris — the sovereignty of the high seas — which no free nation, least of all the Netherlands after eighty years of struggle for freedom, could accept. The paths of the wide ocean, they insisted, must remain open alike to every flag. [3]
It was believed that the English would send a fleet to St Helena to intercept homeward Indiamen with rich cargoes. Instructions therefore ordered ships to keep together, avoid that part of the Atlantic, and sail west and north of the British Islands to the coast of Norway, then along the European shore to the ports of the Fatherland. The commander at the Cape was directed to strengthen the settlement's defence by detaining twenty-five or thirty soldiers from the first ships that called, and to guard carefully against surprise. [3]
The council at once resolved to detain the galiot at the Cape and to send the Goede Hoop, the better of the two small vessels, to Batavia with the intelligence. The yacht had recently made her second trip to Saldanha Bay and Dassen Island and was then at anchor off the fort. In five days she was ready for sea, and on 23 January she sailed — carrying war news that would shape every call at Table Bay for months to come. [3]
Fort Defences and the Means of War
Every possible exertion was now put forth to strengthen the fort so that it might be defended if attacked. There is no doubt that van Riebeeck would have done all that a brave and faithful officer could do to protect the post under his charge — but it was well for him that no enemy appeared. His cannon, he reported, were so light that they would not carry a ball more than halfway to the anchorage. The fort was commanded by the flank of the Lion’s Rump (Signal Hill), so that if an enemy of any strength once landed, it must have surrendered. Several of the men were disaffected, and a few were ready to commit almost any crime. Against any force more formidable than a Khoikhoi raiding party, the commander’s means of defence could not be depended on. [3]
Work on the fortress itself continued through the year. By April 1653 van Riebeeck could describe to the directors a completed “Fortresse” larger by a full rood square than the drawing he had brought from the Netherlands. Walls of two bastions already carried earthworks; craftsmen, a cooper with helpers, constable and geweldiger, a sick-father for the ill, and the sick-comforter for spiritual care made up a thin official spine around one assistant and the men of the yacht. Title and pay still lagged the work: the commander pressed that the rank of commander should carry a commander’s salary, while the fort rose stone and earth against a war that might never reach Table Bay in force — yet might arrive on any morning’s tide. [2]
Ships, Provisions, and Renewed Trade — Spring 1653
On 2 March 1653 five ships from India under the flag of Admiral Gerard Demmer arrived in the bay. That very morning the last ration of bread had been issued to the workmen — but there was then no fear of starvation, for van Riebeeck was able to supply abundance of fresh meat and vegetables to the crews of all the ships that called during the next two months. On 26 March the Haas arrived from the Netherlands; on 14 April the yacht Windhond followed. On 17 April the bay was clear again: Demmer’s five ships sailed for the Fatherland and the two yachts proceeded to Batavia. Next morning the Muyden arrived from Texel with news to 26 December, and within a few days three Indiamen from Batavia entered the bay, remaining until 6 May. From these vessels the commander replenished his stores with almost everything needed — except materials for a whale fishery, a project still deferred. [3]
A few weeks after the departure of the Goringhaiquas, small parties of another clan living further inland arrived in Table Valley. They had heard that copper and tobacco could be obtained in exchange for cattle. From them van Riebeeck obtained seventy-five head of horned cattle and twenty-one sheep, besides a few tusks of ivory. Added to the earlier figures, these show the extent of the cattle trade in the first year of European occupation — hundreds of sheep and cattle won by barter, not by open war, yet always under the shadow of hunger if the next fleet failed. [3]
Spring traffic turned the lonely bay of winter into a brief hub of the VOC route. Outward and homeward hulls took greens and meat; the fort took rice, tools, men, and news. The war still framed every courtesy: soldiers might be detained to thicken the defences; English flags were potential enemies until peace returned in a later year. For a few weeks, though, the settlement did the work it had been founded to do — refresh ships, hold a foothold, and prove that Table Valley could feed more than its own thin company.
The rhythm of those weeks was the rhythm the directors had imagined in 1652 and almost lost in the first winter: fleets in, cattle slaughtered for crews, gardens cut for greens, empty casks and sick men left behind or relieved. Demmer’s squadron sailing for the Fatherland on 17 April was the proof of outward success; the Muyden and the Batavia Indiamen filling the bay again the next morning were the proof that the Cape sat on a two-way road. Only the whale fishery stayed on paper — lines and try-works the fort still could not spare space or stores to begin.
The Roode Vos and the Second Winter
On 2 June 1653 the galiot Roode Vos, long given up for lost, made her appearance. Her skipper and mate had died at sea, and for three and a half months the galiot had been beating about off the Cape looking for Table Bay. She was kept at the Cape to bring shells from Robben Island for lime, wood from Hout Bay for fuel, eggs, birds, and conies from Dassen Island for provisions, and similar work. The Zwarte Vos, which had been employed in this service, was sent to Gambroon with despatches. [3]
The second winter spent in South Africa was comparatively uneventful beside the first. There was plenty of food for all, and consequently not much sickness. Building went forward; oxen were trained to draw timber from the forests behind Devil’s Peak; much new ground was broken up. Wild animals gave more trouble than anything else. Lions invaded the cattle kraal by night though armed men watched it; leopards came down from the mountain in broad daylight and carried away sheep under the herdsmen’s eyes. One morning before daybreak a great noise rose from the poultry pens: all the ducks and geese had been killed by wild cats. The country appeared to be swarming with ravenous beasts. [3]
Winter work bound the peninsula’s resources into a single logistics chain: Robben Island for shells and later sheep, Hout Bay for fuel timber, Dassen Island for birds and conies, the forests for palisades and beams. The galiots were not ornaments; they were the difference between a fort that could burn lime and eat fish and a fort that waited helpless for the next Indiaman. When oxen later vanished in the October raid, that chain would snap in one of its strongest links — hauling timber — and men would feel the loss in their shoulders.
Against lions at the kraal and leopards on the open pasture, the settlers learned the land’s other economy: meat on the hoof was never only trade goods or fleet rations. It was bait. Night watches around the cattle pens, daylight herding under the mountain, and the sudden crash of poultry before dawn were the price of keeping living stores. Building and ploughing went on anyway. Timber came down Devil’s Peak slopes behind trained oxen; new ground was broken while the second winter rains fell on a settlement better fed than in 1652, yet still only a few walls and gardens wide against a peninsula full of predators.
Jacob Ryniers — First Secunde
In August the ships Salamander, Phoenix, and Koning David arrived from home and were provided with fresh provisions. On board the Phoenix was a young junior merchant named Jacob Ryniers (also Reijniers), whom the commander wished as an assistant. Van Riebeeck convened a broad council and represented that in case of his death or temporary absence there was no one of higher rank than a sergeant to perform his duties, leaving the Company’s property exposed to hazard. The council agreed that Ryniers should remain at the Cape. He was the first to hold the office of secunde (second in authority) in the settlement. [3]
Ryniers reached the Cape on 16 August 1653 with the Phoenix and within three days was appointed secunde. Scarcely three months later his betrothal to Elisabeth van Opdorp, niece and ward of van Riebeeck, was made known; the marriage followed, binding the second officer into the commander’s household circle. The office itself was institutional, not merely personal: for the first time the settlement had a named deputy who could sit in council, ride to Saldanha on inspection, and — early in 1654 — be lifted to provisional merchant rank to quiet a quarreling ship’s officers before he left the Cape and left the secundship vacant again. [2] [3]
The French Ship at Saldanha Bay
On 2 September a small party of Khoikhoi came to the fort with a few cattle for sale, but were not followed by others. The council resolved to send the Roode Vos to Saldanha Bay to learn whether the Goringhaiquas were there and to try to open trade. The galiot was about to sail when Harry informed the commander that he had heard from two Khoikhoi that a large ship was lying in Saldanha Bay. Ryniers and six soldiers were sent overland; after eight days they returned with word that the ship was under the French flag and that her crew had been killing seals on the islands for more than six months. They had nearly completed a cargo of some forty-eight thousand skins and many casks of oil. The skipper intended to sail shortly for La Rochelle and politely offered to take letters to Amsterdam. [3]
Van Riebeeck believed it to be in the Company’s interest to keep foreigners away from South Africa, and he did not scruple to practise deceit. Ryniers reported that many French seamen wished to desert because they had little food beyond what the islands supplied. The commander called the council and suggested a plan to damage the Frenchman: four men were sent overland with instructions to the galiot’s officers to entice as many French seamen as possible to desert, so that the ship might be crippled and her owners discouraged from returning. Frederick Verburg, who understood French, was sent with complimentary messages and an invitation to Table Bay, while a letter to the directors was partly written in a cipher only a few persons in Amsterdam could read. [3]
Little was gained. The French skipper suspected hostility, took precautions, and only four of his men escaped. With these the Roode Vos returned to Table Bay, having had no useful cattle trade with inland Khoikhoi. The overland parties saw many rhinoceroses and twice had to make detours to avoid troops of elephants. The episode fixed two lessons for the settlement: the west-coast islands were already a prize other Europeans knew, and diplomacy at Saldanha could not be separated from rivalry over oil, skins, and the long route home. [3]
The Second European Birth — 18 October 1653
On 18 October 1653 the second child of European parentage was born in the fort Good Hope: a son of Commander van Riebeeck and Maria de la Queillerie. The infant was destined for distinction — in 1709, at the age of fifty-six, he attained the rank of Governor-General of Netherlands India, which he held until his death in 1713. In the household he was called Abraham; Jacob Ryniers stood among the baptismal circle that bound the child’s name to the small official world of the fort. [3] [2]
One day earlier the fort had been only a war-post and garden station. One day later it would be a place of murder and pursuit. The birth sits in the record between those poles — a private joy inside walls that still could not throw a cannonball halfway to the anchorage, on the eve of the first killing that turned beachranger neighbours into fugitives and cattle thieves in Company eyes.
Cattle Raid and the Murder of David Janssen — 19 October 1653
On the morning of Sunday 19 October 1653 the community was assembled in the great hall of the commander’s residence, where religious services were regularly held. Sentries stood on the ramparts; Hendrik Wilders and David Janssen, the two cattle herds, were tending the oxen and cows. Nearly everyone else was listening to a sermon which Dominie Wylant, the sick-comforter, was reading. [3]
Ever since the Europeans landed, the beachranger Khoikhoi had lived mostly with them — the men idling, the women and children carrying firewood and doing light work for food. They were now well clothed after their fashion, for the skins of slaughtered cattle were given them for karosses. Harry, the principal man among them, lived in a hut not a pistol-shot from the fort gate, ate from the commander’s own table, and received bread and provisions for his family in return for interpreting. When the Europeans went to their devotions that morning, all was still. There were no strangers in Table Valley; a drizzling rain drifted up from the Atlantic before a westerly breeze. [3]
When the sermon was over, a guard reported that Harry, with his whole family carrying household effects, had left his hut during the service — but no notice was taken at once. In a few minutes Eva was found missing. Then, just as the commander was sitting down to dinner, came Hendrik Wilders with news that his companion had been murdered and that the beachrangers had driven off forty-two of the cattle, leaving only two. Wilders had come to the fort for food, leaving the youth David Janssen in charge of the cattle grazing at the end of the Lion’s Rump. On his return he found the lad’s corpse — murdered with assegais — and saw the cattle being driven hastily round the mountain. [3]
Van Riebeeck had three Javanese horses sent from Batavia in the last ships. Soldiers were mounted on these and sent round by Sea Point to follow the robbers, while another party went over the neck between Table Mountain and the Lion’s Head hoping to intercept them. The pursuit failed, though continued for several days. On one occasion Corporal Jan van Harwarden with seventeen soldiers nearly overtook the fugitives at the head of False Bay, but the sand was so heavy that the Europeans became exhausted; though all the cattle were then in sight, only one cow was recovered. The scene would be repeated a thousand times later across South Africa; it was new to the commander’s experience. Its immediate effect was intense hatred of the Khoikhoi among soldiers and workmen. The commander was thereafter compelled to make regulations against intercourse with them even more stringent than before. [3]
The raid rewrote the local map of trust. Harry’s hut at pistol-shot from the gate, Eva’s place in the household, beachranger women carrying firewood — all of that morning calm — sat beside a corpse at the Lion’s Rump and a dust of cattle going round the mountain. Mounted men by Sea Point and infantry over the nek failed in heavy sand with the herd still visible. From that Sunday the fort’s rules hardened: less private dealing, sharper separation, and men who wanted vengeance the commander was not free to grant. The first full year of the settlement ended not only in gardens and war paper, but in a blood debt neither side could easily settle.
Aftermath: Hunger, Sealing, and the Duynhoop Redoubt
During the next two months very few Khoikhoi visited Table Valley. Harry’s people made peace with the Goringhaiquas and took refuge among them, probably persuading them to stay away from the fort. The supply of flat copper bars — the only sort in demand — was exhausted, and without copper few cattle could be obtained. Trade nearly stopped. In place of beef the labourers ate penguins and even salted seal flesh. The theft of the oxen imposed extra toil: the fort was being enclosed with palisades cut in the forest behind Devil’s Peak, and instead of being drawn on a waggon these now had to be carried on the men’s shoulders. [3]
A sealing establishment was formed at Dassen Island, and a redoubt — first called Tranenburg and afterwards Duynhoop — was commenced at the mouth of the Salt River. The map of Company power thus stretched beyond the fort walls: island stations for oil and skins, a watch at the river mouth, and men on Robben Island still to come. Each post was thin; together they were the beginning of a peninsula system, not a single garden behind a ditch. [3]
In December the ships Naarden, Breda, and Lam arrived from Texel. They were supplied with vegetables in plenty, but only three oxen could be obtained for them. Early in 1654 they were followed by the Vrede, Kalf, and Draak — the outward-bound fleet of the new season. When the Vrede arrived with officers quarrelling so violently that the council placed someone over them all, secunde Jacob Ryniers was chosen and given the provisional rank of merchant. After his departure the office of secunde at the Cape remained vacant for a time — a reminder how personal and fragile the new hierarchy still was. [3]
Ore, Hopes of Silver, and Khoikhoi Crucibles
While exploring along the base of the mountain, a stone was found with glittering specks. Quarrying deeper revealed the mineral in quantity. Van Riebeeck was nearly certain the specks were silver. To test it he sent men to buy earthenware pots that would stand intense heat from a Khoikhoi encampment nearby. Those casual needs open a window on skill: the people of the camps understood how to make well-tempered earthenware jars usable as crucibles. None, however, could be obtained. Crucibles were then made by a workman who knew something of the craft, and a little charcoal was prepared. Experiments at the Cape proved nothing; specimens sent later to Batavia and the Netherlands showed the mineral did not contain silver. [3]
The false silver rush left no mines, but it left a record of contact: Europeans hunting metal on the mountain flank, Khoikhoi ceramics judged by heat resistance, and samples shipped half a world away for assay. Ambition at the Cape was never only vegetables and beef; it was also the hope that the land itself might pay like an Asian factory.
Closing 1653: Robben Island and a Cautious Peace
The return fleet was anxiously looked for; supplies expected from Batavia were almost exhausted. Of vegetables there was abundance, of little else. The few sheep reserved for the fleet were placed on Robben Island, where the pasturage was excellent. European rabbits and conies were turned loose there. A small party of men was stationed on the island to collect seal skins and oil and to look after the sheep — the island’s long career as outstation, prison, and pasture beginning in practical Company need. [3]
Repeated efforts to re-open the cattle trade failed at first. One large horde had been plundered by San of nearly all its stock. Others wanted flat copper, of which the fort had none. Harry was said to be somewhere inland; the remaining beachrangers were seen with Gogosoa’s people, and the Company’s stolen cattle were recognised among herds at the back of the mountains. Sailors and soldiers were eager to recover the stock and avenge David Janssen, but the commander would permit no hostility. He had orders to inspire confidence by kindness; though he would gladly have seized a herd and enslaved its owners, he would not disobey. He allowed even the robbers to shake hands with him, and actually repurchased two or three of the stolen cows. [3]
This treatment dispelled the Goringhaiquas’ fears so completely that by midsummer (southern hemisphere — the turn into early 1654 in the seasonal sequence) they came about the fort as freely as before, though they would not barter cattle for anything then in the magazine. Most of the beachrangers also returned; finding they were not to be punished, they took up residence near the fort again. Their principal service, the commander stated, was collecting firewood — a great relief to the labourers — and he was glad to encourage them. Peace returned as policy, not as forgetfulness: the murder and the missing herd remained in every regulation that kept soldiers from private dealing. [3]