Boer History1672 at the Cape of Good Hope: Van Breugel, Land Purchases, Goske, and St Helena
Van Breugel Assumes Command — March 1672
The year opened under the board of officers that had governed since Commander Pieter Hackius died at the end of November 1671. In Europe the directors of the East India Company, reading an unfriendly English Court and a secret Treaty of Dover still unknown to its intended victims, had already resolved to strengthen the Cape as one of the points they meant to secure more firmly. The castle, the building of which had for some time been suspended, was to be completed according to the original design; the garrison was to be increased; and the administration of affairs was to be confided to a class of men superior to those hitherto employed. [3]
Instructions received at the Cape in February 1672 ordered all available force into collecting shells, quarrying stone, and conveying those materials to the site of the new fortress. Woodwork for the castle buildings was being prepared in Amsterdam and sent out as opportunities offered; large quantities of bricks and tiles followed in the same fleets, with skilled mechanics to do the work. The position chosen for the castle was then believed almost impregnable, though later engineers would judge it faulty and a later generation would admit that higher ground on the Devil’s Peak could command it. For the men still living in the crumbling earthen fort, February’s orders meant stone, shell-lime, and a wartime pace of labour before any new chief had yet stepped ashore. [3]
The officers selected at this troublous time to conduct the government were Isbrand Goske, Albert van Breugel, and Pieter de Neyn. Goske had filled responsible situations in the Indies, won distinction in Ceylon and on the Malabar coast, and twice served as commissioner at the Cape—once choosing the castle site on his way from Europe to Persia, and again in 1671 when charged on the homeward passage with rectifying whatever might be amiss. In rank he already stood higher than a commander; when he was requested to assume direction at the Cape the residency was raised to a government and he was entitled governor, with appointment as councillor extraordinary of India. His salary was to be £25 a month—double a commander’s—with a liberal table allowance, quarters in the fort, and a pleasure house or country seat with ornamental garden at Rondebosch where he could entertain visitors at ease. [3]
Van Breugel, appointed secunde, was a man of less experience than Goske but was believed a staid, upright, and able officer. Advocate Pieter de Neyn, sent out as fiscal, was a good-natured, witty personage, well read in law and thoroughly competent as far as talent was concerned, though his moral character was not altogether above reproach. He was the first of the three new officers appointed, and when he arrived he had already experienced some difficulty in getting himself recognised by the grave God-fearing councillors then ruling the settlement. Until Goske himself arrived, the working head of the bay would be whichever senior civil officer first held clear commission to sit above the interim board. [3]
That interim closed when the Macassar arrived from Texel on the 23rd of March 1672 with the newly appointed secunde Albert van Breugel as passenger. The councillors went on board to welcome him and to escort him to the fort, but a strong south-easter springing up suddenly kept them from returning to land before the 25th. Van Breugel’s commission empowered him to act as commander whenever no one higher in rank in the service was present at the Cape. He therefore assumed the direction of affairs as soon as he landed. The board that had held the fort through the summer—Lieutenant Coenraad van Breitenbach, Johannes Coon, the junior merchant Daniel Froymanteau, and secretary Hendrik Crudop—thus gave way to a single senior civil officer short of a full commander’s permanent title, but with clear authority to sit at the head of the council. [3]
The same day that Van Breugel finally came ashore, a homeward-bound ship brought a commissioner of the Cape residency in the person of Arnout van Overbeke, member of the council of justice at Batavia and admiral of the return fleet of 1672. He was received with the ordinary state observed toward officers of his rank. The walls of the old fort would not admit of the cannon being used too freely, but the ships at anchor lent assistance with their great guns. Amid the roar of their discharges Van Overbeke landed on the jetty, where the officers of the settlement met him. The troops, with as many of the burgher militia as could be assembled, were drawn up and presented arms as he passed along the lines, and as he entered the fort his flag was hoisted and saluted. March thus closed the long headless summer with a secunde in charge and a Batavian commissioner already inspecting the residency’s books and defences. [3]
Van Overbeke and the Schacher Purchase — 19 April 1672
After investigating the affairs of the settlement, commissioner Van Overbeke thought it expedient, in order to prevent future disputes, to make a formal purchase of the country about the Cape from the Khoikhoi claimants. A negotiation was accordingly entered into with the chief formerly called by his countrymen Osingkima and now Mankagou, to whom the Dutch had given the name of Schacher. [3]
When Van Riebeeck arrived in South Africa, Schacher’s father, the fat captain Gogosoa, had been the principal chief of the three clans—Goringhaiquas, Gorachouquas, and Goringhaikonas—in occupation of the Cape peninsula and the adjacent country. Since that time some changes in the internal condition of these clans had taken place. The largest of them had been subdivided into several little bands. The permanent residents of the peninsula had increased in number owing to the facility of obtaining food afforded by the presence of the European settlers. The others had not yet recovered from the loss sustained during the pestilence of 1665. But to them all Schacher’s position was the same as that of his father had been, so that if any one had a right to barter away the country, that one was he. [3]
The Khoikhoi chief, when applied to, readily consented to the conditions proposed, for they took nothing from him which he had not already lost. The agreement, long preserved in the Registry of Deeds in Cape Town, contains eight clauses. In the first, the “Hottentot prince,” as he is called, agrees for himself and his heirs in perpetuity to sell to the Honourable East India Company the whole district of the Cape, including Table, Hout, and Saldanha bays, with all the lands, rivers, and forests therein and pertaining thereto, to be cultivated and possessed without remonstrance from anyone—with the understanding, however, that he with his people and cattle shall be free to come anywhere near the outermost farms in the district where neither the Company nor the freemen require the pasture, and shall not be driven away by force or without cause. [3]
In the second clause he agrees for himself and his people never to do harm of any kind to the Company or its subjects, and to allow them the rights of transit and trade not only in the ceded district but in his other possessions. In the third he promises to repel all other Europeans who may attempt to settle in the district. In the fourth he engages that he and his descendants for ever shall remain the good friends and neighbours of the Company, and be the enemies of all that seek to do the Company or its subjects harm. On the other side, the Company engages in the fifth clause to pay to Prince Schacher goods and merchandise such as he may select to the value of four thousand reals of eight (£800). The sixth guarantees to him and his people the peaceful possession of his remaining territory and gives them the right of passage through the Company’s ground wherever the exercise of this privilege may not cause damage or annoyance. [3]
The seventh clause secures to Schacher the right of refuge in the Company’s territory in case of his being defeated by his Khoikhoi enemies, and binds the Company to protect him. It also refers tribal disputes to the decision of the Company, and provides for a present to be made yearly to the protecting power. The last clause is Schacher’s acknowledgment that the foregoing having been translated to him he agrees to all, and that he has received the amount stipulated. The document is dated in the fortress of Good Hope on the 19th of April 1672. It is signed on behalf of the Company by Aernout van Overbeke, Albert van Breugel, Coenraad van Breitenbach, and J. Coon, and bears the marks of Prince Schacher and ’T Tachou, stated to be the person next in authority to the prince. Secretary Hendrik Crudop signs as a witness. [3]
The paper is drawn up in precise legal language and is clear in its statements, but it cannot be held to give the Company any claim to the Cape district not possessed before. The seller had no choice in the matter. If he had declined to agree to it, the result, so far as the Company’s retaining possession of the soil, would have been precisely the same. Saldanha Bay is included in the purchase, though the country thereabouts was known to be in the occupation of the Cochoquas. The price paid is stated to be £800; in a despatch to the directors the value of the goods actually transferred to Schacher is put down at £2 16s. 5d. It was not, and under the circumstances could not be, an honest open bargain made by two parties who thoroughly comprehended what they were doing and knew the value given and taken. The deed nevertheless gave later officers a documentary title they could cite when farms and posts were pushed beyond the Liesbeek. [3]
Chainouqua Cession of Hottentots Holland — 3 May 1672
An agreement identical with that signed by Schacher was concluded on the 3rd of May between Albert van Breugel and Coenraad van Breitenbach on the part of the Company, and the two leading men of the Chainouquas on behalf of their minor chief Dhouw, wherein the district of Hottentots Holland adjoining the Cape, with all its lands, streams, and forests, together with False Bay, are ceded to the Company in return for merchandise amounting in value to £800. The goods actually transferred were worth no more than £6 16s. 4d. [3]
Van Overbeke had already left the negotiation’s aftermath to the local council; the May deed therefore bears the names of the secunde and the senior military officer rather than the Batavian admiral. Its geography mattered as much as its price. False Bay opened a seaward approach to the grass country east of the Cape Flats; Hottentots Holland’s streams and mountain recesses promised timber, pasture, and a wartime refuge if Table Valley itself had to be abandoned. The cession thus wrapped a future farming and fall-back district in the same legal form already used for the peninsula bays. [3]
The twin deeds of April and May thus wrapped Table Valley, the peninsula bays, Saldanha Bay, False Bay, and the grass country of Hottentots Holland in one documentary claim: a perpetual sale at a paper price of eight hundred pounds, a residual right of pasture at the outermost farms, promises of friendship and exclusion of other Europeans, and a cash-in-kind transfer whose real cost was a few pounds’ worth of copper, beads, and tobacco. The Company already held the soil by occupation and fortification; the 1672 papers added a title later officers could cite when inland posts and farms were pushed beyond the Liesbeek. Tribal government among the Khoikhoi remained so weak that the slightest cause could break larger names into little clans virtually independent of each other—a fact that would soon make staffs of office and separate bargains with captains such as Klaas and Koopman more useful to the fort than any single princely signature. [3]
Plant Experiments and the First Cape Brandy
At this time experiments were being made in the cultivation of various useful plants from other parts of the world. Sugarcanes and cocoanut trees were brought from Ceylon, and cassava plants were introduced from the west coast of Africa, but these all failed. The olive was still regarded as a tree that would ultimately succeed. Some seasons the fruit fell before it was ripe; in other seasons it was small and of very inferior quality. But the trees looked so well that the gardeners always maintained that they had not yet procured the best kind for bearing, and that if they could only get proper stocks or grafts the plant would to a certainty answer here. [3]
In this year the first brandy was distilled at the Cape. It was made as an experiment to ascertain if the wine of this country could not be turned to some good account. The general opinion of the quality of the brandy was, however, even less favourable than of the wine of which it was made. The 1672 garden books thus record three tropical failures, a still-hopeful olive, and a first local spirit that pleased nobody—yet the distillation itself marked a new use for Cape grapes beyond table wine and vinegar for the ships. In a settlement whose freemen already complained of trammels on sale and purchase, any new product that might one day find a market mattered even when the first cask disappointed the tasters. [3] [4]
War Intelligence and Defensive Measures — 31 July 1672
On the 31st of July intelligence arrived that war had commenced between France and England on one side and the United Provinces on the other. Orders were therefore sent out to take every possible precaution against surprise. The council hereupon made the best arrangements which they could for the defence of the settlement. The establishment on Dassen Island was broken up, and the five hundred sheep which were kept there were removed to the mainland. At Saldanha Bay and Robben Island preparations were made for abandoning the posts upon the first appearance of an enemy, and destroying everything that could not be carried off. In case of need the women and children with the cattle were to be sent to Hottentots Holland. The work at the castle was meantime diligently carried on. [3]
The European war that framed these Cape orders was the most unequal struggle modern Europe had yet seen the Free Netherlands fight. The Kings of England and France, the Elector of Cologne, and the Bishop of Münster were allied for the suppression of Batavian liberty. Louis XIV in person with a splendidly equipped army invaded the Provinces from the south in May 1672, and within twenty-eight days no fewer than ninety-two cities and strongholds fell into his hands. To Utrecht, in the very heart of the Republic, his march was one continued triumph. The ecclesiastical princes poured their forces into Overijssel and subdued that province; Charles II fitted out a large fleet. William of Orange was raised to the stadtholdership; the dykes were cut; and a great fleet was got together in Zeeland and North Holland, ready in the last extremity to convey two hundred thousand free people to the islands of the East. [2] [3]
At the Cape the same crisis meant fewer ships, harder recruiting, and a standing order to finish the stone castle while the old earthen fort still stood as a crumbling second line. Even after the recovery of Dutch territory it would take years to re-establish European trade; in the East the Company suffered no reverse of first importance, but its commerce was crippled by the necessity of keeping a large fleet on a war footing. High admiral there was the elder Ryklof van Goens; under him, commanding a division, was Cornelis van Quaelberg, once commander of the Cape settlement. The best contested battle fought in Indian waters during the war was between Van Quaelberg’s division and a squadron of ten English ships off Masulipatam, where the English, though outnumbered, fought until one ship went down and two others were reduced to wrecks before the remaining seven made sail for the Hooghly. July’s intelligence at Table Bay was thus only the local edge of a war that emptied islands of sheep and would thin the fleets on which the refreshment station lived. [3]
Goske Installed as Governor — 2 October 1672
On the 2nd of October Governor Isbrand Goske arrived in the ship Zuid Polsbroek, after a passage of five months from Texel. The Zuid Polsbroek had lost eighteen men, and there were sixty down with scurvy when she dropped her anchors. The governor landed at once, and was received by the garrison under arms. As soon as his flag was distinguished on the ship the news had been signalled to Rondebosch and Wynberg, so that the burghers were fast assembling on the ground which now forms the parade. To them the governor was presented by the secunde Van Breugel, and was saluted with loud acclamations of welcome, mingled with discharges of firearms from the troops and the roar of cannon from the Zuid Polsbroek and the finished point of the new fortress. The governor’s commission was then read, and the ceremony of induction was over. [3]
With Goske’s installation the Cape residency was raised temporarily to the dignity of a government. He held the title of governor and councillor extraordinary of India, with a salary of £25 a month—double that of a commander—together with a liberal table allowance and a pleasure house or country seat with an ornamental garden at Rondebosch in addition to quarters in the fort. Van Breugel remained as secunde; the fiscal Pieter de Neyn, already named in the wartime appointments, completed the higher civil staff that the directors had selected when war with France and England was still only a cloud on the horizon. The board of officers that had held the fort after Hackius’s death was thus finally superseded by the full wartime hierarchy Amsterdam had designed in 1671–72. [3]
Goske’s first months would be judged by stone and powder rather than by ceremony. He had authority to land from passing ships as many men as could be spared and he might require for defence; he also inherited a half-built castle, a ruined earthen fort, and a European war that was already reducing the number of hulls in Table Bay. The finished point that had saluted his landing was a promise of strength, not yet a completed frontier fortress of India. [3]
Population, Old Fort, and Castle Works
At the time when the Cape settlement was raised temporarily to the dignity of being called a Government, the European population consisted of sixty-four burghers, thirty-nine of whom were married, sixty-five children, fifty-three Dutch men servants, and about three hundred and seventy servants of the Company and soldiers—in all not exceeding six hundred souls. Those few hundred Europeans occupied what the directors called the frontier fortress of India: a refreshment station whose stone castle was unfinished, whose earthen fort was crumbling, and whose inland cattle still depended on trade and raid alike. Under circumstances such as these, Theal later observed, the deeds of six hundred individuals may be of greater importance in an historical retrospect than are ordinarily those of six hundred thousand. [3]
The freemen among them already bore a freedom more nominal than real. Commissioner Verburg, reporting upon the state of the settlement in 1672, wrote that the Dutch colonists at the Cape of Good Hope bore the name of free men, but were so trammelled and confined in all things that the absence of any freedom was but too manifest; the orders and proclamations from time to time issued were so rigid that it would be impossible to carry out the penalties therein except with the utter ruin of the burghers. Holland’s intention remained a distant water and cattle station maintained at minimum cost for ocean traffic, not a colony planted for its own sake—a commercial logic that shaped every restriction on cattle barter, market days, and sale to ships. [4]
The first and most important object that Governor Goske had to attend to was to prepare the Cape for defence in the event of its being attacked, and for this purpose he had authority to land from passing ships as many men as could be spared and he might require. But the troubles in Europe caused a falling-off in the number of ships sent out, and further made it so difficult to obtain soldiers and seamen that for some years hardly a vessel sailed with her full complement of hands. Urgent as was the necessity for completing the castle, it was not possible at any time to employ more than two hundred and fifty to three hundred men upon it. [3]
The governor resolved as a temporary measure to repair the old fort, the earthen walls of which had by this time so crumbled away that he described it as being like a ruined molehill. It was hastily built up again, and then every man that could be spared was set to work upon the castle. The wartime programme of 1671—complete the stone fortress, increase the garrison, confide affairs to men of higher grade—thus became daily labour under a resident governor rather than a paper order from Amsterdam. Shells, quarry stone, Amsterdam woodwork, imported bricks and tiles, and the February labour order all converged on the same unfinished angles that had saluted Goske’s landing. [3]
Hottentots Holland Outpost — 18 October 1672
It was now nearly three years since the commissioner Van der Broeck had authorised the Cape government to form a farming establishment at Hottentots Holland, but, owing to the illness of Commander Hackius and the absence of any one of high authority after his death, nothing had yet been done in the matter beyond surveying the ground. Besides the original object in view there was now a special reason for forming an outpost in the country, as a place was needed to which the cattle could be sent, and upon which the garrison could fall back if compelled to abandon the Cape. On the 18th of October 1672 Sergeant Cruythof and twelve men left to put up the necessary buildings, and thus the first step was taken to extend the settlement toward the interior. [3]
The description of Hottentots Holland which was sent to the Netherlands for the information of the directors would seem at a later day to be too highly coloured if the face of the country had not since undergone a great change. Western valleys were then covered with long rich grass. Every summer a party of men used to be sent out with scythes to the Tigerberg, and thirty or forty waggon loads of hay were brought back to the Company’s stables as forage for the horses. The recesses in the mountain sides facing the sea contained patches of evergreen forest, in which were found great varieties of useful timber. [3]
The grass at Hottentots Holland and the forests in the immediate neighbourhood were mentioned as being superior to those of any other part of the country as yet visited. The soil was described as rich, and the south-east wind, that scourge of the husbandman in Table Valley, was far less violent there. It was a bountifully watered land; its streams were stocked with fish; and on its pastures at certain seasons browsed elands and hartebeests and other game. It was easy of access by sea. A cutter could run up to the head of False Bay, where without any difficulty produce could be shipped, and thus the journey through the heavy sand of the Cape Flats be avoided. It seemed almost a natural law in South Africa, Theal later remarked, that all the advantages of a locality should be seen at first, and its defects only become known gradually afterwards. [3]
The October outpost therefore combined a wartime cattle refuge with the first permanent farming foothold beyond the peninsula. The May cession had already named the district and False Bay in Company paper; Cruythof’s twelve men turned that paper into beams and kraals. From this foothold escorts could later meet Chainouqua captains on the road to the fort, and from it cattle and families could in theory fall back if an English or French squadron forced the bay. Expansion toward the interior, so long delayed by Hackius’s illness and the headless summer of 1671–72, had at last a sergeant’s post on the ground. [3]
Gonnema and the Hippopotamus Hunters — November 1672
For a considerable time no trading expeditions had been sent inland, because the directors thought the Khoikhoi would bring cattle to the Cape for sale if they could not obtain tobacco, copper, and beads at their own kraals. In that expectation they were disappointed. The rich clans living at a distance were unable to come, owing to the constant feuds in which they were engaged with others nearer at hand. Those in the neighbourhood of the Cape occasionally brought a lean cow or a few sheep for sale, but they had become impoverished through being plundered, and could not supply as many as were needed. It was therefore determined to send a trading party of twelve men to the kraal of the Chainouqua captain Dorha, who had intimated a wish to obtain some tobacco and copper in exchange for cattle. [3]
This Captain Dorha, or Klaas as he was called by the Europeans, now appears for the first time in the narrative that would make him, for many years, the colony’s most faithful Khoikhoi ally. The tribal government of the Khoikhoi was so weak that the slightest cause seems to have been sufficient to break them up into little clans virtually independent of each other. There was still in name a chief of the Chainouquas, but in fact that tribe was now divided into two clans under the captains Klaas and Koopman. Each was recognised as a ruler by the Cape government, in proof of which staffs with brass heads, upon which the Company’s coat of arms was engraved, had been presented to them, just as such symbols had previously been given to six or eight captains nearer the settlement. These staffs soon came to be regarded by the Khoikhoi not only as recognising but as conferring authority, and thenceforth it became an object of ambition with every head of a few families to obtain one. [3]
Klaas attached himself to the Europeans, though not from any inclination to acquire civilised habits. On this occasion he bartered away two hundred and fifty-six head of horned cattle and three hundred and seventy sheep, a very seasonable supply for the governor, whose slaughter stock was nearly exhausted. Klaas was then requested to furnish fifty young oxen to draw stone to the castle, and in less than a fortnight he collected them among his people and sent a message that they were ready. Such conduct naturally called for a return of favours. The Chainouquas and the Cochoquas were at this time at war, and whenever Klaas wished to visit the Cape an escort was sent to Hottentots Holland to protect him on the journey. Presents and complimentary messages followed; he was provided with a showy suit of European clothing that he might appear at the fort with such dignity as became a faithful ally of the Honourable Company. The attention paid to him may partly explain the hostile conduct of Gonnema, chief of the largest division of the Cochoquas. [3]
Gonnema, known to the first settlers as the Black Captain, usually had his kraals in the neighbourhood of Riebeek’s Kasteel and Twenty-four Rivers, but occasionally he wandered to the shores of Saldanha Bay, or eastward to Hottentots Holland. All his neighbours were in dread of him, for whenever there was an opportunity he was in the habit of plundering them. It was from him that the whole of the Khoikhoi in the neighbourhood of the Cape were fifty years later called Gunjemans by the Dutch. The people of his own clan were even at this time called Gonnemas, and the word gradually became Gonnemans, Gonjemans, and Gunjemans. As the Goringhaiquas and others soon lost their distinguishing tribal titles in European speech, they all became blended under this one name by which whites knew them, even while older names were probably preserved among themselves. [3]
In November 1672 three burghers obtained permission from the governor to shoot hippopotami, and for this purpose they travelled along the banks of the Berg river down to Riebeek’s Kasteel. There Gonnema with forty or fifty of his followers came upon them and seized their waggon, oxen, provisions, and whatever else they had with them, barely permitting them to escape with their lives. It does not seem to have occurred to the governor that Gonnema might object to the destruction of game in his district, and so the act was attributed solely to his enmity to the Company. But there was then no force that could be spared to chastise the offender, and the injury was therefore left unpunished. The November seizure thus stood as an unpaid account when the calendar year closed under Goske’s new government—an account that the murders and expeditions of 1673 would soon enlarge. [3]
St Helena Expedition — 13 December 1672
With a view of crippling the English East India Company, orders were at this time received from Holland to fit out an expedition to attack and endeavour to destroy its victualling station at St Helena. For this purpose the ships Vryheid, Zuid Polsbroek, Cattenburgh, and Vliegende Swaan were made ready at the Cape, and 180 soldiers and 150 sailors above their ordinary crews were embarked in them. The expedition was placed under the direction of Jacob de Geus, skipper of the Vryheid, and subject to his general orders Lieutenant Coenraad van Breitenbach had command of the land forces. [3]
The little fleet sailed from Table Bay on the 13th of December 1672. Upon arriving at St Helena they found the garrison of the island too small to offer effectual resistance. The few men there thought it more prudent to spike their cannon and to make their escape in a ship lying ready for sea. Several who had not time to embark surrendered. Skipper De Geus took possession of the abandoned island and of an English slave ship from Madagascar bound to Barbados with 240 negroes on board, which had put in for refreshment. Lieutenant Johannes Coon was installed as commander, and when the fleet sailed he was left with a small garrison to occupy the new acquisition. A few weeks later intelligence reached the Cape that Lieutenant Coon had died, and Lieutenant Van Breitenbach was then appointed by Governor Goske and the council to succeed him. [3]
The English who escaped sailed toward the coast of Brazil, where they fell in with a squadron under Commodore Richard Munden, directed to meet and convoy the homeward-bound East India fleet. Munden resolved to retake the island; early on the morning of the 15th of May 1673 he landed two hundred men under Captain Kedgwin on the eastern coast and appeared with his ships before the fort at the entrance of Church Valley just as Kedgwin reached it behind. The Dutch garrison, taken by surprise, immediately surrendered. Van Breitenbach, sailing from the Cape in the Europa, reached St Helena on the 21st of May, ran unexpectedly within range of Munden’s guns, and after a futile attempt to escape and resist became a prize to the Assistance. He and the garrison were taken to England as prisoners of war and there exchanged. Those events of 1673 lay beyond the calendar year, but they closed the story of the December fleet that left Table Bay under De Geus: a brief Dutch occupation of England’s Atlantic refreshment station, paid for with the Cape’s own senior military officers and a share of its scarce wartime manpower. [3]
Thus 1672 ran from February’s stone-and-shell labour orders and Van Breugel’s March landing with Van Overbeke’s state entry, through the April and May land deeds that priced the Cape and Hottentots Holland at eight hundred pounds on paper and a few pounds in goods, past the first local brandy and the July war orders that emptied Dassen Island of its sheep, to Goske’s October induction as governor, Cruythof’s October foothold at Hottentots Holland, Klaas’s seasonable cattle barter and castle oxen, Gonnema’s unpunished November seizure on the Berg, and a December fleet that seized English St Helena for a season. The settlement closed the year as a named government of fewer than six hundred Europeans, with a repaired earthen fort, a half-built stone castle, an inland farming post beyond the Flats, a Chainouqua ally in European clothing, and its senior military officers already committed to an Atlantic side-theatre of the European war. [3] [4]