Boer History1686 at the Cape of Good Hope: Stavenisse Wreck, Stellenbosch Fair, and the Milagros
Return from Namaqualand — 26 January 1686
The calendar year 1686 opened with commander Simon van der Stel still in the field. His copper march into Namaqualand, begun on 25 August 1685, ended only when the train re-entered the castle on the 26th of January 1686 after five months and one day away. The last stages of the homeward road had passed the Elephant river, Lambert’s Bay, and the Little Elephant river, where Cochoqua men mourning the death of Gonnema asked the commander to confirm the old chief’s son as successor. Nothing further of lasting political weight marked the remaining march itself; the year’s work at the Cape began the moment the expedition was home. [3] [4]
Geographical results were substantial. Western maps of what is now the Cape Colony became fair representations of the country: rivers were not always given their true courses or exact latitudes, but the general features were correctly drawn. The great river of the north—later the Orange—was laid down from report only, yet its size and east–west course were known. The commander brought back a Namaqua of the people he had named Camissons, dressed him in European clothing, and placed him where he might learn Dutch; the hope of fuller information from him was disappointed, for he never told much more than was already known of the country. [3]
As to copper, ore rich and easy to collect had been found in abundance, but in a situation useless to Europeans with the means then available. It could not be removed in quantities that would pay expenses. Under those circumstances the council considered it needless to spend more money or thought upon the matter, and left the Copper Mountain until improved communication of a later age made Namaqualand’s mineral wealth workable. The 1685–86 march thus closed as exploration and map-making rather than as a mining venture. [3] [4]
Wreck of the Stavenisse — 16 February 1686
On the night of the 16th of February 1686 the East India Company’s third-class ship Stavenisse, homeward bound from India to Europe, was wrecked on the African coast about seventy English miles south of the Bay of Natal. The weather had been overcast. Skipper Willem Knyf and his officers believed themselves far from land. Longitude at sea was always uncertain in that age; in this instance the latitude had also been miscalculated. When the look-out reported land, the chief mate Ysbrand Hogesaad, officer of the watch, answered sharply that it could only be a bank of mist and would not even go forward to look. A second report placed land close under the bow; almost at the same moment breakers were seen and the roar of the surf was heard. It was very dark, and the light breeze was dying into a calm. [3]
All hands sprang on deck. The two bower anchors were got out as fast as possible. The Stavenisse drifted slowly inshore; the port bower held and she swung to it, but by then she was among breakers. She lay in that condition for a couple of hours before the cable parted and she struck. The ship filled at once. Of the crew, sixty reached land and eleven were drowned. At dawn one side of the wreck was stove in, the masts were gone, and the cargo of pepper was washing out. The main and fore yards, with their sails, had been thrown up on the beach; stretched over a rough frame the canvas made a tolerable tent. On the 17th and 18th compasses, charts, altitude instruments, a couple of casks of pork, a little biscuit, and some clothing were recovered. [3]
On the 19th of February a general consultation decided to attempt overland travel to the Cape without delay. Three officers severely bruised in getting ashore were left in the tent as unable to march. The other fifty-seven set out the same morning. Within a couple of days the skipper, the three mates, the sailmaker, the boatswain, and four sailors, finding themselves unequal to the rough country, abandoned their companions and returned to the wreck. The remaining forty-seven continued along the coast—a party whose fate would not be known at the castle until much later. [3]
English Aid and the Bay of Natal
Those who remained at the wreck resolved to repair a broken boat and try for the Cape by sea. The work took a fortnight. Compasses, charts, a few stores, and clothing went into the boat; she was launched, overturned in the surf, and everything was lost, the voyagers barely escaping with their lives. Meanwhile indigenous people flocked to the scene—at times as many as a thousand armed men. The Europeans purchased a little bread and millet for nails and bolts, until the visitors began to burn and cut out iron for themselves. With nothing left to buy food, the seamen were in great distress when two Englishmen appeared. [3]
The strangers stated that on the 17th of May 1685 they had lost their vessel at the Bay of Natal. For nine months they had lived with the people there; hearing of a wreck to the southward, they had come to offer help. They understood enough of the local language to make themselves understood and had beads and copper rings for trade. At Natal, they said, they and three companions held merchandise enough to buy bread and meat for fifty years, and skipper Knyf’s party was welcome to share it. Three Dutchmen still unable to walk were left in the tent with one Englishman as protector; ten others, guided by the second Englishman, set out at once for the bay. One of the sick later died; the other two recovered and joined the main party. A petty officer was trampled to death by an elephant. When united, the little European community numbered eleven Dutchmen and five Englishmen. [3]
The Englishmen were part of the crew of the ketch Good Hope, of fifty tons and twenty-four hands, which had gone to the east coast for ivory and slaves. Warping over the Natal bar she was struck by a squall and driven on the Point. Her people built a large decked boat from materials on board; the master and nine men left in her for Mozambique. Another English ketch calling for beef took four more of the Good Hope’s crew. Five had already died of dysentery; the remaining five were those who welcomed the Stavenisse people. They had bartered about three tons of ivory and found the country inland friendly wherever they had walked. [3]
Building the Centaurus at Natal
After about four months in idleness the Dutch and English resolved to build a vessel for escape. Timber was plentiful; the wreck of the Good Hope could supply some fittings, but bolts and tools were short. A large party of local labourers was hired to fetch iron from the Stavenisse wreck seventy miles away—each man carrying from fifty to a hundred pounds for a single copper arm-ring. Among the Europeans, John Kingston of Bristol proved fertile in expedients. They had no saw; with only an anchor shank for an anvil he turned a stout iron ring into a tool that answered. They laid the keel of a craft fifty feet long and fourteen feet beam, hired carriers for forest timber and rough hewing of planks, and worked nearly eight months before the hull was complete. [3]
Early in 1687—still part of the wreck story that began in February 1686—another party reached Natal. On the 25th of December 1686 the London ketch Bona Ventura, of twenty tons, was lost at St Lucia Bay. One of her crew drowned; the remaining eight men and a boy set out to walk to the Cape and found, to their joy, Europeans and a vessel nearly ready for sea. The newcomers joined the labour. The little ship was launched as the Centaurus, provisioned with thousands of pounds of millet, smoked meat, meal, goats, fowls, and pumpkins purchased from the local people, plus seventeen small casks of water and the English ivory. On the 17th of February 1687, a year and a day after the Stavenisse wreck, she sailed. Three Englishmen of the Good Hope and an Englishman and a Frenchman of the Bona Ventura stayed behind. Eleven men of the Stavenisse, seven of the Bona Ventura, and Kingston and William Christian of the Good Hope kept the coast in sight without chart or compass and reached Table Bay safely on the 1st of March 1687—news that closed the 1686 wreck narrative for the Cape council only after the new year had begun. [3]
Within the Cape calendar of 1686 itself, however, the castle knew nothing of Knyf’s Natal refuge. The forty-seven who had walked west from the wreck on 19 February remained missing. Their trail, the later purchase of the Centaurus, and the search voyages of 1687–89 belong to those years; what 1686 contributed was the wreck, the split of the crew, English aid from Natal, the start of boat-building, and the December arrival of the Bona Ventura survivors at the same bay. [3]
Orphan Girls and Emigrant Families
Emigration policy set in 1685 continued into 1686. The Assembly of Seventeen had renewed free passages, farms in full property, and stock and implements at cost on credit, with a fifteen-year residence obligation and specified return rates thereafter. Female immigrants remained scarce. Of forty-eight marriageable orphan girls the directors had hoped to send in 1685, only three from Rotterdam had embarked that year, travelling with the emigrant Cornelis Swart and his family under conditions set by the orphan masters of Amsterdam and Rotterdam—respectable escort, protection until marriage to sober industrious burghers, and liberty to leave after five years if they or their husbands wished. [3]
In 1686 they were followed by seven or eight more orphan girls, also from Rotterdam. Small parties continued in later years, never more than seven or eight at a time; they married the more prosperous Cape burghers, generally within a few weeks of landing. Each outward-bound fleet now also brought a few families accustomed to tilling the ground. Nearly all were located in the district of Stellenbosch, as were many individuals discharged from Company service who rarely remained long as burghers. The inland village thus absorbed most of the year’s free settlement growth while the castle and Liesbeek farms carried on under the commander’s ordinary routine. [3] [4]
Stellenbosch Fair — 1 to 14 October 1686
In 1686 a fair was established at Stellenbosch and thereafter held yearly from the 1st to the 14th of October. The commander intended it to resemble a kermis in the Fatherland: free buying and selling of the country’s products without the ordinary restrictions, and a season of general recreation during which the drilling of the militia and target-shooting would take place. Cape-district colonists usually went in their waggons; when ships lay in port, as many of their people as could get away did the same. It was the pleasure time of the year, when labour was laid aside for a short space and friends renewed acquaintance. The commander, who liked to see his people happy, was always present. [3]
Target-shooting followed a set form. A figure resembling a parrot—hence called a papegaai—was fixed on a pole in the centre of a circle of sixty-foot radius. Marksmen took places on an arc in the order of subscription (one shilling for Stellenbosch residents, four shillings for others) and fired standing without rests. Small prizes were paid for knocking off head, wings, tail, or a splinter; the great prize went to whoever destroyed the whole figure by striking the rump—five pounds from the Company plus the subscription money in hand. The winner was escorted home as King of the Marksmen until another took the title. Pistol shooting was practised from horseback at full gallop along a furrow, firing at a small object ten paces aside. The drill-master arranged the sports, judged disputes, and received one-fifth of prizes. Toward the end of September each year he drew from the castle stores one hundred and fifty pounds of gunpowder, one hundred pounds of lead, and three hundred flints as the Company’s contribution. [3]
On the closing day of the fair—the commander’s birthday—everyone waited on him with good wishes; the school-children marched in procession under Dominie Mankadan; in the afternoon the militia fired three volleys in his honour. Khoikhoi chiefs in the neighbourhood also paid their respects, were entertained after their own ideas, and sometimes presented an ox in return. The October gathering thus joined market, militia exercise, and personal homage in one annual inland festival. [3]
First Church Service and Stellenbosch Buildings
When the commander visited Stellenbosch for the fair of 1686 he was accompanied by the Rev. Johannes Overney, who on Sunday the 13th of October conducted divine service in a resident’s house—the first service held by a clergyman in the new settlement. He preached from Isaiah lii. 7, and in the afternoon three infants born at Stellenbosch were baptized. The next day the question of a building expressly for public worship was discussed, and it was resolved to begin as soon as the crops were gathered. The Cape clergyman was to visit the village once every three months to conduct service and administer the sacraments; on other Sabbaths the sick-visitor Mankadan would continue to read a sermon and prayers. [3]
In January 1687 Overney installed a deacon and an elder chosen by the congregation and approved by the council—the deacon being Dirk Coetsee—and on 14 February 1687 the first stone of a church forty feet by twenty-two was laid; it opened on 19 October 1687. Those completions fall outside the 1686 calendar, but the decision and the first clerical visit belong to the fair fortnight of that year. In 1686 itself a residence for the landdrost and a courthouse were erected, and a mill was built at the district’s expense. The price of grinding was fixed; the mill was then leased by auction to the highest bidder, the rental going to district funds. Stellenbosch thus gained the physical shell of local government and the first steps toward a settled congregation in the same season that the fair began. [3] [4]
Vines, Olives, Oaks, and Experiments
Vine cultivation was advancing in the new district; Stellenbosch already had the reputation of producing better wine than Rondebosch or Wynberg. Even the best remained far inferior to European wines, and the commander believed either that grapes were pressed too soon or that the right varieties had not yet been introduced. He issued a placaat forbidding anyone, under a penalty of ten pounds, to press grapes before the vineyards had been visited by a committee and pronounced by himself to be of the requisite maturity. He obtained new cuttings from France, Germany, and Spain, raised Persian vines from seed, and experimented at Constantia, in the Company’s Table Valley gardens, and at Rustenburg, while encouraging Stellenbosch burghers to do the same. [3]
Experiments with rice, cassava, and hops answered no better than on former occasions. Millet obtained from Natal did well and was found to make good beer. The olive, which had excited hopes since the first commander of the settlement, was tried again and again by Simon van der Stel in every variety of soil and position; fruit fell early, seasons failed, and only occasionally a few good olives kept hope alive until nearly all the trees died off. Tree-planting was a separate enthusiasm. Indigenous forests were being destroyed faster than nature replaced them. Fuel for the garrison already came from a grove of alders beyond Rondebosch planted by Crudop in 1679. Of European and Indian timber raised from seed in the Company’s nurseries, none thrived like the oak. The commander offered young oaks to burghers, later ordered every farmer to plant at least one hundred, and set the example at Constantia and on the Company’s farms. By the spring of 1687 between four and five thousand oaks were beginning to bear acorns in the Stellenbosch and Cape districts, with over fifty thousand more nearly ready to transplant—work rooted in the planting drive already under way through 1686. [3]
Wreck of the Milagros — 16 April 1686
In the night of the 16th of April 1686 the Portuguese ship Nostra Senhora de los Milagros, on her return voyage to Europe, was wrecked on the coast between Capes Agulhas and False. She carried a crew of several hundred souls and many passengers, including three ecclesiastics and three ambassadors from the king of Siam to the king of Portugal, with servants and attendants. The night was fine and clear, but the master, believing he had rounded the Cape, neglected to set a watch and steered directly on shore. Many lost their lives trying to reach land; those who succeeded found themselves without food and half naked. [3]
The eldest of the Siamese ambassadors died of grief and distress shortly after getting ashore. The others left with a party of Portuguese to make their way to the Cape. On the 8th of May ten seamen reached the castle and were kindly received; waggons, horses, and provisions were sent at once to meet the other travellers. Two days later Captain Emanuel da Silva, officers, Roman Catholic priests, sailors, and soldiers arrived. Hunger and thirst had killed a large proportion of those who left the wreck. They informed the commander that they had saved nothing from the wreck except diamonds to the value of one hundred thousand pounds. The Siamese had been abandoned by their Portuguese companions on the way, and no one could tell what had become of them. [3]
The council lodged the Portuguese officers and priests at Rondebosch and the sailors and soldiers in the hospital, which happened to be free of patients. Rations on the Company’s scale according to rank were issued, and £100 in money was lent to the officers for clothing. The priests were required not to give offence by public celebration of their worship. All were forwarded to Europe with the next fleet except some sailors who chose to enter the Company’s service. A sergeant and six soldiers were sent to look for the Siamese; after about a month from the wreck most were found in a wretched condition among the mountains. They were received at the castle with firing of cannon and other marks of honour on account of Siam’s friendly feeling toward the East India Company, given clothing and £200 on loan, and at their own request lodged with a burgher rather than with the Portuguese. About four months after rescue the two surviving ambassadors and their attendants, twenty-eight in number, were forwarded to Batavia to find a ship home. [3]
Klaas and the Bushmen — 1686
In 1686 an incident illustrated the enmity already felt toward the San (Bushmen). Some time earlier a hunting party of Europeans had been attacked; one man was killed by a poisoned arrow, sixteen oxen were stolen, and two waggons were burnt. Retaliation of the kind used against agricultural or pastoral neighbours was nearly useless, for San bands were hard to find when they did not wish to be seen. The Chainouqua country was infested so that travelling was unsafe. The commander called on Captains Klaas and Koopman to suppress the depredations, but Klaas himself was so pressed that on one occasion he abandoned his kraals and fled toward Cape Agulhas. [3]
At length Klaas—often styled a good and faithful friend of the Company—appeared at the castle and reported a slight punishment of the common enemy. As he prepared to attack, three women came to request a renewal of former friendship. He returned a favourable answer with a present of tobacco, and by that means decoyed eleven people, including their leader, to his kraal. A sheep was killed for their entertainment; while they danced and rejoiced he had them seized and ordered them put to death. Eight were killed at once; three escaped by speed of foot. For this act, which the council chose to view as retaliation for injuries done to Europeans, Klaas was rewarded with twenty pounds of Virginia tobacco, an anker of arrack, one hundred and fifty pounds of rice, and a few trifles. The episode stands in the 1686 record as Company policy working through a Khoikhoi ally against San raiders rather than as a formal colonial commando. [3]
Revised Placaats and Land Titles — July 1686
Among the various placaats issued since the formation of the settlement, many had fallen into disuse. Some no longer fitted the condition of affairs; others had been enforced only by particular commanders. It became necessary to revise and republish them so that local law should not be uncertain. Most of the revised placaats concerned what would now be called municipal matters. Individual liberty was more restricted, and penalties were severer, than in later ages—though in that respect the Cape did not differ from the most enlightened European countries of the day. Among general rules republished were penalties for working a horse under three years of age (ten pounds), for permitting a slave to carry a gun even when tending cattle (twenty pounds), and for selling any implement of war, even a knife, to a slave (arbitrary correction). The Company’s cattle were to be branded C & O on both ears; no one was to keep cattle with clipped ears, under penalty of confiscation. [3]
Another useful measure was more perfect registration of titles to land. On the 1st of July 1686 the council of policy resolved that all persons should produce within two months their title-deeds and leases, to be copied into a strong book and authenticated by the secretary. Existing records were to be copied into the same book so that causes of dispute and actions at law might be prevented. The volume framed under that resolution later stood in the surveyor-general’s office in Cape Town. From this date a continuous title record was kept. It must not be inferred that the names of all who obtained grants appear at the moment of arrival: title-deeds were never issued until the ground was properly surveyed, sometimes twenty-five or thirty years after allotment, while the occupant held only a note authorising possession and cultivation. Original occupiers often died or sold out before survey, so titles issued in the name of whoever held the land when measurement was made—an apparent defect in the books that in fact reflected survey delay rather than missing grants. [3]
Close of 1686 at the Cape
By the end of the year the settlement’s ordinary work sat beside the extraordinary wrecks. The commander was again at the castle after the long northern absence; copper mining had been set aside; Stellenbosch had its fair, its landdrost’s house and court, its district mill, and the first clerical service and church resolution of the inland congregation. Orphan girls and farming families continued to thicken the free population inland. Revised placaats and the July title register tightened the paper frame of property and police. On the southern coast the Milagros disaster had brought Portuguese officers, priests, and Siamese ambassadors under Company hospitality and onward passage. Far to the east, unknown yet at Table Bay, the Stavenisse people and their English hosts were still hewing the Centaurus, and the Bona Ventura survivors had only just reached Natal on Christmas Day. [3] [4]
No single new office equal to Van Rheede’s 1685 reforms defined the year. Instead 1686 fixed habits: the October kermis as the colony’s annual inland meeting, written land title as a standing duty, and the Cape’s role as rescue port for wrecks on both the Agulhas shore and—by slow report—the Natal coast. Those were the calendar facts of the year under Simon van der Stel’s command. [3]