Boer History1721 at the Cape of Good Hope: Delagoa Bay Landing and Fever, Rice Rations, Slicher’s First Service, and Cranendonk’s Death
Rice Rations and Fifty-One Muids of Wheat for Batavia — 1721
The dry sequence that had begun with a poor harvest in 1718 and had left outward wheat under a hundred muids in 1720 reached its sharpest local effect in 1721. It was not possible that year to supply the ships with beans, peas, and husked barley. Rice was served out to the Company’s own people instead of bread. Fifty-one muids of wheat were nevertheless sent to Batavia so that the name of exportation might still be kept alive on the India books. [3]
Those fifty-one muids stood well below even the token figure of the previous season. Burghers and magazines had already lived through livestock disease since 1714, a private meat contract after a failed public auction in 1718, the first severe horse sickness of 1719, and the live-animal placaat of 2 July 1720. Calendar 1721 added grain rationing inside the settlement itself while still forcing a symbolic outward wheat parcel toward Batavia. [3]
In the winter of 1721 the seasons changed for the better. The improvement did not yet restore a full export year—nearly three thousand five hundred muids would go out only in 1722—but it closed the worst stretch of the dry run under Governor Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes. Rice on Company tables and fifty-one muids on the Batavia account thus mark the calendar year at both ends of the local food chain. [3]
Delagoa Bay Expedition Sails from Table Bay — 14 February 1721
Late in 1720 the advance party sent from the Netherlands to occupy Delagoa Bay as a Cape dependency had reached Table Bay in the small vessels Kaap and Gouda: forty-four soldiers and a few mechanics. The officer appointed head of the expedition had died soon after arrival; the council of policy had selected the Cape clerk Willem van Taak as successor, chosen a council to assist him, and constituted a petty court of justice. Through the turn of the year those men and stores remained under castle authority while the sailing season opened. [3]
On the 14th of February 1721 the expedition, accompanied by a small vessel named the Zeelandia, sailed from Table Bay. The Portuguese had abandoned the bay in 1692; the directors’ resolution of 1720 had intended the new factory to stand under the Cape government much as Mauritius once had, with important cases and appeals going to the high court of justice at the Castle of Good Hope. The February departure turned that paper dependency into an outward voyage under Van Taak’s temporary commission. [3]
Three vessels thus left the Cape roadstead for the south-east coast: the two small craft that had brought the advance party and the accompanying Zeelandia. Chavonnes’s government kept the ordinary summer-fleet and interloper rules at Table Bay while this detached enterprise carried soldiers, mechanics, and a Cape-made civil frame toward a shore the Company had not held for nearly three decades. [3]
Landing, Fever, and the First Fort — March–April 1721
On the 29th of March 1721 the expedition reached its destination. A site on the left bank of English river near its mouth was selected for the fort. Before much building was done, fever attacked the party. Within six weeks two-thirds of them died, including the commander and the engineer. The first weeks of occupation therefore destroyed most of the force that had left Table Bay in February, and removed both the Cape-chosen head and the man charged with the works. [3]
At length, with the assistance of some of the local people, a small fort was constructed. The Zeelandia was then sent back to the Cape with letters and a little ivory and wax obtained in barter. The first return cargo from the new station was thus thin trade goods and official reports rather than a settled factory’s surplus, and it carried news of a mortality that had already emptied two-thirds of the original party. [3]
Willem van Taak’s death closed the brief command that the Cape council had created after the Netherlands-appointed head died in Table Bay. The engineer’s death left the works without their specialist at the same moment. What remained on the left bank of English river was a reduced occupation behind a small fort, still dependent on the Cape for men, food, and a new civil head. [3]
Zeelandia Returns with the Yacht Uno and Eighty Soldiers — August 1721
The Zeelandia returned in August, together with the yacht Uno, taking provisions and eighty soldiers to strengthen the occupation party at the bay. The reinforcement more than replaced the original military draft of forty-four soldiers in raw numbers, though it could not restore the dead commander, engineer, or the two-thirds lost to fever in the first six weeks. [3]
Upon learning what had occurred, the council of policy appointed Casparus Swertner successor to Van Taak, with the rank of junior merchant and a salary of £2 15s. 6d. a month. He was then already at Delagoa Bay, but he died before the news of his appointment reached the station. A subaltern named Jan Michel was then chosen to be head of the party of occupation. The council hoped that by this time the survivors from the fever were seasoned to the climate, and that henceforth all would go well. [3]
The August relief thus paired a double ship visit—Zeelandia and Uno—with a double failure of named succession at the outpost: Van Taak dead of fever, Swertner dead before his commission could be read to him, Michel left in charge as a stopgap head. The Cape still treated the bay as a dependency for trial and appeal, but the living chain of command had already turned over three times between the Netherlands appointment and Michel’s selection. [3]
Swertner’s Dead Commission and Jan Michel’s Command — 1721
Swertner’s junior-merchant rank and fixed monthly salary show how the Cape council tried to regularise the bay under ordinary Company grades once Van Taak was gone. The appointment was made at the Castle after the Zeelandia’s letters arrived; it never became an effective local installation because death outran the despatch. Michel, already on the spot as a subaltern, inherited the occupation without that merchant title. [3]
Under Michel the station passed the remainder of the calendar year in trading, exploring, and gathering information. The heavier disasters still ahead—the buccaneer seizure of Fort Lagoa on the 19th of April 1722, later gold and copper barter, and the inland party under secunde Jan Christoffel Stefler in 1723—lay outside 1721. Within this year the institutional fact was a small fort on English river, a reinforced but fever-thinned party, and a subaltern head after two named successors had died. [3]
From the Cape’s side, Delagoa Bay remained an expensive and deadly dependency rather than a paying factory. Ivory and wax in small quantity had come back with the first Zeelandia letters; eighty fresh soldiers and provisions went north in August; no gold rush or copper mine yet answered the directors’ hopes. Chavonnes’s board continued to staff and supply the post while keeping Table Bay’s ordinary commerce under the enlarged post-Utrecht shipping pattern. [3]
Chavonnes Raised to Ordinary Councillor of India — 1 June 1721
Governor Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes had managed to preserve the good will both of the directors and of the colonists. He embarked in no costly undertakings, did his utmost to keep down expense, and preserved concord in the settlement. The directors were so well satisfied with his administration that they raised him to the rank of ordinary councillor of India, a dignity enjoyed by none of his predecessors at the Cape. [3]
The letter containing the announcement of his elevation reached the Cape on the 1st of June 1721. The honour arrived in the same half-year that rice replaced bread for the Company’s people, that fifty-one muids of wheat went out as a token export, and that the Delagoa expedition was already dying of fever on English river. Metropolitan approval of a quiet, expense-conscious government thus coincided with the hardest grain year of the dry sequence and with the first mortality reports from the new bay factory. [3]
Chavonnes remained a quiet, religious man whose administration the later record sums in low expenditure and preserved concord. The ordinary-councillor rank did not alter the local board’s daily work—secunde, fiscal, and junior members still sat under him—but it placed the Cape governor on a higher India grade than any predecessor had held while still resident at the Castle. [3]
Rev. Lambertus Slicher’s First Cape Church Service — 15 June 1721
In the Cape church, matters had assumed a satisfactory aspect. The Rev. Mr. D’Ailly remained as first or chief clergyman of the Cape. The rector of the school, the Rev. Lambertus Slicher, was an ordained clergyman, but had been employed as rector only. In that capacity he had served at the Cape when, at the request of the congregation and with the consent of the directors, he began to assist in the church. [3]
His first service was held on the 15th of June 1721. He still continued to perform the duty of rector of the school, though only in February 1723 would he be formally inducted as second or assistant clergyman of the Cape congregation. The June service therefore opened a dual role—school rector and assisting preacher—under D’Ailly’s chief pastorate, two weeks after the ordinary-councillor letter for Chavonnes had been read at the Castle. [3]
The previous year private persons had subscribed funds for an organ for use in the Cape church. Inland, Petrus van Aken already held Drakenstein, where the church building begun in 1717 had been completed in 1720, and Bek remained at Stellenbosch while a replacement church rose on poor-fund, collection, Cape consistory loan, and lottery money. Within 1721 the new Cape fact was Slicher’s first pulpit Sunday beside D’Ailly, not a change of inland pastors. [3]
Cranendonk Dies; Jan de la Fontaine Acting Secunde — 8 October 1721
On the 8th of October 1721 Abraham Cranendonk died. He had been secunde since 4 March 1715, after the Helot crisis and Chavonnes’s installation, and had sat through the labour debate of 1717, the Noodt precedence quarrel of 1718, and the dry years that followed. His death opened the second chair of the government in the same year that Delagoa Bay consumed its first two named commanders. [3]
Jan de la Fontaine, who had been working his way upwards during the eleven years of his residence in South Africa, was chosen by the council of policy to act as secunde until the pleasure of the directors could be known. He had arrived on the 15th of March 1710 and had held warehouse and junior council work through the Mauritius evacuation, the Stellenbosch fire, and the early Chavonnes years. The October vote made him acting second in the colony while confirmation still lay with the Assembly of Seventeen. [3]
In 1724 the appointment would be confirmed by the directors. Within calendar 1721 the legal fact was the council’s choice after Cranendonk’s death on the 8th of October: De la Fontaine acting secunde under Chavonnes, with fiscal independent Cornelis van Beaumont still in office. The board that had staffed Delagoa Bay and received Slicher’s first service now itself changed its second seat before year-end. [3]
Close of 1721 at the Cape
By the end of 1721 the Cape under Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes had lived through the hardest grain year of the dry sequence: ships went without beans, peas, and barley; rice replaced bread for the Company’s people; fifty-one muids of wheat still went to Batavia to keep the name of exportation; and the winter rains at last turned for the better. On the 14th of February the Delagoa Bay expedition sailed with the Zeelandia; on the 29th of March it reached English river; within six weeks fever killed two-thirds of the party, including commander Willem van Taak and the engineer; a small fort rose with local help; the Zeelandia carried back ivory, wax, and letters; in August she returned with the yacht Uno, provisions, and eighty soldiers; Casparus Swertner died before his junior- merchant commission could take effect; and subaltern Jan Michel headed the occupation. Word that Chavonnes had been raised to ordinary councillor of India reached the Castle on the 1st of June. On the 15th of June the Rev. Lambertus Slicher, still school rector, held his first assisting service in the Cape church under D’Ailly. On the 8th of October secunde Abraham Cranendonk died, and Jan de la Fontaine was chosen to act in his place. The year thus joined rice rations and a token wheat export, a fever-struck south-east factory, a metropolitan honour for a quiet governor, a new Cape pulpit assistant, and a new acting secunde. [3]