Boer History1722 at the Cape of Good Hope: Table Bay Gale, Delagoa Buccaneers, Schoonberg Wreck, and Wheat Export Recovery
Wheat Export Recovery — Nearly Three Thousand Five Hundred Muids — 1722
The dry sequence that had left outward wheat under a hundred muids in 1720 and had forced rice onto Company tables in place of bread in 1721 broke in the winter rains of that latter year. In calendar 1722 the harvest answered. Nearly three thousand five hundred muids of wheat left the colony, restoring a real export figure after the token fifty-one muids that had gone to Batavia only to keep the name of exportation alive. [3]
Those three thousand five hundred muids stood against the memory of four lean seasons under Governor Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes: a poor harvest in 1718, another in 1719, less than a hundred muids outward in 1720, and the rice-and-token year of 1721. The recovery did not yet match the still larger parcels of the mid-decade, but it closed the worst stretch of grain scarcity at the refreshment station and put Indian-bound wheat back on the books in commercial quantity. [3]
Livestock disease and the live-animal placaat of 2 July 1720 still constrained meat supply, and foreigners remained under tight rules for fresh provisions. Grain, however, was again a Cape surplus article. The calendar year thus opened under Chavonnes with magazines and free farmers sending wheat seaward while the Castle watched a south-east factory and a crowded roadstead. [3]
Hendriks Becomes a Burgher; Tobacco Abandoned; Wine Samples Fail — 1722
The directors’ programme of staple experiments, pressed since the council reports of 1717 and the resolution of 17 April 1718, reached a practical close for tobacco in 1722. Cors Hendriks, the expert sent from Amsterdam in 1719, had judged the soil unfavourable after a colony tour, had set plants at Rustenburg beside Rondebosch and in the Company’s garden in Table Valley, and had seen wind and sun ruin the crop while the mature leaves proved bad in flavour. The council of policy shared his despair of success. [3]
In 1722 the tobacco expert became a burgher. The change of status marked the end of his official superintendence rather than a new commercial industry: no marketable Cape tobacco leaf had been established, and the experiment stood abandoned beside the long failure of the olive, whose trees still grew luxuriantly only to die without clear cause or to drop fruit while young. [3]
Wine trials continued on a larger cask. After six half aams sent on the return fleet following the directors’ letter of 27 June 1719 had proved unfit at Amsterdam and at Batavia, the directors ordered half leggers instead of half aams. In 1722 ten half leggers went to Amsterdam and Middelburg; the result was the same as before. A further trial with a thousand bottles sent out to be filled and returned likewise failed. Ordinary fleet and hospital wine prices remained on the old scale, while Constantia under Johannes Colyn kept its separate European reputation with red wine at a high legger price and white wine readily sold. [3]
Buccaneers Take Fort Lagoa — 19 April 1722
At Delagoa Bay the occupation that had sailed from Table Bay on the 14th of February 1721 had already lost two-thirds of its first party to fever, including commander Willem van Taak and the engineer. Casparus Swertner had died before his junior-merchant commission could take effect; subaltern Jan Michel headed the survivors after the Zeelandia and yacht Uno had reinforced the post in August 1721. Time then passed in trading, exploring, and gathering information under Cape dependency rules. [3]
On the 19th of April 1722 some of the local black inhabitants reported that three ships had entered the bay. The vessels proved to be manned by buccaneers. They attacked Fort Lagoa, took possession after a short cannonade, and plundered the store. They did not otherwise ill-treat the Company’s men at the fort; eighteen of them joined the raiders. [3]
When the raiders were ready for sea they compelled an official named De Bucquoi to pilot them out, for he had surveyed the bay and made a chart of its soundings. They also took the vessel employed as a packet—so that, they said, they could send the pilot back once outside. They failed to keep that word. De Bucquoi and the crew of the Kaap had to remain with the buccaneers until another port was reached, from which they made their way to India. Those left at the station were cut off from communication with the outer world until relief came in due course; only then was exploration of the country a few miles inland completed and a little gold, ivory, and copper trade resumed under the broken post. [3]
North-West Gale in Table Bay — 14–16 June 1722
The year 1722 was the most disastrous yet known for the Company’s fleets in these seas. On the 17th of January the richly laden return ships Sampson and Amstelveen, belonging to a large homeward fleet, met a great gale off the southern coast and went down in the open ocean. Two men from the first and one from the last were later found by other ships floating on wreckage; the remainder of their crews perished. That January loss opened a calendar that would close far worse inside Table Bay itself. [3]
On Sunday the 14th of June a gale from the north-west set into Table Bay. At anchor for the Company lay two second-class outward-bound ships, the Standvastigheid and Rotterdam, together carrying 453 men; two third-class outward-bound ships, the Zoetigheid and Lakeman, together carrying 283 men; a small outward-bound vessel, the Schotsche Lorrendraayer, with 52 men; the packet boat Gouda, ready to sail to Delagoa Bay with supplies; and the brigantine Amy, in Cape use ever since her seizure in Saldanha Bay in 1693. [3]
Three English East Indiamen also lay in the bay: the Nightingale, bound to Madras, with a crew of 140; and the Addison and Chandos, homeward from Bengal, with crews of 80 and 70. The Chandos had put in a fortnight earlier in distress, dismasted in a gale at sea. All that Sunday the danger to shipping was great, but no accident worse than parting cables and swamping boats occurred. On Monday the gale lulled. During the night the wind shifted to north-north-west, and on Tuesday morning the bay seemed covered with breakers. Still up to dusk the ships held to their anchors. [3]
As darkness set in the gale increased. At seven o’clock minute guns were heard between the gusts, and the firing continued until midnight. The sea broke on the beach with such violence that it was dangerous to pass along the road between the castle and the shore. Through that night the roadstead fought at its anchors while the settlement could give no help beyond listening to the guns. [3]
Dawn of 17 June 1722 — Every Ship Ashore
At dawn on the morning of the 17th not a single vessel was afloat in the bay. The Amy lay nearest the castle and had broken up, but her crew had got ashore. The Chandos was next, close to the castle; she had partly broken up, and only two of her people were drowned. Then came fragments of the Zoetigheid, half of whose crew had perished. [3]
The Lakeman stood high on the land a little further on, with only one man missing. Just beyond were the crushed fragments of the Standvastigheid, Rotterdam, and Schotsche Lorrendraayer, all together; of their crews only forty-five men were living. The Gouda and the Nightingale lay some distance off, both high on the land and not much broken: the Nightingale had lost one man, the Gouda none. The Addison had struck in the mouth of Salt River, overturned, and broken up; only ten of her crew had got to land. [3]
The roadstead that had held Dutch outward ships, a Delagoa packet, the old prize brigantine, and three English Indiamen on the Sunday evening was, by Wednesday morning, a single line of wreckage from the castle beach toward Salt River. No hull remained at anchor; the bay’s shelter had failed completely under the shifted north-north-west storm after the Monday lull. [3]
Six Hundred and Sixty Dead and a Quarter-Million Loss — June 1722
In all, six hundred and sixty men perished in that gale, and property valued at nearly a quarter of a million sterling was lost. The figure joined Company sailors and soldiers on the outward ships with English Indiamen crews and the small craft tied to Cape and Delagoa service. It stood without parallel in the earlier wreck record of the settlement. [3]
Among the Dutch losses the crushed cluster of Standvastigheid, Rotterdam, and Schotsche Lorrendraayer accounted for most of the dead from the large outward complements. The Zoetigheid lost half her people. The Lakeman, driven high ashore, almost saved her full company. The packet Gouda, meant for Delagoa Bay supplies after the April buccaneer stroke at Fort Lagoa, survived as a hull on the beach without loss of life, while the old Amy broke up with her crew ashore. [3]
On the English side the Addison at Salt River mouth was the worst single case among the three Indiamen: ten men only reached land from a crew of eighty. The Chandos, already once dismasted at sea, lost two beside the castle. The Nightingale, high and little broken, lost one. The June disaster thus struck both flags in the same roadstead and left Chavonnes’s government to bury, salvage, and report on a scale the Cape had not yet known. [3]
Schoonberg Run Ashore near Cape Agulhas — 20 November 1722
On the 20th of November of the same disastrous year the Schoonberg, homeward bound with a valuable cargo, was run ashore near Cape Agulhas in broad daylight and in fine weather through the culpable negligence of her officers. The ship broke up, but all on board got safely to shore. [3]
That November loss differed in kind from the June gale: no storm justified it, and the entire company walked free while the cargo went with the hull. Coming five months after six hundred and sixty deaths in Table Bay and ten months after the ocean foundering of the Sampson and Amstelveen, the Schoonberg wreck extended the year’s shipping toll from open-sea return fleet to roadstead catastrophe to daylight stranding on the Agulhas coast. [3]
The next wreck on the coast would fall only in the following year, when the little Meteren, outward as a packet for the Cape–Delagoa run, was lost north of the Elephant river mouth on the 7th of November 1723. Within calendar 1722 the Agulhas stranding closed the known major ship losses tied to the Cape sea-lanes under Chavonnes. [3]
Church and Administration under Chavonnes — 1722
Inland and in Table Valley the ordinary machinery of the colony continued under the same heads who had closed 1721. The Rev. Mr. D’Ailly remained first clergyman of the Cape. Lambertus Slicher, rector of the school and ordained clergyman, who had held his first assisting service on the 15th of June 1721, still served in that assisting capacity; his formal induction as second or assistant clergyman of the Cape congregation would come only in February 1723. The organ subscribed for the Cape church in 1720 already belonged to the completed fabric of town worship. [3]
At Drakenstein the Rev. Petrus van Aken held the pulpit in the church completed in 1720. At Stellenbosch the Rev. Mr. Bek remained while the replacement church, begun in 1717 after the fire, rose on poor-fund money, collections, a Cape consistory loan, and a lottery permitted by the directors. Secunde Jan de la Fontaine, chosen after Abraham Cranendonk’s death on the 8th of October 1721, acted through 1722 pending the directors’ confirmation that would arrive in 1724. Fiscal independent Cornelis van Beaumont still held his office; he would die on the 14th of June 1724. [3]
Chavonnes himself kept the good will of directors and colonists by avoiding costly new undertakings, holding down expense, and preserving concord. The metropolitan honour that had reached the Cape on the 1st of June 1721—ordinary councillor of India—still framed his rank while the June gale and the Delagoa raid tested the practical limits of a quiet administration at a refreshment port. [3]
Close of 1722 at the Cape
By the end of 1722 the Cape under Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes had recovered a working wheat export of nearly three thousand five hundred muids after the rice winter of 1721; had closed the official tobacco experiment by making Cors Hendriks a burgher; and had seen ten half leggers of sample wine fail again at Amsterdam and Middelburg while Constantia under Colyn kept its separate name. On the 19th of April buccaneers took Fort Lagoa, plundered the store, drew eighteen men from the fort party, and carried off De Bucquoi and the Kaap packet crew toward India. On the 17th of January the Sampson and Amstelveen had already gone down off the southern coast. From the 14th to the 17th of June the north-west and north-north-west gale destroyed every ship in Table Bay—Standvastigheid, Rotterdam, Zoetigheid, Lakeman, Schotsche Lorrendraayer, Gouda, Amy, Nightingale, Addison, and Chandos—killing about six hundred and sixty people and destroying property worth nearly a quarter of a million sterling. On the 20th of November the Schoonberg was run ashore near Cape Agulhas in fine daylight weather, all hands saved, cargo lost. Church and civil heads—D’Ailly and assisting Slicher at the Cape, Van Aken at Drakenstein, Bek at Stellenbosch, De la Fontaine as acting secunde, Van Beaumont as fiscal—carried the ordinary year beside that sea disaster. The calendar thus joined harvest recovery and failed staple samples to the worst roadstead wreck night yet recorded and a second blow at the Delagoa dependency. [3]