Boer History1729 at the Cape of Good Hope: Saxenburg Wreck, Soldiers’ Desertion, Death of Noodt, and Le Sueur
Saxenburg Lost off Cape Agulhas — 9 January 1729
On the morning of the 9th of January 1729 the provision ship Saxenburg, bound from Batavia to the Cape with rice and other Indian produce, went down in a gale off Cape Agulhas. Of eighty-eight souls on board, all perished but seven, who were picked up on pieces of the wreck by other vessels a few hours later. [3]
The Agulhas loss therefore opened the calendar year on the outward rice route rather than on the Table Bay beach where the Stabroek, Haarlem, and Middenrak had already been wrecked or stranded in 1728. A Batavia provisioner carrying Indian staples never made the roadstead; seven men on floating wreckage were the whole human salvage of a company of eighty-eight. [3]
For magazines and shipping clerks at the Cape, the January gale off the southern tip cut a rice and produce cargo out of the year’s expected Batavia arrivals. The disaster sat beside the prior winter’s Table Bay record as another reminder that the refreshment station’s approaches, not only its anchorage, could erase hulls and crews in a single blow. [3]
Harbour Commission: Table Bay, Saldanha, and Simon’s Bay — 1729
In consequence of the numerous disasters that had occurred in Table Bay in the winter season, the directors issued instructions that the several harbours in the neighbourhood of the Cape should be carefully examined, and a report be submitted to them. To perform this, a commission was appointed, consisting of two old skippers, one named Jacobus Möller, who was then acting as master of the naval establishment at the Cape, the other named Jan de Heere, who had been for some time living in the colony as a burgher. [3]
They sounded Table Bay and made a chart of it, reporting that it was not filling up, that it could be made a perfectly safe harbour by means of a mole, but that the mole would cost a great deal of money. Saldanha Bay they described as secure, but as wanting in everything else that could make a refreshment station valuable. Simon’s Bay they thought more highly of. Eight or ten ships could there find shelter in all weathers, and there was plenty of fresh water to be had. Its drawbacks they reported to be no ground in its neighbourhood fit for gardens and difficulty of access by land. [3]
The Möller–De Heere survey thus answered directors’ anxiety after the winter wrecks with three distinct verdicts: Table Bay still deep enough for a costly mole solution; Saldanha safe but barren as a full refreshment base; Simon’s Bay the preferred natural shelter for eight to ten ships, limited by land approach and the lack of garden soil nearby. Calendar 1729 therefore carried the first systematic local charting reply to the disasters that had closed the previous year. [3]
Soldiers Plan Desertion toward Delagoa — Night of 2 April 1729
Fourteen soldiers planned to desert from the garrison and march overland to the Portuguese possessions beyond Delagoa Bay, where they supposed they would find means to get to Europe. In the night of the 2nd of April 1729 two of them were on guard. These deserted with their arms and assisted some of the others to rob the guardhouse of nine muskets with ammunition. One was unable to get away; the remaining thirteen marched towards Stellenbosch. [3]
During the next day they visited the farms of Andries Schutte and Izaak Nel, where they obtained food, and then continued on their journey. The desertion was thus not a single night’s bolt from the castle walls but a planned column toward the Portuguese east coast, armed from the guardhouse and feeding at free-burgher farms on the Stellenbosch road. [3]
Governor Pieter Gysbert Noodt, meantime, instructed Pieter Lourens, landdrost of Stellenbosch, to assemble a party of burghers and arrest the fugitives. The Company’s answer was therefore local civil-military pursuit under the district landdrost rather than an immediate castle sortie alone—burgher neighbours called out against soldiers who had already left the posts with stolen muskets. [3]
Pursuit at Hottentots Holland Kloof — 4 April 1729
Early in the morning of the 4th they were overtaken at Hottentots Holland kloof, but only two gave themselves up when the landdrost summoned them to surrender. The others maintained a running fight for three hours, when their leader was shot and eight were captured. Another was made prisoner a few days later, and the remaining three returned of their own accord to the castle and surrendered. [3]
The kloof fight therefore broke the column without a complete field massacre: two at the first summons, a three-hour running action with the leader killed and eight taken, a later capture, and three voluntary returns to the castle. Of the thirteen who had left with arms after the guardhouse robbery, none reached the Portuguese frontier. [3]
For Stellenbosch district and the Cape posts, the 4 April pursuit fixed the deserters’ route on the Hottentots Holland pass rather than on a successful overland trek to Delagoa. Landdrost Lourens’s burgher party closed a plot that had begun with two men on guard and nine stolen muskets two nights earlier. [3]
High Court Sentence of the Deserters — 21 April 1729
They were brought to trial, and on the 21st of April sentence was passed. Four were condemned to be hanged, and their bodies afterwards to be exposed to perish by the air and the birds. Five were to be flogged, branded, and made to labour fifteen years in chains. Three were to be flogged and made to labour ten years. And the last was to be flogged and made to labour three years. [3]
At the foot of this sentence the original signatures may still be seen of the members of the high court of justice: Pieter Gysbert Noodt, Jan de la Fontaine, Johannes Theophilus Rhenius, Nicholas Heyning, Hendrik Swellengrebel, Christoffel Brand, J. P. van Coller, and Ryk Tulbagh. [3]
The 21 April judgment thus graded capital exposure for four, long chain labour with flogging and branding for five, and lesser flogging-and-labour terms for the rest, under a bench that seated the governor, the secunde, and councillors including Tulbagh, who had entered the council of policy and the high court only the previous September. The paper record of the court, not later gossip about the day, is the surviving official account of how the desertion was punished. [3]
Execution and Sudden Death of Governor Noodt — 23 April 1729
The sentence was carried into effect on the morning of the 23rd, and the only interference of the governor that is recorded is that he used his power of mitigation to permit the burial of the four who were hanged, instead of allowing them to be exposed. The punishment was in accordance with the spirit of those times, and was not more severe than was inflicted for similar offences in other countries. [3]
Mr. Noodt was at the head of this colony for a period of two years and two months. He was generally disliked, but as he did not interfere with the burghers, they did not complain of him as they had of the younger Van der Stel. He died suddenly when sitting in the pleasure house in the Company’s garden between three and four o’clock in the afternoon of the 23rd of April 1729. A few hours before, when apparently in perfect health, he had signed documents which are still in existence. [3]
On the last day of the month his body was buried with state under the pavement of the church, but in the records there is no trace of regret shown by any one for his death. With the first homeward bound fleet of the following year his widow and son returned to Europe. The same calendar day therefore held the morning execution of the four condemned deserters—with Noodt’s mitigation for burial rather than exposure—and the governor’s own sudden death in the garden pleasure house that afternoon. [3]
De la Fontaine Again Acting Head — 24 April 1729
At eight in the morning after Mr. Noodt’s death the council of policy met, and decided that the secunde Jan de la Fontaine should again act as head of the government until the pleasure of the supreme authorities could be known. With the next homeward bound fleet they sent a request to the directors that he should be permanently appointed governor. [3]
De la Fontaine had already headed the government as secunde from 8 September 1724 to 25 February 1727, between the death of Governor Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes and Noodt’s installation. The 24 April 1729 decision restored that acting arrangement inside twenty-four hours of Noodt’s death, with a formal petition for permanent appointment travelling on the next homeward fleet. [3]
For the rest of calendar 1729 the Cape therefore ran again under De la Fontaine as acting head, with the high-court and council personnel who had signed the 21 April sentence still in place and the directors’ answer on the governorship still months away. Continuity of routine administration, not a contested local succession, marked the day after Noodt’s burial preparations began. [3]
Rev. François le Sueur, Assistant Clergyman — 16 October 1729
The directors sent out as second or assistant clergyman at the Cape the Rev. François le Sueur, who conducted service here for the first time on the 16th of October 1729. [3]
At the Cape the clerical map had for some years run with the Rev. Mr. Bek at the mother congregation after the death of the Rev. Mr. D’Ailly in 1726, and with the Rev. Lambertus Slicher at Drakenstein and directed to hold services occasionally at Stellenbosch. So matters had remained for more than three years when Le Sueur’s first Cape service added a second ordained voice on the Cape side. [3]
The October arrival did not yet fill every inland vacancy; it did place an assistant clergyman at the Cape under directors’ appointment before the later deaths and transfers that would again reshuffle Drakenstein and Stellenbosch. Inside 1729 the dated fact is Le Sueur’s first service on the 16th of October. [3]
Close of 1729 at the Cape
By the end of 1729 the Cape had lost a governor and regained an acting head already known from the mid-decade interregnum. On the 9th of January the Batavia provision ship Saxenburg sank off Cape Agulhas with seven of eighty-eight saved on wreckage. A directors’ harbour commission under skippers Jacobus Möller and Jan de Heere charted Table Bay as fit for an expensive mole, judged Saldanha secure but otherwise thin as a refreshment station, and preferred Simon’s Bay for all-weather shelter of eight or ten ships despite poor garden ground and hard land access. On the night of the 2nd of April fourteen soldiers tried to desert overland toward the Portuguese beyond Delagoa Bay; thirteen left after a guardhouse robbery of nine muskets, fed at the farms of Andries Schutte and Izaak Nel, and were broken at Hottentots Holland kloof on the 4th by landdrost Pieter Lourens and burghers. Sentence on the 21st condemned four to hang with exposure, five to flogging, branding, and fifteen years in chains, and the rest to shorter flogging-and-labour terms, signed by Noodt, De la Fontaine, Rhenius, Heyning, Swellengrebel, Brand, Van Coller, and Tulbagh. On the morning of the 23rd the four were hanged; Noodt mitigated exposure to burial; that afternoon between three and four he died suddenly in the Company’s garden pleasure house after two years and two months in office, and was buried with state under the church pavement on the last day of April. On the morning of the 24th the council restored secunde Jan de la Fontaine as acting head and petitioned the directors for his permanent appointment. On the 16th of October the Rev. François le Sueur held his first service as second or assistant clergyman at the Cape beside Bek and Slicher. The year thus closed on a southern-tip wreck, a three-harbour survey, a failed soldiers’ trek and public executions, Noodt’s sudden death, De la Fontaine’s second acting government, and one new ordained assistant at the mother church. [3]