Boer History1730 at the Cape of Good Hope: De la Fontaine Governor, Delagoa Abandonment, and Slicher’s Death
Directors Confirm De la Fontaine — Despatches of 20 February 1730
After Governor Pieter Gysbert Noodt died suddenly on the afternoon of the 23rd of April 1729, the council of policy had restored secunde Jan de la Fontaine as acting head and, with the next homeward-bound fleet, had asked the directors to appoint him governor in permanence. On the 20th of February 1730 despatches were received at the Cape to the effect that that request had been complied with. [3]
The same packet of orders filled the two offices that the promotion would leave open. The fiscal independent, Adriaan van Kervel, was appointed to succeed De la Fontaine as secunde. Daniel van den Henghel, then in service at Colombo, was appointed fiscal. The February despatches thus settled the headship, the second place, and the independent fiscalate in a single directors’ reply to the Cape’s petition of the previous year. [3]
Calendar 1730 therefore opened not on a contested local succession but on written confirmation from the Netherlands. De la Fontaine, who had already acted after Chavonnes’s death in 1724 and again after Noodt’s death in 1729, now held directors’ authority to take the full title and oath of governor. [3]
Jan de la Fontaine Installed as Governor — 8 March 1730
On the 8th of March 1730 Mr. De la Fontaine took the oath of office and was formally installed as governor. The ceremony closed the long acting interval that had begun the morning after Noodt’s death and placed the Cape again under a fully commissioned head rather than a secunde holding the government pending directors’ pleasure. [3]
The installation did not yet carry the higher Indian rank that would later be added to his name. Only on the 21st of March 1732 was he further promoted to councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India. Inside 1730 the dated constitutional fact is the March oath and formal installation as governor of the Cape. [3]
With Van Kervel named secunde and Van den Henghel named fiscal from Colombo, the senior civil list of early 1730 was thus reset around De la Fontaine’s permanent commission. Routine administration that had run under his acting hand since late April 1729 now continued under the same man with directors’ full title. [3]
Van Kervel Secunde and Van den Henghel Fiscal — 1730
Adriaan van Kervel moved from the independent fiscalate into the secunde’s chair as De la Fontaine’s immediate subordinate. The appointment kept a senior Cape officer already known in council work at the governor’s right hand and freed the fiscal’s post for a new man ordered out from the eastern stations. [3]
Daniel van den Henghel, then serving at Colombo, received the fiscalate. His nomination from Ceylon rather than from the Cape burgher or junior servant lists underlined that the independent fiscal remained a directors’ appointment on the wider Company circuit, not a local promotion alone. [3]
Together the two names completed the February package: permanent governor, promoted secunde, and a fiscal drawn from Colombo. For the rest of the year the Cape’s highest civil triangle was therefore De la Fontaine–Van Kervel–Van den Henghel under the directors’ 1730 commissions. [3]
Noodt’s Widow and Son Return to Europe — 1730
With the first homeward-bound fleet of the following year after Noodt’s death—that is, in 1730—the late governor’s widow and son returned to Europe. Their departure closed the private household chapter of the Noodt administration that had ended so abruptly in the Company’s garden on the 23rd of April 1729. [3]
The records had already noted that Noodt was buried with state under the church pavement on the last day of April 1729, and that there was no trace of regret shown by anyone for his death. The widow’s and son’s passage home with the first returning fleet of 1730 removed the last of that household from the Cape establishment under the new governor. [3]
Administrative continuity thus ran one way—De la Fontaine confirmed and installed—while the Noodt family connection ran the other, homeward on the year’s first Europe-bound ships. Both movements belonged to the same post-Noodt settlement of 1730. [3]
The Company Past the Zenith of Its Prosperity — Context of 1730
The East India Company, upon whose fortunes the Cape greatly depended, had by this period passed the zenith of its prosperity. Its dividends, which for the ten years ending 31 December 1722 had been at the rate of thirty-seven per cent per annum upon the paid-up capital, averaged only twenty-one per cent for the ten years 1723–1732, and never afterwards rose higher than twenty-five per cent. [3]
Many of its trading establishments were not returning the expense of maintenance. The commerce of the English and French in the East was making enormous strides, and some branches were completely lost to the Dutch. The coasting trade of southern Asia, once almost exclusively in Company hands, had fallen into other hands. In Holland the directorate was secured by members of powerful families content to draw a revenue without correcting abuses, and their influence was sufficient to prevent the States General from exercising inspection into the Company’s affairs. [3]
Under those circumstances corruption in the public service extended more deeply than before, and the appointment of independent fiscals had done nothing to check it. In the Asiatic dependencies wealth was accumulated by Company servants in shameless ways, and officers of government lived in a style of ostentation resembling that of Asiatic rulers. At the Cape there was less opportunity for such malpractices, as the colonists were not the people to submit tamely to wrong of any kind; and for many years after Noodt’s death the chief officials in South Africa were men held in general esteem, whose probity was not questioned. [3]
Death of Rev. Lambertus Slicher; Le Sueur Sent Inland — June 1730
In June 1730 the Rev. Lambertus Slicher died. He had been serving Drakenstein since the 15th of July 1725, with instructions also to hold services occasionally at Stellenbosch after the Rev. Mr. Bek had been removed to the Cape following the death of the Rev. Mr. D’Ailly in 1726. [3]
On Slicher’s death the council instructed the Rev. François le Sueur—who had held his first Cape service as second or assistant clergyman on the 16th of October 1729—to act provisionally at Drakenstein and Stellenbosch. The inland pulpits thus passed for a time to the newly arrived assistant while Bek remained at the mother congregation. [3]
Le Sueur would return to the Cape only in April 1731, upon the arrival from Europe of the Rev. Johan Wilhelm Hartzogenrath as clergyman of Drakenstein. Inside calendar 1730 the clerical facts are Slicher’s death in June and the council’s provisional inland assignment of Le Sueur. [3]
Death of Governor De la Fontaine’s Wife — June 1730
In the same month of June 1730 the governor’s wife died. De la Fontaine was thereby left a widower at the outset of his permanent governorship, a private loss later remembered when, advanced in years, he sought permission to retire to Europe with his children. [3]
The death fell in the same June that took Slicher from the Drakenstein pulpit and that saw the council resolve on the abandonment of Delagoa Bay. Public and household grief thus marked mid-year under the newly installed governor. [3]
For the Cape community the governor’s bereavement was a domestic fact of the governing household rather than a change of policy. The administration continued under De la Fontaine and Van Kervel while the widowhood dated from June 1730 stood in the later record of his career. [3]
Council Resolves to Abandon Delagoa Bay — 11 June 1730
Early disasters at Delagoa Bay had not at first discouraged the Company, and for a long time hopes of profitable trade there had been entertained. Experiments in sugar cane and indigo, boat expeditions up the rivers toward supposed gold fields and Monomotapa, the earthen enclosure named Lydzaamheid, summer fever that killed thirty-eight men including Commander Jan de Koning, desertions toward Inhambane, and a conspiracy among sixty-two men had all marked the later 1720s at the station under Jan de la Capelle and others. [3]
The directors at length resolved to leave the abandonment or retention of Fort Lydzaamheid to the discretion of the council of policy at the Cape. The council thereupon resolved, on the 11th of June 1730, that the sooner it could be abandoned the better. The Cape’s own board, not a fresh Netherlands order of detail, thus fixed the end of the Delagoa experiment. [3]
June 1730 therefore paired a clerical death and a governor’s private bereavement with a strategic decision: Fort Lydzaamheid was to be evacuated as soon as shipping could be spared. The refreshment station on Table Bay would reclaim its men and effects from the south-eastern coast post that had never repaid its cost. [3]
Packets Sail to Withdraw Delagoa — 12 August 1730
On the 12th of August 1730 the little vessels Snuffelaar, Zeepost, and Feyenoord, which were employed as packets at the Cape, left to bring away the men and effects from Delagoa Bay. The three small craft were the practical instrument of the June resolution. [3]
Their departure in mid-August gave the Cape packets a south-eastern evacuation task rather than ordinary Table Bay or coastal packet work. The station that had been reinforced and renamed in the mid-1720s was now to be stripped by the same class of small vessels that linked the Cape to its outposts. [3]
Until the packets arrived, acting commander Jan de la Capelle and the reduced establishment remained at Fort Lydzaamheid. The August sailing set the clock for a final season on the bay before embarkation at year’s end. [3]
Ensign Mona Killed; Delagoa Station Embarks — 27 December 1730
Before the packets’ arrival another disaster occurred at the station. Ensign Mona and twenty-nine Europeans were surprised and killed by a party of natives. The blow fell on a post already marked for abandonment and further reduced the strength that De la Capelle would finally embark. [3]
On the 27th of December 1730 the acting commander Jan de la Capelle and one hundred and thirty-three men, to which number the station force had been reduced, embarked in the vessels sent for them. Delagoa Bay was thereby abandoned as a Company station, though the ships themselves would only make the Cape in the middle of the following January. [3]
The December embarkation closed a costly experiment that had run from the early Delagoa occupation through fever summers, failed gold and copper searches, Lydzaamheid’s earthen walls, and the Mona massacre. Inside calendar 1730 the Cape’s decision of 11 June, the packets’ sailing of 12 August, the killing of Mona and twenty-nine men, and the embarkation of De la Capelle with one hundred and thirty-three survivors formed the full local arc of abandonment. [3]
Close of 1730 at the Cape
By the end of 1730 the Cape had a confirmed governor and had ordered the end of its south-eastern bay station. On the 20th of February directors’ despatches made Jan de la Fontaine permanent governor, Adriaan van Kervel secunde, and Daniel van den Henghel fiscal from Colombo; on the 8th of March De la Fontaine took the oath and was formally installed. Noodt’s widow and son returned to Europe with the first homeward fleet of the year. The East India Company stood past the peak of its prosperity, with dividends for 1723–1732 averaging twenty-one per cent against thirty-seven per cent in the prior decade, while at the Cape the chief officers after Noodt were men held in general esteem. In June the Rev. Lambertus Slicher died and the Rev. François le Sueur was sent provisionally to Drakenstein and Stellenbosch; the same month the governor’s wife died. On the 11th of June the council resolved that Fort Lydzaamheid at Delagoa Bay should be abandoned as soon as possible; on the 12th of August the packets Snuffelaar, Zeepost, and Feyenoord sailed to withdraw the men and effects; Ensign Mona and twenty-nine Europeans were surprised and killed before the evacuation was complete; and on the 27th of December acting commander Jan de la Capelle and one hundred and thirty-three men embarked for the Cape. The year thus closed on a settled governorship, a reshaped clerical map inland, a governor’s bereavement, and the last Company embarkation from Delagoa Bay. [3]