Boer History1731 at the Cape of Good Hope: Delagoa Return, Hartzogenrath, and the Southeast Coast Survey
Delagoa Evacuation Party Reaches Table Bay — 18 January 1731
On the 27th of December 1730 acting commander Jan de la Capelle and one hundred and thirty-three men had embarked from Fort Lydzaamheid at Delagoa Bay in the Cape packets sent to withdraw the station. Their voyage closed the Company’s occupation of the bay. On the 18th of January 1731 the same party arrived in Table Bay, bringing the evacuated establishment back under the eye of Governor Jan de la Fontaine and the council of policy. [3]
The January landing converted the December embarkation from a distant bay report into a Cape fact. Men, effects, and the acting commander who had held the post through its last fever seasons and the killing of Ensign Mona were again on the peninsula rather than on the south-eastern coast. Delagoa Bay stood abandoned as a Company station, even while the directors and the Cape still hoped for some other foothold farther along that seaboard. [3]
Calendar 1731 therefore opened on the practical end of the Delagoa experiment that the council had resolved to quit on the 11th of June 1730 and that the packets Snuffelaar, Zeepost, and Feyenoord had begun to execute in August. The men who stepped ashore in mid-January were the living remainder of a post that had cost gold-dust assays, failed river explorations, summer fever, desertion, conspiracy, and a final native surprise. [3]
Daniel van den Henghel Takes the Fiscalate — March 1731
The directors’ despatches of 20 February 1730 had named Daniel van den Henghel, then in service at Colombo, as independent fiscal when Adriaan van Kervel moved up to the secunde’s chair under De la Fontaine. The Colombo nomination left a gap between appointment and arrival. In March 1731 Van den Henghel took up the fiscalate at the Cape, completing the senior triangle the directors had sketched a year earlier. [3]
Van Kervel’s own tenure of the independent fiscalate had run from June 1724 to March 1731. His promotion to secunde and Van den Henghel’s arrival from Ceylon therefore closed one long fiscal career and opened another drawn from the eastern stations rather than from the local junior list alone. The independent fiscal remained a directors’ office on the wider Company circuit. [3]
For the rest of 1731 the highest civil list stood as permanent governor De la Fontaine, secunde Van Kervel, and fiscal Van den Henghel. The March entry of the new fiscal filled the last open place in the February 1730 package and gave the Cape a fully seated headship after the acting years that had followed Chavonnes’s death and Noodt’s sudden end. [3]
Hartzogenrath at Drakenstein; Le Sueur Returns to the Cape — April 1731
After the death of the Rev. Lambertus Slicher in June 1730, the council had instructed the Rev. François le Sueur, assistant clergyman at the Cape since 16 October 1729, to act provisionally at Drakenstein and Stellenbosch. That inland arrangement lasted into the new year. In April 1731 Le Sueur returned to the Cape upon the arrival from Europe of the Rev. Johan Wilhelm Hartzogenrath, appointed by the directors as clergyman of Drakenstein. [3]
Hartzogenrath’s landing restored a resident pastor to the Drakenstein congregation after the provisional months under Le Sueur and the longer sequence of vacancies that had marked the country churches since the mid-1720s. The directors’ choice of a new man from Europe rather than a further temporary shift of Cape clergy signalled that Drakenstein was again to have a settled incumbent of its own. [3]
Le Sueur’s return to Table Valley put the Cape again under its assistant (and, with the Cape’s own establishment, under the pattern of town clergy who could cover the castle church without holding the inland pulpits by permanent transfer). The April exchange therefore redrew the clerical map: Hartzogenrath inland at Drakenstein, Le Sueur back on the peninsula, and the Stellenbosch question still to be settled by council resolution the same month. [3]
Bek Retires; Hartzogenrath Consulent of Stellenbosch — April 1731
At the same time the council resolved that Hartzogenrath should act as consulent of Stellenbosch, and permitted the Rev. Hendrik Bek, who was advanced in years and very feeble, to retire on a pension. Bek’s long country service—from May 1702 through to April 1731 on the clerical lists—thus ended in formal superannuation rather than in another forced transfer. [3]
Stellenbosch therefore passed under Hartzogenrath’s consulent care while he held the Drakenstein charge. The arrangement was the council’s answer to a congregation that still lacked a full resident minister of its own and to a senior clergyman no longer able to carry the work. Country worship continued, but under a shared pastorate rather than under Bek’s declining strength. [3]
The April decisions did not yet complete the full restoration of three settled pulpits. Only in 1732 would the Rev. Hendrik Kock arrive as second clergyman of the Cape and the Rev. Salomon van Echten as clergyman of Stellenbosch, ending a series of vacancies that the narrative of these years counts across eight years. Inside 1731 the dated clerical facts are Hartzogenrath’s Drakenstein appointment, Le Sueur’s return, Bek’s pension, and the Stellenbosch consulentcy. [3]
Southeast Coast Still Sought after Delagoa — 1731
Delagoa Bay was abandoned, but the Company retained a strong desire to establish a station somewhere on the south-eastern coast of Africa. The gold-dust trade, copper hopes, and strategic interest that had justified Fort Lagoa and Fort Lydzaamheid had not vanished with the evacuation; they had only been detached from that particular bay. [3]
The Cape packets that had brought De la Capelle home were the natural instruments for a fresh coastal examination. The council and the directors could use small vessels already on the Cape establishment, and a journalist who had commanded the last Delagoa months, to test whether some other anchorage between Natal waters and Inhambane might serve where Lydzaamheid had failed. [3]
That policy decision framed the second half of 1731. While the fiscalate and the inland churches were being settled in the first months of the year, the maritime question left by Delagoa’s abandonment was prepared for a September sailing rather than for a quiet close of the file. [3]
Snuffelaar and Zeepost Sail for Inhambane — September 1731
In September 1731 the Snuffelaar and the Zeepost were sent to examine the seaboard carefully as far north as Inhambane. Jan de la Capelle accompanied the expedition as journalist. The two packets carried the Company’s search for a replacement station into waters beyond the abandoned Delagoa anchorage. [3]
A Portuguese station was visited, but nothing unknown before was discovered. The cruise therefore confirmed existing coastal knowledge rather than opening a new bay or river mouth to Company occupation. De la Capelle’s journal role linked the voyage to the same officer who had closed Lydzaamheid and who now tested whether any other point on that coast would repay a fresh post. [3]
The September departure used two of the three small craft that had withdrawn Delagoa the previous August. Packet work in 1731 thus shifted from evacuation to reconnaissance: the same class of vessel, and one of the same senior names, now sought a site instead of dismantling one. [3]
Fever at St. Lucia Bay; No Suitable Station Found — 1731
At and near St. Lucia Bay many lives were lost by fever, and the survivors then returned to the Cape with a report that no suitable place for a station could be found. The human cost of the cruise fell hardest on that stretch of coast, where disease rather than native hostility or shipwreck emptied the packets’ complements. [3]
The expedition was absent five months. Measured from the September sailing, the return fell early in the following year; the negative report and the St. Lucia losses belonged to the voyage ordered and begun in 1731. The council received not a new anchorage plan but a judgment that the seaboard as far as Inhambane offered no post worth the risk already paid in fever deaths. [3]
A second search would still be tried in September 1732 with the Zeepost and Feyenoord, after which the directors would give up the design. Inside calendar 1731 the dated maritime arc runs from the January Delagoa return through the September Inhambane cruise to the fever toll at St. Lucia and the survivors’ report that no station site had been found. [3]
Harvest Export and Settlement Context — 1731
Across the wider span that included this year, the directors required a year’s supply of wheat to be reserved before any was sent to India. From 1728 through 1737 there was a constant export, sometimes of as much as seven thousand muids, though the crops were not uniformly good. Calendar 1731 sat inside that exporting sequence rather than inside the drought and rust years of the mid-1720s. [3]
Shipping through Table Bay remained the settlement’s other measure of ordinary business. In the thirteen years 1725–1737 one thousand and seven ships put into the bay, or on an average seventy-seven yearly, the great majority Company vessels with smaller numbers of English, Danish, French, and occasional other flags. The Cape of 1731 continued to function as a refreshment and export station while its council closed Delagoa, reseated the fiscalate, and probed the southeast coast. [3]
Inland, the clerical repairs of April mattered as much as the coastal survey of September for the daily life of free burghers at Drakenstein and Stellenbosch. A resident Drakenstein minister, a consulent for Stellenbosch, and a pensioned Bek replaced the provisional patchwork that Slicher’s death and Bek’s feebleness had forced on the country churches. [3]
Close of 1731 at the Cape
By the end of 1731 the Cape had absorbed the Delagoa evacuation, filled the independent fiscalate, partly restored the country pulpits, and tested the southeast coast for a replacement station. On the 18th of January Jan de la Capelle and the one hundred and thirty-three men from Fort Lydzaamheid arrived in Table Bay. In March Daniel van den Henghel took up the fiscalate named for him from Colombo the previous year. In April the Rev. Johan Wilhelm Hartzogenrath arrived as clergyman of Drakenstein; the Rev. François le Sueur returned to the Cape; the Rev. Hendrik Bek retired on pension; and Hartzogenrath was ordered to act as consulent of Stellenbosch. The Company still desired a south-eastern coast station after Delagoa’s abandonment; in September the packets Snuffelaar and Zeepost, with De la Capelle as journalist, sailed to examine the seaboard as far as Inhambane; a Portuguese station was visited without new discovery; at and near St. Lucia Bay many lives were lost to fever; and the survivors returned after five months with a report that no suitable place for a station could be found. Wheat export continued in the multi-year sequence from 1728, and Table Bay’s ordinary shipping traffic ran through a year whose special business was the aftermath of Delagoa and the search for another coast post. [3]