Boer History1736 at the Cape of Good Hope: Feyenoord Wreck, Hartzogenrath’s Death, Hubner Hunters, De la Fontaine Retires
Brigantine Feyenoord Wrecked near Salt River Mouth — 1–2 July 1736
During the night between the 1st and 2nd of July 1736 the brigantine Feyenoord was driven ashore in a gale near Salt River mouth and became a wreck. Only one life was lost. The vessel was a Cape packet of the same name that had earlier served Company coastal and Delagoa work; her loss on the open Table Bay shore put another small local hull on the same stretch that later storms would litter with larger Indiamen. [3]
The wreck sat in ordinary winter north-wester weather rather than in a nine-ship catastrophe. Still, it reminded the settlement that Salt River mouth and the beach beyond it remained a lee shore when cables parted: a single packet driven in at night could break up as completely as a third-class Indiaman, even when almost all hands reached land. [3]
Calendar 1736 therefore opened its dated Table Bay disaster record with a one-night packet wreck before the far heavier fleet losses of the following year. For the year itself the administrative fact was simple and local: the Feyenoord gone, one man dead, and the Salt River beach again the scene of Company salvage and burial rather than of routine boat traffic alone. [3]
Death of Hartzogenrath; Van Echten to Drakenstein — June 1736
In June 1736 the Rev. Johan Wilhelm Hartzogenrath died. He had arrived from Europe in April 1731 as the directors’ clergyman for Drakenstein, and the council had at the same time made him consulent of Stellenbosch while permitting the aged Rev. Bek to retire on a pension. His five-year tenure had closed the long stretch of rural vacancies that had followed Van Aken’s death in 1724 and Slicher’s in 1730. [3]
On Hartzogenrath’s death the council removed the Rev. Salomon van Echten from Stellenbosch to Drakenstein, with instructions to act as consulent for Stellenbosch. Van Echten had been sent out as clergyman of Stellenbosch in November 1732, completing the restoration of a full set of ministers after eight years of intermittent vacancies at the three older congregations. [3]
At the Cape the pulpits of the Rev. François le Sueur (first service 16 October 1729) and the Rev. Hendrik Kock (arrived April 1732 as second Cape clergyman) still framed town church life. The June transfer therefore rearranged the rural pair without stripping the Castle congregation: Drakenstein received a sitting Stellenbosch minister; Stellenbosch fell back on consulent care from the same man until a later independent appointment could be made. [3]
Elephant Hunters Far Inland — 1736
The country at this time must have been explored far inland, for parties of elephant hunters were sometimes absent from the settlement eight or nine months together before returning with their waggons laden with ivory. Those people were very reticent upon routes and hunting grounds, and information obtained from them was known to be so unreliable that the government did not take the trouble to place it on record. [3]
That silence mattered for Cape administration as much as for geography. Loan farms and recognised outposts still clustered west of the far eastern hunting belt; yet ivory loads kept arriving from journeys the council could not map. The hunters’ reticence left official knowledge thinner than the practical reach of free-burgher waggons and Khoikhoi servants already travelling for months at a stretch. [3]
Against that background of unrecorded routes, one party in 1736 left a narrative detailed enough for the government later to take depositions. The exception did not invent inland hunting; it merely broke the usual silence after violence at a paramount chief’s kraals turned a commercial ivory trek into a matter of attestations and, in the following year, of a temporary ban on elephant hunting beyond the eastern border. [3]
Hubner’s Elephant Hunters East to Palo and the Pondos — 1736
In May 1736 a party of elephant hunters headed by Hermanus Hubner left the settlement and travelled eastward into Xhosa country. There were eleven white men in the party, with thirteen waggons and a strong band of Khoikhoi. Passing through the district occupied by the Gonaquas, at whose head was a chief whom they called Captain Babbelaan, they came to the kraal of a petty Xhosa chief and then to the residence of Palo, paramount ruler of the Xhosa. [3]
Proceeding still further, they reached the country of the Tembus, where they found four colonists with six waggons already hunting elephants and trading with the inhabitants for ivory. The two parties united and went on to a district which they believed to be part of Natal, among a people they termed Nomotis—almost certainly the Pondos. There they met three Englishmen, Thomas Willer, Henry Clark, and William Bilyert, who had been shipwrecked many years before and were living in all respects like the surrounding communities, with numerous wives and children. [3]
From those Englishmen the hunters purchased on credit about five tons of ivory, undertaking to deliver later a quantity of iron, copper, and beads. They now had enough ivory to load ten waggons, each with eighteen or nineteen hundred pounds weight. They therefore began the return journey, intending to hunt by the way, the three Englishmen proposing to accompany them as far as Palo’s kraals. From the Nomotis country they passed again through the Tembus and kept on until they reached Palo’s residence, where they meant to rest their cattle for a week or two. So far they had been treated in a friendly manner and had no cause to suspect different conduct there. [3]
Massacre of Hubner’s Rear Party at Palo’s Kraals — 1736
After resting a while, nine of the Europeans, with seven waggons, went on ahead and after a day’s journey came to a river so swollen that they had to encamp on its bank and wait for the fall. The three Englishmen were with that advance group but did not intend to proceed further. On the eighth day after leaving Palo’s kraal they were still waiting when two of the Khoikhoi left with the companions behind appeared and reported that all the others had been massacred. [3]
The servants stated that Hermanus Hubner was sitting in front of the tent, in which the other Europeans were lying down, when one of them reported signs of a hostile design among Palo’s people. Hubner took no notice, replying that the people were friendly and there was no cause for alarm. Shortly afterwards some Xhosa drove up eight oxen and, on behalf of the chief, presented them to Hubner. While they were talking, one suddenly stabbed Hubner with an assegai. He drew the weapon from his body and tried to reach his gun, but was killed by another stab in the back before he could do so. [3]
The attackers then rushed the tent from all sides and murdered Frederik Hubner, Andries Esterhuis, and Gerrit van Vuuren before they could protect themselves. Philip Constant and Anthonie Pottier got out of the tent but were killed close by. The bodies were afterwards mutilated. The murderers unloaded the twelve waggons and burnt them, probably for the iron. Among the stores were three kegs of gunpowder, each of fifty pounds. When the kegs were broken open and the powder thrown on a heap, a tremendous explosion killed and wounded a great number of those close by. [3]
Survivors’ Flight to the Gonaqua and the Fish River — 1736
Upon learning the fate of their comrades, eight of the Europeans at the river hastened across with the waggons. The three Englishmen, who had no fear of the Xhosa, remained behind, and one of the hunters, Louis Cloete, thought it advisable to place himself under their protection. Soon after crossing the river the party was overtaken by a great horde among whom they recognised some people of mixed descent. They fired on the pursuers and struck down eight or ten; but with very little powder left they abandoned the waggons at the first opportunity and continued on foot. [3]
For three days and two nights the pursuers followed until the fugitives reached Gonaqua country, where Captain Babbelaan gave them an escort as far as the Fish River. One of their number, Christoffel Hoogreefde, became faint on the way and was left under Gonaqua care. The seven who escaped continued on foot to the Sunday River, where they met another elephant-hunting party under Gerrit Oosthuizen and Jacob van Deventer travelling eastward. Four of them—Daniel de Vries, Jan de Bruin, Jan van Vuuren, and Coenraad Scheffer—joined that party. The other three—Hendrik de Vries, Hendrik Scheffer, and Jan de Vries—came on toward the Cape; the two first-named later gave a formal attestation of the journey on the 10th of July 1737. [3]
The Hubner trek thus fixed, for Cape record-keepers, a line of names and places from Babbelaan’s Gonaquas through Palo’s Xhosa, the Tembus, and the Pondos to shipwrecked English residents and a massacre at a paramount kraal. Ivory loads of nearly a ton per waggon, credit trade in iron and beads, and a powder explosion among the attackers all entered the same narrative that free hunters had long kept off the official map. [3]
De la Fontaine Applies to Retire; Van Kervel Named Successor — 1736
Governor Jan de la Fontaine was now advancing in years, and infirmities were creeping upon him. He was a widower, his wife having died in June 1730. He had children for whom he desired the advantages of a residence in Europe, and from whom he did not wish to be separated. During the twenty-eight years that he had served the Company he had amassed considerable wealth, and it had become a desire with him to spend the evening of his life in repose in the Fatherland. [3]
In 1736 he applied to the directors for permission to retire. They heard of his resolution with regret, for he had performed his duties to their satisfaction; but his request was so reasonable that it could not be refused. They therefore appointed the secunde Adriaan van Kervel as his successor and promoted Hendrik Swellengrebel to be secunde. [3]
The directors’ answer and the formal transfer of office still lay ahead: Van Kervel would be installed only on the 31st of August 1737 after despatches of 17 June 1737 reached the Cape, and De la Fontaine would remain in the colony until March of the year after the transfer before sailing as admiral of five ships. Inside calendar 1736 the decisive local act was the governor’s own application and the directors’ choice of Van Kervel and Swellengrebel for the two highest civil seats that would follow his departure. [3]
Government Continuity, New Colonist Names, Wheat, and Shipping — 1736
Through 1736 De la Fontaine still headed the government he had held since his installation on the 8th of March 1730, with Van Kervel as secunde and Daniel van den Henghel as independent fiscal. The retirement request did not remove him from the Castle in the year it was sent; it only set the succession the directors accepted while he remained in office pending formal transfer. [3]
During the later years of De la Fontaine’s government, or so shortly afterwards as to be practically within that span, names found in the records included Jeremiah Auret, Jan Bam, Jan Blignaut, Carel Buitendag, Dirk Craffort, Jan Ditlof, Jan Fleck, Andries Holtshuizen, Hermanus Keeve, Frans Marx, Jacob Naude, Hendrik Nefdt, Adriaan de Nys, Godlieb Opperman, Christiaan Rabe, Pieter Radermacher, Andries Schutte, Frederik Seele, Jan Serrurier, Jan Hendrik Swemmer, Jan Andries Truter, Willem van de Vyver, and Ernest Wepener—a burgher roll sample of the mid-1730s settlement rather than a single day’s census. [3]
Across the wider harvest span that included this year, the directors still 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. In the thirteen years 1725–1737, one thousand and seven ships put into Table Bay, or on an average seventy-seven yearly—eight hundred and sixty-eight of them Company vessels, with smaller numbers of English, Danish, French, and occasional other flags. [3]
Calendar 1736 thus combined a Salt River packet wreck, a rural clerical death and transfer, the first fully narrated eastern ivory disaster under Hubner, and the governor’s formal step toward retirement with Van Kervel and Swellengrebel already named for the succession—while ordinary wheat export and roadstead traffic continued under the same Castle hierarchy that still awaited the actual handover of 1737. [3]