Boer History1737 at the Cape of Good Hope: Table Bay Gale, Van Kervel’s Death, Schmit Mission, De la Fontaine Hands Over
The Great Gale in Table Bay — 21 May 1737
The year 1737 was one of the most disastrous ever known to shipping at the Cape. On the 21st of May a fleet of nine ships, mostly of the third class, lay at anchor in Table Bay ready to sail for the Fatherland. During the preceding night a heavy gale had set in from the northwest. At daylight the wind veered a little more to the westward, increasing the swell. Huge waves rolled in between Robben Island and Green Point, and the bay was like a sheet of foam. As the gale increased, ships’ cables began to part, and between ten and eleven o’clock in the morning minute guns were heard. [3]
In a short time the Ypenroode was seen to be drifting. She struck close to the mouth of Salt River, and with the shock her masts fell and she broke into fragments in the surf. Some of her crew managed to get to land. The Goudriaan parted next. She struck broadside on, with her stern in the mouth of Salt River, and went to pieces at once. The larger number of those on board perished. [3]
At noon the Flora struck at the same place as the Goudriaan. She too went to pieces immediately, and of her crew only six men got to land. The Paddenburg followed, but her crew were more fortunate. She was carried in on the crest of a mountain wave, passed directly over the other wrecks, and struck high up on the beach. She went to pieces with the shock, but most of those on board escaped with their lives. [3]
Afternoon and Evening Wrecks — Westerwyk, Buys, Duynbeek, Roodenrys, Victoria
At half past two in the afternoon the Westerwyk was driven ashore at the same place. She ran high on the beach without breaking up, and only a few of her men were lost. At four o’clock the Buys struck close to the Westerwyk, but she went to pieces at once, and only five of her crew were saved. [3]
Early in the evening the Duynbeek was driven ashore beyond Salt River mouth and broke up immediately; very few of her men were saved. Later the Roodenrys struck at the same place, but she held together until all of her crew but six got to land by means of a rope attached to a yard which was washed up. At the same time the brigantine Victoria, one of the Cape packets, was carried by a great wave high on the beach, where she lay dry when the gale was spent. Nearly all of her crew were saved. [3]
There were now left in the bay only the Papenburg, a homeward-bound Indiaman, and the Goede Hoop, a small vessel built at the Cape in 1733 and used as a packet. Those two managed to ride out the gale. In all, two hundred and eight men were lost out of seven hundred and thirty-nine that formed the crews of the wrecked Indiamen. The purchase price of the cargo with which the beach was strewn was £160,128. [3]
Placaat against Pilfering and Four Hangings on the Beach — May 1737
While the ships were drifting ashore a placaat was issued threatening summary execution to anyone found pilfering the wrecked cargo. A military guard was stationed on the beach, and four men who were caught stealing were actually hanged on a gallows erected near the water’s edge, where their bodies were left exposed as a warning to others. [3]
Those executions took place on the same principle as that which permitted the shooting of San cattle-lifters caught red-handed: the council treated theft from stranded Company cargo as an immediate capital offence rather than as a matter for delayed process alone. The beach therefore became both salvage ground and scaffold while the wreckage still lay in the surf. [3]
For the settlement the May disaster was not only a shipping loss. It forced Castle authority onto the Salt River shore in force, tied ordinary winter northwest weather to nine Indiamen and a Cape packet wrecked or stranded in a single day, and left a cash figure—more than one hundred and sixty thousand pounds purchase price of cargo—on the public record of Table Bay risk. [3]
Hubner Survivors’ Attestation and the Eastern Elephant Ban — July–October 1737
Three of the Europeans who had escaped the massacre of Hermanus Hubner’s rear party at Palo’s kraals in 1736—Hendrik de Vries, Hendrik Scheffer, and Jan de Vries—came on to the Cape. On the 10th of July 1737 the two first-named gave an account of their journey in the form of an attestation, fixing the eastern ivory trek and the Xhosa attack in formal Company paper. [3]
In July 1737, owing to the massacre of Hubner’s party, elephant hunting beyond the eastern border was prohibited. The love of gain was, however, so strong that in the following October the prohibition was cancelled, and the only restriction placed upon elephant shooting was that each hunter should pay two shillings and a penny for a license. In the license it was forbidden to molest indigenous communities or to trade with them. [3]
Calendar 1737 thus closed the Hubner episode as administration rather than only as survivors’ story: attestation in July, a temporary eastern hunting ban in the same month, and a licensed return to the ivory frontier by October under written conditions that the Castle could not easily enforce far inland. [3]
George Schmit and the Moravian Mission Noted — 11 July 1737
The first mention of the Moravian missionary George Schmit is found in the proceedings of the council of policy of the 11th of July 1737. The council recorded that a certain person named George Schmit had come in the ship Huis te Rensburg with the object of converting the Khoikhoi to Christianity if that should be possible; that it was to be hoped such a desirable result would be attained by the blessing of the Lord upon the means to be employed; and that therefore all possible assistance was to be given to him in the prosecution of that work. [3]
Schmit established himself for that purpose at Baviaans Kloof, later Genadendal, in the district of Stellenbosch. The council contemplated that if any Khoikhoi should be converted he would present them to the clergyman of the parish for baptism, and that he would not attempt to form a separate congregation with rules differing from those of the Dutch Reformed church. [3]
Inside 1737 the decisive official act was the July welcome and the promise of assistance. The later friction over baptism (1742), the dispersal of his hearers, and his free passage home in January 1744 still lay ahead; the year’s Cape record opened a Moravian presence under Reformed parish assumptions rather than under an independent mission church. [3]
De la Fontaine Transfers to Van Kervel — 31 August 1737
The retiring governor Jan de la Fontaine had applied in 1736 for permission to leave office. The directors appointed the secunde Adriaan van Kervel as his successor and promoted Hendrik Swellengrebel to be secunde. The retiring governor was permitted to hand over the administration whenever it should please him to do so, and to return to Europe with his rank and salary. [3]
On the 17th of June 1737 despatches to that effect were received at the Cape, and on the 31st of August De la Fontaine transferred the duties to Van Kervel. He remained in the colony until the month of March following, when he sailed for Europe as admiral of a fleet of five ships. [3]
Van Kervel had passed a great portion of his life in South Africa. From 1719 to 1725 he had been secretary to the council of policy; then he became fiscal, and afterwards secunde, so that his experience was varied and extensive. His formal installation on the last day of August closed De la Fontaine’s governorship that had run since the 8th of March 1730. [3]
Death of Governor Van Kervel — 19 September 1737
Van Kervel held the highest office in the land less than three weeks, and only presided in the council on one occasion. After a short illness he died on the 19th of September 1737. [3]
As he had expressed a desire to his daughter that his funeral should be conducted without the usual state, the council respected his dying wish. His remains were buried in the church between seven and eight o’clock in the evening of the 24th, the officers of government and principal burghers attending without the parade of draped banners, muffled drums, and minute guns. He left a widow and a daughter, who remained in the colony, as most of their near relatives were resident at the Cape. [3]
The September death therefore cut short a governorship that had barely begun after a long Cape career in the secretaryship, the fiscal’s office, and the secunde’s chair. Within the same calendar year the settlement saw both the formal end of De la Fontaine’s long rule and the sudden vacancy of his appointed successor. [3]
Van den Henghel Chosen Acting Head by Lot — 20 September 1737
On the morning after the governor’s death the council met to elect an acting head. Six members were present, and of these two put forward claims. The secunde, Hendrik Swellengrebel, was one. He was by birth a colonist, son of Johannes Swellengrebel, who had been dispenser and member of the high court of justice at the beginning of the century. He based his pretensions on precedent: that upon the death of a governor the second in command should act until the pleasure of the supreme authorities could be known. He had been secunde only nineteen days, but he had been a member of the council of policy for thirteen years. [3]
The independent fiscal, Daniel van den Henghel, claimed the appointment on the ground that he had been a senior merchant longer than Swellengrebel. He had been in the colony since March 1731. The question was put to the vote: Nicholas Heyning and Christoffel Brand favoured the fiscal; Captain Johannes Tobias Rhenius and the secretary Ryk Tulbagh supported the secunde. [3]
The fiscal objected to Tulbagh’s vote because Tulbagh was married to Swellengrebel’s sister and must therefore be held prejudiced. The secretary replied that the right to vote had never before been disputed on such grounds; he had been a member of the council for nine years and would continue to vote according to his conscience. The others maintained Tulbagh’s right. The master of the warehouses, Brand, then proposed that as the members were equally divided the lot should be cast. This was agreed to, and the result being in favour of the fiscal, Van den Henghel took the vacant chair. [3]
The Assembly of Seventeen did not approve of Van den Henghel’s appointment, because they considered the secunde the proper person to assume the chief authority upon the death of a governor. They therefore sent instructions that he should return to his office of independent fiscal, that Swellengrebel should take the place of governor, and that Tulbagh should become secunde. Those changes took effect only on the 14th of April 1739; through the remainder of 1737 and the whole of 1738 the Cape was headed by the fiscal chosen by lot. [3]
Government Continuity, Wheat Export, and Shipping — 1737
Across the thirteen years 1725–1737, one thousand and seven ships put into Table Bay, or on an average seventy-seven yearly. Of these, eight hundred and sixty-eight belonged to the Company, ninety-one were English, twenty-seven Danish, nineteen French, one Portuguese, and one Flemish. The May gale struck that roadstead traffic at its most concentrated moment—nine homeward hulls ready for the Fatherland—and left the bay’s winter danger written in wreckage and hangings. [3]
From 1728 through 1737 there was a constant export of wheat, sometimes of as much as seven thousand muids, though the crops were not uniformly good, and the directors still required a year’s supply to be reserved before any was sent to India. Ordinary grain administration therefore continued under three successive heads of government in a single year: De la Fontaine until 31 August, Van Kervel for nineteen days, and Van den Henghel from 20 September. [3]
Calendar 1737 thus joined the worst single shipping disaster yet recorded at the Cape with the Hubner attestations and a brief eastern hunting ban, the council’s welcome to George Schmit, De la Fontaine’s formal handover, Van Kervel’s death within three weeks, and an acting succession decided by lot—while wheat export and the long average of Table Bay arrivals still framed the Company’s ordinary Cape business. [3]