Boer History1747 at the Cape of Good Hope: Swellendam Named, Locust Fast, Reygersdaal Wreck, and Orange Holiday
Swellengrebel, Tulbagh, and Van Oudtshoorn — 1747
Calendar 1747 opened with Hendrik Swellengrebel still governor, Ryk Tulbagh still secunde, and Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn still independent fiscal after relieving Daniel van den Henghel on the 18th of September 1741. The hierarchy fixed by the directors on the 14th of April 1739 therefore continued through an eighth full agricultural and shipping year under the same three senior civil names. [3]
Beyond the Castle the settlement carried five Reformed parishes after the boundary council of 30 August 1745, a full landdrost beyond the Lower Breede in Johannes Theophilus Rhenius, and a shore line of fortifications whose Imhof battery and the batteries toward Salt River still framed Table Bay defence while European war news kept country burghers rotating fifty mounted men to the Cape. [3]
The year’s distinctive Cape record lay less in a change of governors than in the clearance of the locust plague that had closed 1746, the formal naming of Rhenius’s district seat, the wreck of a scurvy-stricken outward Indiaman on the west coast approaches, a hard border inquiry on the distant Swellendam frontier, the filling of the Stellenbosch pulpit, and a public Orange holiday after news of the restored stadtholderate in the Netherlands. [3]
Day of Fasting and Prayer against Locusts — 22 February 1747
In 1746 abundance of rain had given an exceedingly good wheat crop, but before the beans and peas were off the ground enormous swarms of locusts had appeared—a plague from which the colony had been free since 1695. On the 28th of December 1746 the insects had entered Table Valley in such numbers that the air seemed filled with them, and in a few days nothing edible remained, not even leaves on the trees. [3]
The council appointed the 22nd of February 1747 to be observed as a day of fasting and prayer that God would be pleased to remove the plague. The February fast therefore answered a winter crisis that had already destroyed country gardens, stripped pasture, and doubled the price of meat after many years without cattle disease. [3]
In the country districts the gardens had been completely destroyed, and as there was nothing left for the cattle to eat, so many oxen and sheep had died that meat, previously sold at less than a halfpenny a pound, had at once doubled in price. The public fast of February thus sat between the December irruption into Table Valley and the slower biological clearance of the swarms that still hung over pasture and green crops in the opening months of 1747. [3]
Locusts Almost Disappear — End of April 1747
By the end of April 1747 the locusts had almost disappeared. The clearance closed a pest sequence that had begun on the late legumes of 1746, filled Table Valley at Christmas, drawn a February day of fasting and prayer, and then faded as autumn advanced. [3]
The remaining years of the long Swellengrebel chapter after this clearance were free from excessive drought and insect plagues. Average exports to India during the wider period stood at 7,539 muids of wheat, 116 muids of rye, 289 muids of peas, and 271 muids of beans, with ordinary wine averaging 384 leggers a year to Batavia exclusive of ship supply, while Constantia wine, ivory, skins, ostrich plumes, and dried fruit also left the colony. [3]
Within calendar 1747 the binding agricultural fact was therefore recovery after plague rather than a new bumper figure of its own: the February fast, the April disappearance of the swarms, and the return of ordinary pastoral and garden conditions after meat prices had doubled and leaves had been stripped from the trees in Table Valley. [3]
Rev. Edward Arendsen at Stellenbosch — September 1747
In the staff of clergymen several changes had been caused by death or removal. At the Cape, the Rev. Ruwardus Cloppenburg still held the first pulpit after succeeding François le Sueur in August 1746, and the Rev. Petrus van der Spuy remained second clergyman after his arrival three weeks later. Those Cape chairs would not break until Cloppenburg’s suspension in January 1748. [3]
In October 1744 the Rev. Willem van Gendt had died, from which date the church at Stellenbosch was without a resident clergyman until September 1747, when the post was filled by the Rev. Edward Arendsen, who was sent out by the directors. Nearly three years of vacancy therefore ended in the spring of 1747 with a Company-appointed pastor for the oak-embowered village and its surrounding farms. [3]
Arendsen’s tenure would prove short: he died in July 1749, after which the Rev. Salomon van Echten of Drakenstein was required to act as consulent of Stellenbosch until the directors could make another appointment. Within 1747 the binding clerical fact was the September restoration of a resident Stellenbosch minister after the long gap that had run since Van Gendt’s death, while the Rev. Arnoldus Maurits Meyring remained at Roodezands Kerk and the Rev. Rutger Andries Weerman still held Zwartland. [3]
Reygersdaal Wrecked between Dassen and Robben Islands — 25 October 1747
On the 25th of October 1747 the Company’s outward-bound ship Reygersdaal ran ashore on the coast between Dassen Island and Robben Island, and went to pieces at once. Only twenty men got to land. [3]
She was four months and a half from Holland, and had lost one hundred and twenty-five men from scurvy. Eighty-three of the remaining crew were too ill with the same disease to keep their feet, and the few who were able to work could not manage the ship. They were trying to get into Saldanha Bay when the final disaster took place. [3]
The October wreck therefore belonged to the same west-coast shipping world that winter refreshment at Simon’s Bay after 1742 and the abandoned Table Bay mole had been meant to ease. An outward hull already emptied by scurvy, unable to work into Saldanha, broke up between the two islands with a survivor count of twenty—one of the hard single-ship losses of the Swellengrebel years, recorded beside the earlier Visch disaster of May 1740 and the later wrecks of 1750. [3]
District and Drostdy Named Swellendam — 26 October 1747
Since the 31st of August 1745 the country beyond the Lower Breede had been a separate district under full landdrost Johannes Theophilus Rhenius and six heemraden, with boundaries defined only as “where the power of the Honourable Company ends.” On the 25th of October 1746 the council had permitted use of the ground selected on the Cornlands river, a Langeberg feeder winding through a dell before it joined the Breede, and a drostdy and other necessary buildings had speedily arisen there. [3]
The place received a name in 1747: on the 26th of October of that year the council of policy decided that the district should be called Swellendam, and in conformity with the usage of the time the seat of magistracy took the same name. The naming thus fell one day after the Reygersdaal wreck and a full year after the October permission to occupy and build on the Cornlands site. [3]
At mid-century few people could maintain themselves there except by farming, and many years elapsed before the scattered houses and gardens along the vale could fairly be called more than a hamlet. Building sites for persons not in the government service were first surveyed only in 1750. Within 1747 the binding civil fact was the October decision that fixed the district and drostdy name Swellendam on the Cornlands seat already rising under Rhenius. [3]
San Border Violence Rumours and Government Inquiry — 1747
Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in much of the settled country, but occasionally the peace was disturbed by San marauders. In 1747, and again in 1750, rumours reached the Cape that certain farmers on the distant border of Swellendam had not scrupled to shoot down women and children as well as men when they were endeavouring to recover cattle and punish the murderers of their servants. [3]
The government caused strict inquiry to be made, with the object of bringing the offenders to justice; but it was impossible to obtain evidence sufficient to secure conviction. Calendar 1747 therefore recorded both the new district name on the Lower Breede and a hard allegation of excessive frontier violence under that same geographical label, answered by official inquiry without a secured conviction. [3]
The country along the coast was now occupied by Europeans a few miles farther eastward than Mossel Bay. Some graziers had earlier taken possession of land on the banks of the Gamtoos, but in January 1745 the landdrost of Stellenbosch, acting under orders from the governor, had required them to return to the westward of the Great Brak river. The circumstances under which the graziers lived remained so favourable to expansion that they could not long be kept within the assigned limits, even while the Castle tried to police the manner of San conflict on the distant Swellendam border. [3]
Orange Stadtholder Holiday — 29 November 1747
The East India Company had recently undergone a change in its constitution. During the late war the office of stadtholder had been again created in the Netherlands, after its abrogation for a number of years, and Willem Carel Hendrik Friso, prince of Orange, had been raised to the dignity, which was declared hereditary, with the additional title of captain and admiral general of the republic. [3]
At the Cape the officers of government were enthusiastic partisans of the Orange, as against the pure republican faction, and intelligence of the resumption of the stadtholderate was received with great rejoicing. The 29th of November 1747 was kept on this account as a public holiday. There were processions through the streets, ringing of bells, and firing of salutes, every person being decorated with orange cockades, while above the towers of the church and the castle orange banners were streaming. [3]
In the evening the houses were illuminated. For two nights in succession there were balls at the governor’s residence; but in those days guests retired before midnight. The November holiday thus closed the political year of 1747 with an open display of Orange loyalty at the Cape, months before the formal creation of the prince as chief director and governor-general of the East India Company on the 25th of March 1749, after which all appointments to office were made by him upon recommendations from the Assembly of Seventeen. [3]
Muller’s Diggings and the Wartime Burgher Watch — 1747
Since November 1740 excitement had run on Frans Diederik Muller’s report of a rich silver mine at Groot Drakenstein close to Simonsberg. Early in 1743 the Assembly of Seventeen had granted a charter to Olof de Wet and associates for exclusive search and extraction within the area bounded by the Paarl, French Hoek, and Hottentots-Holland mountains, upon payment of fifteen per cent to the Company. [3]
De Wet, as chief director, engaged a large number of men to whom the government had granted passes, and prospecting and excavation continued with Muller as master miner. For more than five years the clever rogue managed to keep up the hopes of his employers without producing anything valuable, first pronouncing the ore silver, then copper, and finally gold. Calendar 1747 still fell inside that long false boom, before a competent Dutch assay exposed only “a very inexpensive metal” used in small quantities in casting bells and before the council declared Muller an impostor, confiscated his property, and banished him to Batavia. [3]
At the same time the European war that had brought despatches in September 1744 announcing France and England at war, and the likelihood of Netherlands involvement, still required country burghers to furnish a contingent of fifty mounted men monthly to assist in keeping guard at the Cape. That burden would ease only when, on the 26th of September 1748, the British man-of-war Tartar brought intelligence of a truce, and peace at Aix-la-Chapelle later permitted the burghers to be relieved of military duty. Within 1747 the diggings and the mounted watch therefore both continued as unfinished obligations from earlier years. [3]
Settlement Pressure, Staples, and the Named Frontier — 1747
Through these middle Swellengrebel years the colonists were constantly taking possession of new tracts of country and laying them out in cattle runs never less than five or six thousand acres in extent, for each of which they paid the Company a yearly rental of £5 after the increase of 1732. Upon the slightest fault being discovered in a cattle run, the occupier did not hesitate to abandon it and move farther into the interior. [3] [4]
A vast region, almost untenanted since its desolation by smallpox in 1713, still lay open before the colonists. Van Imhof’s 1743 offer to convert sixty morgen about a homestead into freehold on payment of from roughly ten to forty-two pounds according to value had drawn very few takers, so the ordinary pastoral pattern of large annual loan places continued to set the inland map while Rhenius’s court now sat under the fixed name Swellendam. [3] [4]
Company purchase of ordinary wine at £5 5s. 10d. a legger clear and of wheat at 10s. 8d. a muid before tithe—restored in June 1745—still framed the staple cash side of settled agriculture. Calendar 1747 therefore combined the February locust fast and April clearance, Arendsen’s September arrival at Stellenbosch, the Reygersdaal wreck and the Swellendam naming in late October, a border inquiry without conviction, the November Orange holiday, and the continued pressure of loan cattle runs beyond the newly named eastern magistracy. [3]