Boer History1748 at the Cape of Good Hope: Cloppenburg Dismissed, Boscawen Fleet, Tartar Truce, and Van Schoor
Swellengrebel, Tulbagh, and Van Oudtshoorn — 1748
Calendar 1748 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 a ninth full agricultural and shipping year under the same three senior civil names, with the governor still holding the rank of councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India conferred in March 1744. [3]
Beyond the Castle the settlement carried five Reformed parishes after the boundary council of 30 August 1745, a named district and drostdy at Swellendam under landdrost Johannes Theophilus Rhenius after the naming of 26 October 1747, and a shore line of fortifications whose Imhof battery and the batteries toward Salt River still framed Table Bay defence while European war still 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 collapse of the Cape first pulpit under Cloppenburg, the allied refreshment of a large English war fleet bound for India, the exposure of the long Drakenstein mining fraud, the September truce news that ended the wartime mounted watch, a change of landdrost at Stellenbosch, and the departure of the Zwartland clergyman for Batavia. [3]
Cloppenburg Suspended by the Consistory — January 1748
In the staff of clergymen several changes had already been caused by death or removal. The Rev. François le Sueur, having purchased a farm at Rondebosch on the estate of his wife’s father, Johannes Swellengrebel, had been obliged to resign his position in the Company’s service, and in August 1746 had been succeeded by the Rev. Ruwardus Cloppenburg, sent out by the directors. Three weeks later the Rev. Petrus van der Spuy had arrived from Holland to fill the long-vacant post of second clergyman at the Cape. [3]
Cloppenburg’s domestic life was such that in January 1748 he was suspended by the consistory. The January act therefore opened the clerical year of the Cape congregation by removing the first minister from active duty while the formal dismissal still lay with the council of policy, and while Van der Spuy and the highly esteemed Le Sueur remained the practical pastoral resources of Table Valley. [3]
At Stellenbosch the Rev. Edward Arendsen, who had only filled the pulpit in September 1747 after the vacancy that had run since the death of the Rev. Willem van Gendt in October 1744, still held the oak-embowered village. The Rev. Arnoldus Maurits Meyring remained at Roodezands Kerk, and the Rev. Rutger Andries Weerman still held Zwartland when the year opened. The January suspension at the Cape was thus the first of several clerical breaks that would mark 1748. [3]
Cloppenburg Dismissed and Sent to Europe — March 1748
In March 1748 Cloppenburg was dismissed by the council and sent back to Europe without rank or salary. The March sentence closed a ministry that had lasted barely a year and a half after the August 1746 succession to Le Sueur, and it left the Cape first chair empty under Company discipline rather than under ordinary transfer or death. [3]
Van der Spuy then remained for some time sole clergyman of the Cape congregation, but was greatly assisted by Le Sueur, who was very highly esteemed, though in accordance with the law he could not draw a salary from the Company while he was owner of more than two morgen of land. The Rondebosch freehold that had forced Le Sueur’s resignation in 1746 therefore still barred him from a Company stipend even while his unpaid help kept the Table Valley pulpit workable after Cloppenburg’s removal. [3]
Calendar 1748 thus fixed a Cape clerical pattern of one salaried Company minister, a suspended-and-banished predecessor, and a popular former incumbent serving without pay because land ownership exceeded the two-morgen rule. No new first clergyman arrived from the Netherlands within the year to restore the dual Cape establishment of 1746. [3]
Admiral Boscawen’s Fleet in Table Bay — April 1748
Among the English ships that called at the Cape in these middle Swellengrebel years was a far larger force than ordinary Indiamen. In April 1748 Admiral Boscawen put into Table Bay with twenty-six men-of-war and transports, when on his way to India with a force intended to restore English power after the capture of Madras by the French. [3]
Great Britain and the Netherlands were then in alliance, and all possible assistance was therefore given to the English fleet. The troops were landed, and formed a camp just above the Company’s garden, where they were drilled for some weeks, as many of them were recruits. Table Valley thus briefly held a foreign camp on the slope above the garden while hulls and transports crowded the bay under allied colours. [3]
The April visit belonged to the same wartime shipping world that had brought Commodore George Anson’s Centurion homeward through the Cape in March and April 1744 after her Pacific cruise, and that still required the Imhof line and the country mounted contingent until truce news arrived later in 1748. Within the calendar year the binding naval fact was Boscawen’s large allied refreshment and recruit drill above the garden on the India passage after Madras. [3]
Muller’s Drakenstein Mine Exposed and Banished — 1748
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 of everything valuable obtained and delivery of the surplus at specified Company prices. [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. The ore which was found he first pronounced to be silver, then he termed it copper, and finally he asserted it to be gold. [3]
At this stage some of the ore was sent to Holland to be tested by competent persons, when it was found to contain only “a very inexpensive metal which was mixed in small quantities with other materials in casting bells to improve their sound.” The work then ceased. Muller was brought before the council, who declared him an impostor, confiscated his property, and banished him to Batavia. The pits and underground passages, which had cost the association a great deal of money, remained objects of curiosity to strangers. [3]
Counting more than five years from the early-1743 charter, the Dutch assay, the stoppage of work, and Muller’s banishment fall with the middle and later Swellengrebel years that include calendar 1748. The long false boom that had still been running through 1746 and 1747 therefore ended in exposure rather than in metal, and the Drakenstein diggings closed as a failed private association under Company charter. [3]
Tartar Brings Truce News; Burgher Watch Ends — 26 September 1748
During the time that it was feared the colony might be attacked by an enemy, the burghers of the country districts had been required to furnish a contingent of fifty mounted men to assist in keeping guard at the Cape. Every month they were relieved by fifty others, so as to make the task less heavy for individuals. The obligation had run since the war despatches of September 1744 announcing that France and England were at war and that the Netherlands might soon be involved, and since the Company had resolved to construct a line of fortifications along the shore of Table Bay. [3]
It was felt as a great relief by the burghers when on the 26th of September 1748 the British man-of-war Tartar brought intelligence that a truce had been arranged between the belligerents, and a little later the conclusion of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle permitted them to be relieved of military duty. The September despatch therefore ended four years of monthly mounted rotation from the country districts into Table Valley guard. [3]
A temporary outpost at St. Helena Bay, which had been established to give notice of any ships that might touch there, was broken up at the same time. The older military outposts—Saldanha Bay, Klapmuts, Groen Kloof, Ziekenhuis, and Riet Vlei—remained as before. The Waveren outpost, maintained since 1700, had already been withdrawn in October 1743, when the building with sixty morgen about it had been sold by auction to Pieter de Vos. [3]
The fortifications that had framed the wartime watch still stood: the castle; the Chavonnes battery on the shore; Fort Knokke completed in October 1744; the Imhof battery with cannon mounted from July 1745; and the less solid line toward Salt River and toward the Chavonnes work. Peace at Aix-la-Chapelle relieved men, not masonry. [3]
Adriaan van Schoor Landdrost of Stellenbosch — September 1748
In September 1748 Adriaan van Schoor was appointed landdrost of Stellenbosch. He succeeded Pieter Lourens, who had held the magistracy from May 1729 to September 1748—a tenure of more than nineteen years over the oak-embowered village, the Drakenstein farms, and the still-expanding cattle country that had only recently lost the Lower Breede to Rhenius’s separate court. [3]
The board of landdrost and heemraden at Stellenbosch still acted as a court of justice and performed the duties later undertaken by municipal and divisional councils: road and pontoon contracts beyond the Berg river, regulation of the village butcher’s prices, and the jealous protection of the leased public mills at Stellenbosch and Drakenstein that brought the district £126 13s. 4d. a year each. Van Schoor inherited that local administrative machine rather than a quiet rural sinecure. [3]
Calendar 1748 therefore changed the Stellenbosch chair in the same autumn that truce news ended the mounted watch. Rhenius continued at the newly named Swellendam seat beyond the Lower Breede, so the colony’s two rural magistracies now stood under Rhenius and Van Schoor while Lourens’s long service closed. [3]
Weerman Leaves Zwartland for Batavia — December 1748
In December 1748 the Rev. Rutger Andries Weerman, of Zwartlands Kerk, at his own desire was transferred to Batavia. Weerman had held the Zwartland pulpit since May 1745, when the fifth Reformed parish had received its resident clergyman and, in July of that year, its own consistory under the wider parish-boundary settlement of 30 August 1745. [3]
The congregation remained without a clergyman until August 1750, when the Rev. Christiaan Benjamin Voltelen arrived from the Netherlands and took over the duty. December 1748 therefore opened a vacancy of more than a year and a half on the wheat lands north of the Cape flats, while Arendsen still held Stellenbosch, Meyring remained at Roodezand, and Van der Spuy carried the Cape alone with Le Sueur’s unpaid help. [3]
Within a single calendar year the Cape first chair had lost Cloppenburg by suspension and dismissal, and the Zwartland chair had lost Weerman by voluntary transfer east. The five-parish map of 1745 still stood on paper; two of its pulpits were in crisis or empty by the close of 1748. [3]
Shipping, Simon’s Bay, and the Allied Shore — 1748
In the thirteen years 1738–1750 there put into Table Bay 640 ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company, 198 English, 23 French, and 20 Danish. Simon’s Bay, first used as a port of call in 1742 after the directors’ 1741 order that fleets should refresh there from the 15th of May to the 15th of August, received seventy-seven Company ships before the close of 1750. The average number touching at South African ports was thus 73 yearly across the wider span. [3]
The Simon’s Town establishment on the southern shore of the bay—magazine, hospital, and quarters begun after Governor-General Van Imhof’s site choice in February 1743—remained under a small post with the title of postholder. In March 1748 Sergeant Justinus Blas was appointed postholder at Simon’s Town, while fishermen and people dependent on the shipping formed a small village named from the bay. The Table Bay mole, carried to 351 feet by the close of 1746 and then suspended, stayed abandoned, so winter reliance on Simon’s Bay continued. [3]
Boscawen’s April fleet and the Tartar’s September truce news therefore sat inside a busy allied decade at the Cape, when English hulls were the largest foreign class in Table Bay and when Dutch policy still treated British men-of-war as friends to be refreshed and, if requested later, even granted church space—as would happen on the 20th of April 1749 when an English chaplain preached in the Dutch church in Table Valley. [3]
Settlement, Staples, and the Quiet Agricultural Year — 1748
After the locust clearance of April 1747, the remaining years of the long Swellengrebel period 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]
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. Through these middle 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. [3] [4]
Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in much of the settled country, but occasionally the peace was disturbed by San marauders. The hard Swellendam-border rumours and unsuccessful inquiries recorded for 1747 and again for 1750 left 1748 without a fresh dated conviction, while coastal occupation still stood only a few miles east of Mossel Bay and the Great Brak limit of January 1745 still formally checked Gamtoos advances. [3]
Calendar 1748 therefore combined Cloppenburg’s January suspension and March dismissal, Boscawen’s April fleet and garden camp, the collapse of Muller’s Drakenstein fraud, the Tartar’s 26 September truce news and the end of the fifty-man watch, Van Schoor’s September succession to Lourens at Stellenbosch, Weerman’s December transfer from Zwartland to Batavia, and a quiet agricultural year under ordinary staple prices after the locust plague had passed. [3]