Boer History1755 at the Cape of Good Hope: Smallpox, Sumptuary Laws, and the Doddington Wreck
Sumptuary Laws Adapted — 25 March 1755
Calendar 1755 opened in the fifth year of Ryk Tulbagh in the first chair. He had not been quite fifty-two when, on the 27th of February 1751, he became governor; the public presentation to the burghers and the promise of fidelity from the official boards had followed on the 15th of April. Saturday, the 8th of April 1752, had been a day of thanksgiving for a hundred years of Company possession, looking back to the gardens of 1652. In 1753 his wife Elizabeth Swellengrebel had died of a severe cold after seventeen years of marriage and had left him a childless widower. His sorrow had not made him morose. He had taken a still greater interest in the wellbeing of his people, who found him more accessible than ever. Independent fiscal Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn still held his office. The secunde Swellengrebel still sat the second chair. Landdrost Jan Andries Horak still sat Swellendam. Adriaan van Schoor still sat Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trading by officers—was a fifth year’s habit. In March 1755 his superiors in Europe and India raised him to the dignity of councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India, a position which gave him higher rank than that of governor, though it did not add to his duties. He was the second Cape governor raised to that third top seat in the Company’s commercial empire. [3] [7] [9]
As governor he was accessible without the least difficulty to all who wished to see him. The humblest individual could pour grievances into the ears of the father of the country and be sure of a patient hearing. If the complaints were well grounded, he obtained speedy redress; in any case he was sure of good counsel. That quality more than any other endeared him to the people. His probity was beyond suspicion in an age when probity was hardly looked for in men holding such posts. Company salaries were small, and it was taken almost as a matter of course that officers would supplement their incomes in any way not punishable by law. Tulbagh set his face firmly against that habit. He neither traded on his own account nor would he allow any other officer of the government to do so. The fees they were permitted to receive in certain transactions were fixed, and they were restricted from taking more. He regulated his own expenses so that he lived well within his income and allowances, and used what he had to spare in relieving the wants of others. Under his administration every man was certain of getting his dues. No man was put to unnecessary delay; no bribes were received; no false accounts were rendered. [3] [9]
Equanimity, calmness, and a lack of swashbuckling dash did not mean an uneventful chair. He had never sought popularity for popularity’s sake. He wanted to be right with the ego he held as given him by God, and its dictates clashed frequently with the desires of the people. No direct attack by a hostile power fell on the settlement in his term, but the occasions were numerous on which only a firm, determined, and fearless leader could prevent lasting losses. Calendar 1754 had already tested that firmness: French captains who would not fire nine guns had gone without meat; a slave code had been posted with the Company’s great seal; a widow had been ordered to consign her children to the church. Calendar 1755 would shake the same authority twice—first with another hateful regulation from Batavia, then with a disease that nearly emptied Table Valley. Gentle and tolerant he remained; strong when the governor’s authority was defied. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the fifth year as much as novelty of placaat. The same castle, the same boards, and many of the same officers remained. Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in the old districts, but occasionally the peace was disturbed by San marauders. Land continued to be allotted to colonists without consulting Khoikhoi clans. Plenty of land still seemed left. Cattle runs in the outward districts were probably never less than five or six thousand acres, for which, when it could be recovered, a yearly rental was paid—£2 10s. until 1732 and £5 thereafter. The eastern hamlet of Swellendam remained a hamlet. The French astronomer Abbé Nicolas Louis de la Caille, who had arrived on the 19th of April 1751 with a letter from the Prince of Orange, was still measuring. From Tulbagh, who took a warm interest in his labour, he received all the assistance that it was possible to give. Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, who had arrived in the Company’s service in 1754, was still a Company servant. The Rev. Gerhardus Croeser, inducted as assistant pastor at the Cape in September 1754, still shared the town pulpit with Hendrik Kroonenburg. The census of 1754 had counted 5,510 colonists of both sexes and all ages and 6,279 slaves owned by them. Those were the numbers on which the fifth year opened. [3] [4] [8] [9]
In the Indies there had been of late years a growing tendency among Europeans toward luxurious habits, and the authorities feared that the descendants of sturdy pioneers would sink into effeminacy. It was observed that the children or grandchildren of men who had toiled with their hands to earn their food were not content unless they could ride in carriages and be waited upon by menials. Stringent sumptuary laws were issued there, and a copy was sent to the Cape with orders to enforce them. There was no dependency of the Company in which such regulations could have less effect, because there was very little accumulated wealth here except in the form of farming stock. The people generally were above fear of want, but there were few who could pretend to live in luxury. Yet Tulbagh favoured the laws, not only because he was instructed to put them in force, but because he believed them well adapted to form a simple, honest, manly race of colonists and to preserve the hardy virtues which had made the people of the Netherlands a powerful nation. [3] [7] [9]
On the 25th of March 1755 the sumptuary laws of India were referred to a committee to make such alterations as were necessary to adapt them to the condition of this country, and they were thereafter promulgated. They comprised such regulations as the following: no one except the governor might use a gilded coach or one with a coat of arms emblazoned on it; no one except a member of the council of policy might dress his coachman in livery; no one might use large umbrellas except senior merchants and ladies whose husbands or fathers had seats at any of the public boards. There were other regulations hardly less than the foregoing. Company employees as well as burghers—and especially their proud wives—had to do with less ornate carriages, silks, and umbrellas, all long-established status symbols and hard to abandon. Again it was the governor who was able to pour oil on the waters of public indignation—not by forfeiting his coach, that had to be gilded anyhow, but by simply remaining what he had always been: a quiet-living man, who himself had never indulged in extravagance. Display rules thus opened a year that disease would soon dominate. [3] [9]
Smallpox Returns with the Ceylon Fleet — 1755
For forty-two years the colony had been free of smallpox when in 1755 that scourge made its appearance again. It was introduced at the beginning of winter by a homeward-bound fleet from Ceylon. At first the disease was supposed to be a kind of fever, but after a few days there were cases that admitted of no doubt. It assumed, however, various forms, and among some of the distant Khoikhoi communities differed in appearance so much from what was held to be true smallpox that the Europeans termed it gall sickness. The previous outbreak, in 1713, when Helot was acting governor, had soon petered out and had never actually threatened the existence of the settlement. This one would. [3] [9]
Two things in 1755 were likely to shake a governor’s authority. The first was the introduction of the sumptuary laws. The second—to use an understatement—was of an almost disastrous character. From March to November the colony was ravaged by a malicious smallpox epidemic, more lethal than the Cape had ever experienced. Whereas the previous one in 1713 had never actually threatened the settlement’s existence, this outbreak nearly destroyed the little town. The governor acted promptly, firmly, and wisely. Two large emergency hospitals were erected: one for the European poor, the other for blacks. As soon as either a European or a slave recovered, he or she was recruited as a nurse. The gardens of 1652 had become, a hundred and three years later, a refreshment station that could still feed fleets, and a town that could not keep its own people alive through one cold July. [3] [9]
The disease was not a fever that would pass with a change of wind. It was the same scourge that had emptied Namaqua kraals in 1713, returned now on a Ceylon fleet at the beginning of winter, when Table Valley was about to be colder than usual. Distant Khoikhoi who had never seen the European type of the pox called what reached them gall sickness; in the streets under the Lion’s Head there was no such doubt after a few days. The fifth year’s placaat about gilded coaches and large umbrellas would, in strange irony, become futile once the streets emptied. No one would use coaches, silks, or umbrellas. Those commodities could not be sold or bought anymore, for public auctions were stopped. [3] [9]
What the year would add to the March placaat was thus not a further squeeze on produce prices or another salute argument in the bay, but a death-rate that, if it had continued, would have left no one remaining in Table Valley before the close of the year. The man in the chair had been raised councillor extraordinary in the same March that adapted the sumptuary laws. Rank in India did not keep smallpox off a Ceylon deck, nor out of a slave hospital paid for at one shilling and four pence a day. The fifth year would be remembered for the empty Wapen Pleyn, not for the gilded coach. [3] [9]
Table Valley Mortality — July–October 1755
In Table Valley the type was so malignant that hardly a single adult who was attacked recovered. In July the weather was colder than usual, and during that month four hundred and eighty-nine Europeans, thirty-three free blacks, and five hundred and eighty slaves perished. If that death rate had continued, before the close of the year there would have been no one remaining, but as soon as the warm weather set in the virulence of the disease abated. Of some five thousand five hundred European settlers in the colony, five hundred died in the single month of July; of some five thousand eight hundred slaves, five hundred and eighty had to be buried. By far the majority of victims perished in Cape Town. [3] [9]
Two great hospitals were established: one for poor Europeans, supported by the board of deacons; the other for blacks. To the latter all slaves who were attacked were sent, the expense being borne by their owners, who were required to pay one shilling and four pence a day for each. Those who recovered were employed as nurses. In Table Valley from the 1st of May to the 31st of October nine hundred and sixty-three Europeans and eleven hundred and nine blacks died. By the 1st of November nearly a thousand Europeans and well over eleven hundred slaves and other blacks had been slaughtered by the smallpox. [3] [9]
The town’s streets and squares were empty. The Wapen Pleyn did not resound anymore with the gay laughter and happy cries of children looking at the drilling of the militia. Houses were vacant. Whole families had been wiped out. Business had come to a standstill. Property had lost its value. In strange irony the recently introduced sumptuary laws became futile: no one used coaches, silks, or umbrellas. Those commodities could not be sold or bought anymore, for public auctions had been stopped. The fifth year’s March placaat about gilded coaches had been written for a town that still had streets full enough to care who rode in livery. By July the argument was over. [3] [9]
One does not know much about Tulbagh’s movements during the colony’s ordeal. In times like these his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. Of one thing one can be certain: he must have suffered the sufferings of each stricken home in Cape Town, for that was the burden taken up by a man who made the Christian life the light of his chair. He had been accessible without difficulty in ordinary years; in the smallpox winter the father of the country had a town of vacant houses and two hospitals to keep standing. Rank as councillor extraordinary did not empty a sickbed. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trade—waited on warm weather. [3] [9]
The numbers are the year’s monument. Four hundred and eighty-nine Europeans, thirty-three free blacks, and five hundred and eighty slaves in one cold July. Nine hundred and sixty-three Europeans and eleven hundred and nine blacks from the first of May to the last of October, in Table Valley alone. A deacon’s hospital for the European poor; a black hospital at one shilling and four pence a day, paid by the owner, staffed by the recovered. The gardens of 1652 had never seen a July like it. The 1754 census of 5,510 colonists and 6,279 slaves was already, by the spring of 1755, a count of the living that the winter had cut. [3] [9]
Country Seclusion and Inland Spread — 1755
In the country the European inhabitants did not suffer very severely, as they remained so secluded on their farms that for several months hardly a waggon load of produce was taken to the Cape for sale. The dead were not removed from the farms for burial. The government excused the muster of the militia for drill, and even the services in the churches were not attended by people from a distance. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres, rented at £5 a year when the rent could be recovered, became, for those months, closed worlds. The roadstead’s demand for meat and meal waited. The Wapen Pleyn’s silence in town had its counterpart in empty wagon tracks from Stellenbosch, Drakenstein, Zwartland, and Swellendam. [3] [4]
With the Khoikhoi the disease created great havoc, for it spread farther inland than in 1713. It is not possible to say exactly how far it extended, but its ravages were felt in Great Namaqualand at least to the twenty-sixth parallel of latitude, and in the east to the Great Fish river. Before midsummer it entirely died out in the colony’s main settlements. Distant communities who had termed it gall sickness because it did not look like the European pox still buried their dead. The 1713 outbreak had cut Namaqua strength; this one reached farther, along stock-routes and clan paths that no placaat of the council of policy could close. [3]
The Khoikhoi clans that still held together in compact bodies within the limits of the European settlement retained their own government, though their chiefs were practically appointed by the Dutch authorities. Only when Europeans or slaves were also concerned were they made amenable to colonial law. But the greater number of these people had lost their old tribal distinctions, and recognised no chief of their own race. Many of them were living as dependents of farmers, or wandered about the country, taking service occasionally as they felt so disposed. These were of necessity amenable to colonial law. There were instances of harsh and unjust treatment of Khoikhoi by colonists, especially on the remote border; but the courts of law were open for their protection, and the heavy sentences recorded against European criminals in such cases prove that the law was not a dead letter. Land was allotted to colonists without consulting them. As yet there was plenty of land left for them and their cattle. Smallpox did not ask who held a staff of office and who did not. [3]
In ordinary years the number of deaths was in proportion to the number of baptisms as 100 to 261, and there was a constant accession to the colonial population by servants of the Company taking their discharge. The 1754 census of 5,510 colonists and 6,279 slaves cannot be depended upon as absolutely accurate, but it is the count against which the smallpox winter must be read. When later returns were taken, the colonists stood at 5,128 and their slaves at 5,787. Those figures, though they also cannot be depended upon as absolutely accurate, give an idea of the heavy loss of life by the smallpox. Baptism and discharge could not replace, in one season, what July had taken in Table Valley and what the inland paths had taken among Khoikhoi communities as far as the twenty-sixth parallel and the Great Fish. [3] [9]
Country seclusion saved European farm households from the Table Valley type. It also stopped the wagons that fed the roadstead and the Castle. For several months the Cape bought almost no country produce. The dead stayed on the farms. Militia drill was excused. Distant pews stood empty. The same seclusion that kept burghers alive kept the town hungry for meal and meat until the virulence abated with the warm weather. Before midsummer the disease had died out in the main settlements; inland, among Khoikhoi, it had already done the work that 1713 had not finished. The fifth year’s country story is that contrast: farms closed, town emptied, clans cut as far as Great Namaqualand and the Fish. [3]
Doddington Wrecks at Bird Island — 17 July 1755
A shipwreck which took place at this time was made famous by the display, on the part of a few survivors, of such industry and ability to overcome difficulties as have seldom been surpassed. The English East India Company’s ship Doddington sailed from the Downs on the 23rd of April 1755. At a quarter to one in the morning of Thursday the 17th of July, while no one on board suspected danger, she struck a rock on the eastern side of Algoa Bay and at once went to pieces. Of two hundred and seventy persons on board, all perished but twenty-three. Those saved found themselves upon a barren islet frequented only by sea-birds. The wreck belongs to the same cold July in which Table Valley buried four hundred and eighty-nine Europeans in a single month. The roadstead at the Cape knew nothing of it yet. [3]
Fortunately for them, a quantity of provisions, a small boat, a smith’s bellows, much timber, and numerous other useful articles washed up from the wreck. They at once set to work to build a sloop of twelve feet beam and thirty feet keel, with which to make their escape. They had no nails; but a Swedish sailor, who had once been a blacksmith, put up a forge, and with iron obtained from pieces of the wreck managed to make as many as were needed. Industry on a bird-rock in Algoa Bay, in the same weeks that Table Valley’s hospitals filled, is the year’s other monument: twenty-three people making nails from wreck-iron while nine hundred and sixty-three Europeans died in the valley between May and October. [3]
As smoke was often seen on the mainland, on the 3rd of September three men left in the little boat to find out something of the country and its people. They steered for a point about nine or ten miles east of the islet, but when attempting to land the boat was overturned in the surf, and one man was drowned. The other two passed the night on the shore. Next day they found the boat and managed to pull it up on the beach. That night, weary and almost exhausted from want of food, they turned the boat over and lay down under it to sleep, but were disturbed by wild animals prowling about. Next morning a party of Khoikhoi appeared, who took from them a pistol and the greater part of their clothing, though otherwise the people were friendly and, seeing their distress from hunger, gave them some roots to eat. The wind was adverse that day, and they were obliged to pass another night under the boat, but on the following morning they returned to the islet. [3]
During the last months of the year the wrecked people had as many sea-birds’ eggs as they chose to gather, and at all times fish could be obtained, so that they did not suffer from hunger. The sloop remained on the stocks. Their escape from the rock would belong to another calendar; the wreck, the forge, the September boat, and the winter on the islet belong to 1755. Smoke on the mainland had already been seen. Burghers would hear of a boat before they heard of a wreck. [3]
Two burghers—Andries du Pré and Pieter Ferreira—who were hunting elephants along the Bushman’s and Sunday rivers, heard from some Khoikhoi rumours of the landing of the boat, and sent a report to the landdrost of Swellendam. Horak thereupon directed the farmers Nicholas Haarhof and Pieter van Vuuren to make inquiries among the natives, and they obtained the pistol which had been taken from the English sailors, but could learn nothing of a wreck. For anything they could gather, the boat might have belonged to a passing ship. In December 1755, by order of the government, the landdrost sent Dirk Marx, a hunter who was well acquainted with the country, to look for any white people who might be in distress; but he could hear of none, nor could he find any trace of a wreck. He reported having met Nguni groups as far west as the Great Fish river. The Castle thus closed the year knowing of a pistol and a rumour, not of twenty-three men still on a bird-islet with a half-built sloop. [3]
Drought, then a Good Corn Crop — 1755
During the period from the 1st of January 1751 to the end of Tulbagh’s long government there were five years of drought, more or less severe, in the corn-growing districts. Calendar 1755 was one of them. In that year the drought was severe during the early months, and many cattle died of starvation, but after June abundance of rain fell, and the corn crop was a very good one. The same calendar year thus held mass death in Table Valley and a rescued harvest in the wheat districts. Early starvation of stock and a good crop after June is not a contradiction: it is the year’s weather, written in the same ink as the Ceylon fleet and the July cold. [3]
Country seclusion in the smallpox months had already stopped the wagons. Drought in the early months had already killed cattle. After June the rain came, and the corn that stood into the summer was very good. The roadstead would have meal again when the town had people enough to buy it. Wine sent to India in the five years 1751–1755 had averaged 558 leggers a year: the fifth year’s vintage belonged to that average, whatever complaints were made of quality. The Castle still lived by the gardens of 1652—grain, meat, wine, water, and wood for whoever saluted and paid. [3]
The Prussian flag was first seen on a ship in Table Bay in 1755. During the twenty-one years 1751–1771 there put into Table Bay 988 ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company, 168 English, 147 French, 81 Danish, 18 Swedish, 4 Prussian, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Spanish; into Simon’s Bay, 129 Dutch, 14 English, 11 French, 18 Danish, and 2 Swedish. The whole number that touched at the two ports was 1,472, and the average yearly number 70. The first Prussian visit is a small flag in a smallpox year: a new colour in the bay while the Wapen Pleyn stood empty and the wheat districts waited on June rain. Foreigners obtained whatever they chose to pay for, excepting when the council thought it necessary to prohibit the sale of such articles as the Company needed and of which the supply was insufficient for all. [3]
After a few extremely difficult years the international situation would come to Tulbagh’s assistance, but that relief was not yet. Calendar 1755 was still the gloomy time when even farmers borrowed mariners’ glasses to scan the horizon for potential buyers—the same mood that had, in 1754, made a nine-gun salute a contest of endurance over meat. The fifth year’s harvest after June did not fill the bay with customers. It filled the magazines with corn after a starvation of stock. The Prussian flag was a first, not a fleet. [3] [9]
The fifth year’s country ledger is thus written in three columns. Early drought killed cattle. After June the corn was very good. Smallpox closed the wagons for months even where the rain had come. A Prussian ship added a new flag to a bay that had, that winter, more hospitals than customers. The gardens of 1652 still measured a year by rain, by the roadstead, and by who was left to reap. [3]
Guns, Horses, and Khoikhoi Servants — 1755
During Tulbagh’s administration the natives gave very little trouble to the colonists. The government was anxious to prevent Khoikhoi dependents from becoming possessed of guns and horses, as many of those who accompanied the elephant hunters in their expeditions had learned to be expert marksmen, and might prove dangerous to the peace of the colony if mounted and armed. In 1755 some Khoikhoi in the district of Swellendam acquired several horses and a couple of muskets as wages from burghers, when the landdrost was instructed to endeavour to procure the forbidden property in a friendly way in exchange for something else, and strictly to prohibit such actions in future. Horak’s district, which had in December to send Dirk Marx looking for distressed whites, had in the same year to take guns and horses back from Khoikhoi servants by exchange rather than by seizure. [3]
The instruction was of a piece with the fifth year’s chair: firm, not theatrical. Khoikhoi who still held together in compact bodies retained their own government, with chiefs practically appointed by the Dutch authorities. The greater number had lost old tribal distinctions and lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. Those dependents, paid in horses and muskets by burghers who hunted elephants toward the Bushman’s and Sunday rivers, were not to become a mounted, armed people on the Swellendam frontier. The same landdrost who recovered an English pistol from a September rumour was told to recover the muskets in a friendly exchange. The law that posted sumptuary rules on gilded coaches also posted a prohibition on Khoikhoi wages paid in powder and horseflesh. [3]
With San groups there were occasional contests, but the great Roggeveld and Bokkeveld raids had been the business of 1754. Calendar 1755 did not repeat that six-week commando. The year’s frontier note is the Swellendam exchange, not a mountain siege. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough. The smallpox that cut Khoikhoi communities as far as the twenty-sixth parallel and the Great Fish did more, in this year, to empty the interior than any commando. Guns and horses were to be kept out of surviving hands. [3] [4]
In November 1755, under an arrangement between themselves of which the government approved, the Rev. Gerhardus Croeser went to Zwartland and the Rev. Voltelen came to the Cape. Kroonenburg remained. The town pulpit that had been one man’s charge from January 1753 until Croeser’s induction in September 1754 thus changed its second man in the smallpox year, by a swap the Castle allowed. Zwartland received the assistant who had arrived from Europe the year before. The Cape received Voltelen. Church news in a year of empty pews and excused distant attendance is a small personnel note, but it is the year’s note: the government still approved arrangements between clergymen while it excused militia muster and while wagons stayed on the farms. [3]
Calendar 1755 may be closed on those names and numbers. Father Tulbagh, childless since 1753, sat a fifth year in which he was raised councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India in March and saw his town nearly destroyed between May and November. On the 25th of March the sumptuary laws of India were adapted: no gilded coach but the governor’s, no livery but a councillor’s coachman, no large umbrella but a senior merchant’s or a board lady’s. A Ceylon fleet brought smallpox at the beginning of winter. In July, colder than usual, 489 Europeans, 33 free blacks, and 580 slaves died in Table Valley; from the 1st of May to the 31st of October, 963 Europeans and 1,109 blacks. Two hospitals stood; recovered slaves nursed at the owner’s 1s. 4d. a day. Country wagons stopped. Khoikhoi were cut as far as the twenty-sixth parallel and the Great Fish. The Doddington went to pieces on the 17th of July; 23 of 270 lived on a bird-islet and began a sloop; Haarhof and van Vuuren recovered a pistol; Dirk Marx in December found no distressed whites. Early drought killed cattle; after June the corn was very good. The Prussian flag was seen in Table Bay for the first time. Swellendam Khoikhoi gave back horses and muskets by friendly exchange. Croeser went to Zwartland; Voltelen came to the Cape. The gardens of 1652 were still a refreshment station under a Dutch flag, a Castle that posted its laws, and a fatherly chair that could not keep smallpox off a Ceylon deck. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]