Boer History1763 at the Cape of Good Hope: Butter Placaat, Failed Harvest, Le Sueur, and the Fortuné Wreck
Thirteenth Year: Castle Continuity — 1763
Calendar 1763 opened in the thirteenth 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 after seventeen years of marriage and had left him a childless widower. March 1755 had raised him councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India, a rank higher than governor without adding to his duties. The twelfth year had closed with the chairs filled: Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn, named acting secunde on the 12th of December 1760 after Sergius Swellengrebel’s death and confirmed by the directors, sat the second chair; Jan Willem Cloppenburg had arrived in September 1762 and taken the independent fiscal’s pen that Van Oudtshoorn had held since September 1741. Jan Andries Horak still sat Swellendam. Adriaan van Schoor, appointed in September 1748 after the death of Pieter Lourens, still sat Stellenbosch and Drakenstein when the year opened. Jan Frederik Kirsten sat the winter port with the title of resident. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trading by officers—was a thirteenth year’s habit. The sumptuary laws adapted on the 25th of March 1755 still stood: 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. [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. Equanimity and a lack of swashbuckling dash did not mean an uneventful chair. He had never sought popularity for popularity’s sake. Gentle and tolerant he remained; strong when the governor’s authority was defied. The thirteenth year tested that strength on a roadstead still paying in wartime cash, on a butter placaat, on a hospital that lost its chief surgeon, on corn districts that reaped almost nothing, on a horse die-off, on a new landdrost at a rebuilt drostdy, and on four hundred and forty-one Frenchmen walking in from Fish Bay. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the thirteenth 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 pontoon placed on the Breede in 1757, close to the junction of the Zonder End, was still the public boat on that road. Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, who had arrived in the Company’s service in 1754, was still a Company servant. The Rev. Hendrik Kroonenburg, the Rev. Johannes Frederik Bode, and the Rev. Johannes Petrus Serrurier of Hanau still sat the Cape pulpit three deep, as Amsterdam had ordered in 1761. The Rev. Gerhardus Croeser still sat Zwartland. The Rev. Johannes Appeldoorn, stationed at Stellenbosch since October 1753, still sat that village. The Rev. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein. Roodezand’s church at Waveren was still under Remmerus Harders. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759; their travelling charges would not sit on the congregations in the thirteenth year. [3] [4] [8]
In the census returns of 1754 the number of colonists of both sexes and all ages had been given as 5,510, and the number of slaves owned by them as 6,279. In those of 1756 the number of colonists is given as 5,128, and of their slaves as 5,787. No later count sat on the Castle table in 1763. In ordinary years the number of deaths stood to baptisms roughly as 100 to 261, and there was a constant accession to the colonial population by servants of the Company taking their discharge. The figures, though they cannot be depended upon as absolutely accurate, still give the idea of the heavy loss of life by the smallpox. Table Valley had buried 963 Europeans and 1,109 blacks between the 1st of May and the 31st of October 1755. With the Khoikhoi the disease had created great havoc, spreading farther inland than in 1713—felt in Great Namaqualand at least to the twenty-sixth parallel, and in the east to the Great Fish. Before midsummer it had entirely died out. The thirteenth year therefore still lived inside that shadow: fewer free households, fewer bondsmen, and a colony that sold grain and wine into a paying bay while the capital’s labour force stayed thin. Company books had already closed the quarterly 600 guilders sent since 1747 to Tulbagh’s widowed mother Catharina Cattepoel; she had died in 1757. A childless widower sat the first chair without that Dutch household claim. A confirmed secunde sat the second. A fiscal independent of one Cape summer sat the high court. [3] [9]
Outward, the land regime did not change. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough. Yearly rental, when it could be recovered, remained £5 after the fifteen-year quit-rent settlement of 1732. 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. The courts were open for their protection. Dirk Marx’s report, received after the Doddington wreck, that he had met Xhosa as far west as the Great Fish, remained the frontier note. Calendar 1763 added no second Beutler-scale trek and no second Roggeveld commando. Among the drought years of Tulbagh’s twenty-one this thirteenth year would be written in a harder hand than most: not drought alone, but gales and caterpillars on top of it. Average exports across those twenty-one years would later be counted at 11,791 muids of wheat, 202 of rye, 68 of barley, 202 of peas, 174 of beans, and 346 leggers of common wine, with butter to India since 1754 averaging 22,322 pounds a year. The thirteenth year sat inside that average as a cut, not as a mean. What it added was a paying bay in which butter had to be reserved by placaat, a hospital without its old chief surgeon, corn magazines that sent only a quarter of the usual India wheat, more than two thousand five hundred dead horses, a new landdrost at Stellenbosch, and a French man-of-war on the bottom of Fish Bay. [3] [4] [7]
Butter Placaat and the Paying Roadstead — January 1763
From the arrival of the French men-of-war and transports in December 1758 and January 1759 the farmers had been in a prosperous condition. The war in India between the English and the French had not yet ended. French men-of-war had called to refresh and take in supplies until 1761; after that date ships of both nations came for cattle, meal and wine. Officers of French packets from Mauritius and of English packets from St Helena bid against each other. The empty roadstead of the glut years had become a double auction. What the Castle could not do by placaat in 1756 and 1757—move the surplus—seventeen hulls and the packets that followed them still did in cash. Calendar 1763 sat in the English-and-French half of that wartime boom: both flags crowded the roadsteads while the council still had to fill Company holds. During the twenty-one years 1751–1771 there would put into Table Bay 988 ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company, 168 English, 147 French, 31 Danish, 13 Swedish, 4 Prussian, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Spanish; into Simon’s Bay, 129 Dutch, 14 English, 11 French, 13 Danish, and 2 Swedish—the whole number at the two ports 1,472, an average of seventy a year. The thirteenth year sat inside that traffic. [3] [9]
On more than one occasion in this wartime stretch the government was unable to procure as much provision as was needed for the Company’s own ships, as the burghers were desirous of selling at high prices to strangers. There was a remedy for this. In August 1762 a placaat had been issued prohibiting the sale of wine to foreigners under penalty of confiscation of all that was offered and a fine of £66 13s. 4d. That had had the desired effect: the Company obtained as much as was needed, and four weeks from the date of its issue the placaat was withdrawn. In January 1763 it was necessary to resort to the same means to procure a supply of butter. The same farms that could not keep wine from foreign pursers until the Castle posted a short prohibition could not keep butter either. The wartime refreshment still filled Table Bay. After 1761, ships of England and France both came for cattle, meal and wine, and burghers often preferred strangers’ prices to the Company’s. January’s butter placaat was the Castle’s answer in the dairy as August’s had been in the cellar. [3]
The government, as well as individuals, profited by the strangers. The revenue was increased, a quantity of surplus wheat in the magazines was disposed of, and some shipments of Bourbon coffee were purchased at the low price of twenty-five shillings per hundred pounds for transmission to Europe. This season of prosperity lasted until March 1768, when intelligence was received of the conclusion of peace between France and England. Colonial and private interest aligned for once: the revenue rose when strangers bought, magazines could move surplus wheat, and farmers who had faced insolvency held the scarce goods. In 1756 an export duty of £1 per legger had been laid upon all wine and brandy sold to strangers in bulk, in addition to the dues previously levied. The duty was farmed out by auction, and in the first year was sold for no more than £38 6s. 8d. Four years later—calendar 1760—it rose to £400. That farm still paid in 1763, because the bay was buying. For wine farmers the swing remained sharp. India had cut Cape wine intake—exportation to Batavia, which for the five years 1751–5 had averaged 558 leggers, had fallen to 262 on an average during the next ten—and insolvencies had become alarmingly frequent; the fiscal’s fee on foreign wine sales had even been swapped for a grain fee to ease the pressure. By 1763 the roadstead arithmetic had reversed: strangers paid cash, magazines emptied, and the risk was no longer glut but the Company’s inability to secure its own stores when burghers held out for packet prices. January’s butter placaat was the Castle’s answer in fat as August’s had been in wine. [3] [9]
To Europe were sent yearly rather over 100 leggers of common wine and as much Constantia wine as could be obtained, which was usually not more than 14 or 15 leggers. From 1736 to 1761 the price paid by the Company for red Constantia wine had been £20 16s. 8d. and for white Constantia wine £10 8s. 4d. the legger, the proprietors being obliged under an old contract to sell at that price. In 1761 an agreement had been made with Jacobus van der Spuy, then owner of High Constantia, that he should deliver two-thirds of all the red wine made by him at £31 5s., and two-thirds of all the white wine at £15 12s. 6d. the legger, he to be at liberty to sell the remaining third to whom he chose at the best price he could obtain. A similar agreement was subsequently made with Lambert Myburgh, owner of Great Constantia. The thirteenth year therefore sat on that fairer Constantia contract while January’s placaat briefly closed the foreign tap on butter. Company holds first; packet pursers after the Castle had what it needed. [3]
In 1761 the first aloes had been exported from South Africa: two hundred and eighteen pounds produced by the old burgher councillor Petrus Johannes de Wit. The directors had issued instructions to purchase the drug at the stores at a price not exceeding two shillings and three pence halfpenny a pound. From that date it has been an article of export to Europe, but the quantity in demand being inconsiderable, it has not been of much advantage to the colony. Butter, first sent to India in 1754, was another line: during the next eighteen years the quantity sent abroad annually averaged 22,322 pounds, usually purchased at the Company’s stores at sixpence to eightpence a pound, though in times of scarcity as much as a shilling a pound was paid. January’s placaat was therefore not a small domestic order. It sat beside wine, meal, cattle, aloes, and Bourbon coffee as a hold-good the Company would not let the packets take first. The Huguenot valleys still sold the bulk. Drakenstein, the Paarl, Fransche Hoek, and Val du Charron—later Wellington—still poured into a roadstead where French and English packets bid—except when the Castle took butter first. [3] [7] [8]
Chief Surgeon de St. Jean Dies — 11 March 1763
On the 11th of March 1763 Renault Berthault de St. Jean died at Cape Town. He had been born in 1692 at Sancerre, in the province of Berry, the son of Marie Doné. At twenty he became a surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company; seven years later, in 1719, he landed at the Cape. His first wife, Anna Fourdinier, and their son, left behind in Holland, joined him later. By 1726 he was chief surgeon of the Company’s hospital in Table Valley. He married a second time Martha Sollier, born 1702, only daughter of the refugee Durand Sollier. He did not number among the early batches of French fugitives who came after 1688, but the Cape still read him as a French Protestant surgeon who had left France on account of his religion and had given the hospital more than forty years. [8]
The hospital he left was falling to ruins. The directors had resolved to build a new one, but the work was not yet commenced, though the materials were being collected. Table Valley had already buried its 1755 dead from that same hospital’s shadow: two great emergency hospitals, one for poor Europeans supported by the board of deacons, the other for blacks, with owners paying one shilling and fourpence a day for each slave sent in. Those who recovered had been employed as nurses. The thirteenth year’s hospital was not that emergency camp. It was the old Company building, still standing, still taking the sick of a paying bay, still waiting for the new walls the directors had promised. De St. Jean had been chief surgeon of that house. March took the surgeon before the directors took the stone. [3] [8]
Strangers had begun to know the town in Table Valley by the name of Cape Town, though by the colonists it was still termed the Cape. Several new streets were laid out. The parade ground was again levelled, and an oak hedge was planted round it. The artificial fountains from which the inhabitants got water were renewed. The town house—the same that is still in use—was built by the burgher council. The fortifications were repaired, and a new battery was constructed near the mouth of Salt River. The Wapen Pleyn no longer sounded only with militia drill. The Caabse Vlek was changing toward a name that strangers already used. De St. Jean died inside that civic programme: a capital still thinning from the 1755 graves, still selling dear to two empires, still building, and now without the French chief surgeon who had sat the hospital since the 1720s. [3] [8] [9]
Huguenot surnames still sat the valleys that sold into the same bay. Serrurier of Hanau still preached in Dutch in Table Valley, married since November 1760 to Margaretha Elisabeth Timmendorf. Jan Serrurier of Hanau, owner of Alphen at Wynberg, had already sat as burgher councillor. A Joubert had gone north with Hop’s waggons; Joubert farms still sat Waveren. De St. Jean’s line would run on through the female side of van der Riet. The thirteenth year did not invent those French names. It buried the hospital’s French surgeon in March, kept Serrurier in the pulpit, and still bought wine and butter from Drakenstein and the Paarl at packet prices—except when a placaat said the magazines came first. [7] [8]
Drought, Gales, and Caterpillars — 1763
During the period 1st of January 1751 to 31st of December 1771 there were five years of drought, more or less severe, in the corn-growing districts. Calendar 1763 was written among them in a harder hand. In 1755 the drought had been severe during the early months, and many cattle had died of starvation, but after June abundance of rain had fallen, and the corn crop had been a very good one. In 1756 the rain that fell was insufficient for wheat, and only a poor crop was gathered; there was such a quantity in reserve, however, that as much as usual was exported. In 1763 not only was the drought severe, but south-east gales set in early and with such force as partly to destroy what wheat was growing, and a plague of caterpillars followed, so that little or nothing was reaped. There was plenty of grain in reserve, but it was considered prudent only to send one-fourth of the usual quantity to India. [3]
The average quantity of farm produce exported to India across those twenty-one years was 11,791 muids of wheat, 202 muids of rye, 68 muids of barley, 202 muids of peas, 174 muids of beans, and 346 leggers of common wine. In 1763 that stream was cut back hard. A quarter of 11,791 muids is not a famine figure on the India books; it is a Castle figure. The magazines still held grain. The corn districts did not. South-east gales that set in early do not wait for a harvest placaat. Caterpillars do not wait for a second rain. Little or nothing reaped meant the thirteenth year’s wheat would not restock what the fourth-part export took. A small quantity of dried fruit and a little ivory still went to India beside the reduced grain. Butter, when the Company could get it, still went at sixpence to eightpence—or a shilling in scarcity. January’s placaat had already shown that butter was scarce enough to reserve. The harvest then failed under drought, wind, and worms. [3]
The Huguenot valleys that had planted vines after 1688 now watched corn as well as wine. Drakenstein, the Paarl, Fransche Hoek, and Val du Charron had been agricultural settlements whose fruit and grain had become plentiful while cattle remained scarce. Under the second van der Stel the settlement had been extended beyond the first mountain range to place colonists for cattle farming and stock grazing. The Tulbagh kloof remained the gateway to that inland basin. Piketberg, from which Jacobus Coetsee had ridden north in 1760, sat in that same outward cattle country. Wine from those old French names could still fill a paying bay. Wheat from the same districts could not. The thirteenth year did not invent those farms. It paid them in packet gold for what the gales left, and it sent India a quarter-ration of what the magazines still held. [3] [4] [7]
The Castle’s prudence was a thirteenth-year arithmetic, not a panic. Plenty of grain in reserve meant the town would eat. One-fourth of the usual India quantity meant Batavia would wait. In 1756 reserve had covered a poor crop and the usual export had gone. In 1763 reserve covered the colony and not the usual export. The difference was the gales and the caterpillars on top of the drought. South-east wind that strips a wheat field in early season does not come back as rain. Worms that follow do not leave a second cutting. Little or nothing reaped is a farm sentence. A quarter-ration to India is a council sentence. Both belong to calendar 1763. [3]
Foreigners still obtained whatever they chose to pay for, except 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. January’s butter placaat had already drawn that line in fat. The harvest then drew it in meal. The Prussian flag had first been seen in Table Bay in 1755; the Swedish in 1759. Liberal treatment of English visitors had been restored in 1761 after the Chinsurah scare; it did not extend to emptying the magazines for packet prices when the corn districts reaped nothing. The thirteenth year’s roadstead was therefore still a paying one, with English courtesy restored, the honour of the flag still sitting on every salute, and a harvest that could not restock the holds. [3] [9]
Horse Sickness — 1763
Six years before the first horse export of 1769, horse sickness was unusually severe. Burghers lost over 2,500 animals within a few months. The die-off itself belongs to 1763. The loss was later made good by breeding, so that when English officers came for remounts there were horses enough, though small and not handsome. Calendar 1763 did not ship those remounts. It buried the horses. Over two thousand five hundred dead within a few months is not a slow season on the runs. It is a plague year in the stables, on the same farms that had already watched wheat stripped by gales and eaten by caterpillars. [3]
Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough for what stock survived. Yearly rental, when it could be recovered, remained £5. The outward districts that had sent oxen north with Hop in 1761 and had watched thirty stolen by San on the homeward bank in 1762 now watched horses fall in the old districts as well. Horse sickness does not respect a drostdy boundary. Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, the Cape flats, the Zwartland, the cattle country beyond the first mountain range—wherever burghers kept horses, the few months of 1763 took them. The Company did not yet count a Cape horse as an India export. It counted them as farm capital, as wagon and patrol and plough. Two thousand five hundred gone in a few months cut that capital harder than a placaat cuts butter. [3] [4]
The thirteenth year’s stock ledger thus ran in two columns. In the one, wartime packets still bid for cattle, meal, and wine, and the Castle still had to post a butter placaat to fill its own casks. In the other, wheat failed under drought, wind, and worms, and horses failed under sickness. The two columns did not cancel. A paying bay does not restock a dead stable. A reserve of grain does not restock a horse. Breeding would later make the numbers good. The few months of 1763 did not wait for breeding. They took the animals, and the farms counted them. [3]
Khoikhoi who still held together in compact bodies retained their own government. The greater number lived as dependents of farmers or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. The courts were open for their protection. The government was anxious to prevent the Khoikhoi from becoming possessed of guns and horses, as many who accompanied elephant hunters had learned to be expert marksmen and might prove dangerous if mounted and armed. In 1755 some Khoikhoi in the district of Swellendam had 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. The thirteenth year’s horse die-off did not repeal that anxiety. It thinned the animals on both sides of the wage. San marauders still disturbed the peace occasionally. Land was still allotted without consulting Khoikhoi. Plenty of land still seemed left. Fewer horses sat on it. [3]
Le Sueur Landdrost of Stellenbosch — August 1763
In August 1763 Adriaan van Schoor was promoted to an office in Cape Town. Jacobus Johannes le Sueur succeeded him as landdrost. He was of the three brothers Le Sueur who were nephews of the governor’s late wife. Van Schoor had held Stellenbosch and Drakenstein since September 1748, after the death of Pieter Lourens—fifteen years in the same drostdy chair. The thirteenth year moved that chair. Le Sueur took a seat still recovering from fire. On the 31st of October 1762 the drostdy buildings had been destroyed by fire, but they were shortly rebuilt in a handsomer style. Stellenbosch village had been considerably enlarged and improved in appearance during Tulbagh’s time. When the drostdy burned, a new and more spacious building arose. The new landdrost sat in that handsomer house. [3] [9]
Appeldoorn still preached in the village that had lost its drostdy in a night and gained a handsomer one. He had arrived from Europe in September 1753 and had been stationed at Stellenbosch the following month; he was still there. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein. The two congregations of the drostdy thus kept their pulpits while the landdrost’s chair changed. Combined consistories still did not meet. The thirteenth year did not reshuffle the churches. It reshuffled Stellenbosch’s court. Horak still sat Swellendam. He had not yet retired from the Company’s service. The pontoon of 1757 on the Breede, close to the junction of the Zonder End, still carried the public road to that hamlet. Two drostdies, one new landdrost, one old one, and a rebuilt house at Stellenbosch: that was the country administration of 1763. [3] [8]
Not only in town, but also in the country districts, the impact of Tulbagh’s energy was felt. Simon’s Town was enlarged: warehouses were built, a stone pier made, a large hospital erected. The hospital—a square building of 130 feet frontage—had been commenced in 1760 and was still rising; it would be completed in a later year. Substantial storehouses, a slaughter house, a bakery, workshops for smiths and carpenters, and a dwelling house for the officer in charge of the station followed in the same enlargement. The building erected in the time of Governor Swellengrebel—which was 450 feet in length and had previously served for all purposes—was now used solely as quarters for the garrison and workmen. Kirsten still sat as resident, the title given him in May 1761 after De Nys’s death. False Bay was no longer only an emergency winter door. The hospital foundation of 1760, the resident title of 1761, and the stores that followed in these years made Simon’s Town a second built face of Company power—paid for while foreign and Company ships still crowded the refreshment economy of Table Bay, and while Stellenbosch sat a new landdrost in a new drostdy. [3] [9]
Swellendam remained a mere hamlet. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough beyond both drostdies. Yearly rental, when it could be recovered, remained £5. Khoikhoi clans that still held together retained their own government; the greater number lived as dependents of farmers or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. The courts were open for their protection. San marauders still disturbed the peace occasionally. Land was still allotted without consulting Khoikhoi. Plenty of land still seemed left. During the administration of Tulbagh the natives gave very little trouble to the colonists. Harsh and unjust treatment of Khoikhoi by colonists occurred, especially on the remote border, but the heavy sentences recorded against European criminals in such cases prove that the law was not a dead letter. The government, being popular, was strong; oppression on any large scale could only take place in times of anarchy. Le Sueur inherited that court, not a new frontier. [3] [4] [7]
The fiscal independent was not a clerk. Cloppenburg sat the high court, watched the Company’s rights against burgher and stranger, and took the fees the law allowed—fees Tulbagh had already forced into a fixed schedule. Van Oudtshoorn had even abandoned, in the glut years, his four shillings and twopence on every legger of wine sold to a foreigner, taking instead one shilling and fourpence on every hundred pounds of grain or meal, as the only measure of relief the governor could think of for insolvent wine farmers. That swap still coloured the office Cloppenburg held through 1763. The January butter placaat had shown that the Castle could still close a foreign tap when Company ships went short. A new landdrost arrived into a paying bay, a failed harvest, a horse die-off, and a governor who would not let officers trade. Van Schoor went to Cape Town. Le Sueur sat Stellenbosch. The thirteenth year moved one chair and kept the rest. [3] [9]
Fortuné Wrecked in Fish Bay — 11 September 1763
On the 11th of September 1763 the French man-of-war Fortuné, homeward bound from Mauritius, after encountering a heavy gale off the coast put into Fish Bay in a sinking condition. She was kept afloat until everything of value was landed, but was abandoned on the 27th, when she went down at her anchorage. Two days later she broke up in a storm. Her crew and some troops on board, 441 in all, proceeded overland to the Cape, where they embarked in French ships returning to Europe. It was the sharpest wreck on this coast in Tulbagh’s later years, after the earlier loss of the English East Indiaman Doddington on a rock in Algoa Bay in July 1755. [3]
There had been few disasters on the coast in these years. The Danish Crown Princess of Denmark had put into Mossel Bay disabled on the 9th of June 1752. The French Cybells, bound to Mauritius from Guinea with slaves, had run ashore above Blueberg on the 19th of March 1756. The Cape packet Schuylenburg had left Table Bay for Simon’s Bay on the 3rd of June 1756 and had never been heard of. The provision ship Voorsigtigheid had gone ashore near Salt River mouth on the 8th of June 1757. The Naarstigheid, dismasted in a hurricane on the passage from Bengal, had ended at Delagoa Bay; the packet Hector had found fifty-nine still living there, and two of four Swellendam hunters sent for elephants had died of fever on landing. Against that short list the Fortuné was a different scale: not a handful of survivors, but four hundred and forty-one men walking the southern road to Table Valley with a French man-of-war on the bottom behind them. Fish Bay had held her from the 11th to the 27th. Value came off. Then she went down at the anchorage, and a storm two days later broke her up. The men did not wait for another hull. They walked. [3]
They walked into a town that still sold dear to two empires. French ships returning to Europe were in the bay to take them. The same wartime traffic that had forced a butter placaat in January now closed the wreck’s account: 441 French sailors and soldiers embarked for home in French hulls. The Castle that had refused Commodore Lynn English seamen off Dutch decks in January 1762 did not refuse a wrecked French complement the road. Neutral refreshment cut both ways. The honour of the flag had been a no on impressment. The honour of a wreck was a yes on the overland path and a seat in a homeward French ship. Mauritius had sent her. Fish Bay took her. Table Bay sent the men on. [3] [9]
Governor Tulbagh was regarded as a model officer by his superiors in Europe and India. In March 1755 he had been raised to councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India. He had not yet been further elevated to ordinary councillor. In his house by the canal, distinguished from the others only by the sentinel at the door and by the trumpet when he sat down to dinner, the best policy was still to deal justly and honestly with every man. Visitors already knew the name of the tavern of the seas. The thirteenth year did not add Clive or Cook. It added a French wreck, a failed harvest, a horse die-off, a hospital without de St. Jean, a butter placaat, and Le Sueur in a rebuilt drostdy. The gilded coach remained the governor’s. The fees remained fixed. The magazines sent a quarter of the usual wheat and kept the butter when they had to. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s need and then repaired it: butter reserved in January; the hospital’s French chief surgeon buried in March; wheat stripped by drought, south-east gales and caterpillars, with only a quarter of the usual grain sent to India; more than two thousand five hundred horses dead within a few months; Van Schoor promoted and Le Sueur in the Stellenbosch chair in August; the Fortuné down in Fish Bay on the 27th of September and 441 men overland to the Cape. Under Tulbagh, 1763 was not a year of conquest but of reservation, burial, failed harvest, die-off, a new landdrost, and wreck—while farmers still sold dear to the fleets of two empires at a neutral tavern of the seas, except when the Castle took butter first and sent India a quarter-ration of wheat. The thirteenth year closed with cash in the bay, magazines on a short India export, Van Oudtshoorn in the second chair, Cloppenburg independent, Le Sueur in a handsomer drostdy, Kirsten still styled resident at the winter port, and French survivors in homeward ships. The gardens of 1652 were a hundred and eleven years behind. The boom still paid. The next calendar would test the magazines another way. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]