Boer History1764 at the Cape of Good Hope: Drought, Zak River Raid, and Lord Clive in the Kent
Fourteenth Year: Castle Continuity — 1764
Calendar 1764 opened in the fourteenth 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 thirteenth 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. Jacobus Johannes le Sueur sat Stellenbosch, having succeeded Adriaan van Schoor in August 1763. Jan Andries Horak still sat Swellendam. 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 fourteenth 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 fourteenth year tested that strength on a roadstead still paying after the India war, on corn districts counted again among the drought years, on a Zak-river station that lost its European servant and three hundred sheep, and on an English conqueror of India who could not make the jetty against a south-easter. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the fourteenth year as much as novelty of raid. 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. 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 fourteenth 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 1764. 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 fourteenth 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 two Cape summers sat the high court. A new landdrost of one Cape winter sat Stellenbosch. [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 1764 added no second Beutler-scale trek and no second Hop caravan. What it added was another drought year in the corn list, a San raid on a Zak-river sheep station, a commando under a field corporal, ten children taken as servants, and, in December, an English guest who spent his first Cape night on Robben Island. Average exports across Tulbagh’s 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 fourteenth year sat inside that average after a thirteenth that had cut the India wheat to a quarter. What it added was a dry corn year on top of that cut, a murdered servant on the Zak, and Lord Clive in the Kent. [3] [4] [7]
Paying Roadstead After the Failed Harvest — 1764
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 filled the bay; French men-of-war had called to refresh 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. Calendar 1764 sat inside that boom after the India fighting had ended: both flags still 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 fourteenth year sat inside that traffic. [3] [9]
On more than one occasion in this stretch the government had been 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 had been a remedy. In August 1762 a placaat had prohibited 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 the same means had been used to procure a supply of butter. The fourteenth year inherited those two short closures. It did not post a third in the first months. 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. The Castle’s answer remained the same when it needed one: a placaat first, packet pursers after the magazines had what they needed. [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. Calendar 1764 therefore still sat in the paying half of that stretch: four years before the peace news, one year after the butter placaat, one year after a harvest that had sent India only a quarter of the usual wheat. 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 1764, 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 1764 the roadstead arithmetic had reversed: strangers paid cash, magazines emptied when they could, and the risk was no longer glut but the Company’s inability to secure its own stores when burghers held out for packet prices—and when the corn districts sat another dry year. [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 fourteenth year therefore sat on that fairer Constantia contract while the corn districts sat another drought. 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. The January 1763 placaat had already shown that butter was scarce enough to reserve. The fourteenth year did not invent those lines. It sold them into a bay that still paid, from Huguenot valleys that still poured wine—Drakenstein, the Paarl, Fransche Hoek, and Val du Charron, later Wellington—except when the Castle took first. [3] [7] [8]
Drought in the Corn Districts — 1764
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. These years were 1755, 1756, 1763, 1764, and 1771. 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. Calendar 1764 was written next on that list. It did not need a second plague of caterpillars to sit there. A dry year after a wrecked year is already a Castle problem. The magazines had already cut the India wheat. The corn districts now sat another season without restocking them. [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 had been 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. The fourteenth year inherited that arithmetic. 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 1763’s placaat had already shown that butter was scarce enough to reserve. The harvest of 1763 had then failed under drought, wind, and worms. Calendar 1764 added the next drought year in the same districts. It did not reverse the cut. It sat on it. [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 restock what 1763 had taken and 1764 did not return. The fourteenth year did not invent those farms. It paid them in packet gold for what the dry season left, and it kept India on a short wheat ration from magazines that had already been prudent once. [3] [4] [7]
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 1763’s butter placaat had already drawn that line in fat. The harvest of 1763 had drawn it in meal. The drought of 1764 kept it drawn. 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 sat a second dry year. The fourteenth 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 list that now ran 1763 and 1764 together as drought. [3] [9]
Zak River Raid — June 1764
In June 1764 some San visited a cattle station on the Zak river, where the burgher Jacob van Reenen had some sheep running. They murdered Van Reenen’s European servant, who was in charge of the station, and drove off three hundred sheep. The Zak sat outward of the old corn districts, on the interior side of the mountain wall that the first graziers had crossed through the Tulbagh kloof. A cattle station with a European servant and three hundred sheep was not a village. It was a run. June took the servant and the flock. [3] [7]
Upon hearing what had occurred, Gerrit van Wyk, who was the nearest field corporal, raised a commando and hunted up the robbers. Their retreat was discovered, and they were attacked, when twenty-five of them were shot, and ten children were taken away. Only sixty-three sheep were recovered. Three hundred driven off and sixty-three brought back is a farm ledger, not a victory count. Twenty-five shot is a commando count. Ten children taken is a court count. The fourteenth year wrote all three on the same June page. Van Wyk was not a landdrost. He was the nearest field corporal. The krygsraad of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein had already used field corporals that way in the Roggeveld in the spring of 1754, when Willem van Wyk, Godlieb Opperman, Nicholas Ryk, Pieter van Zyl, Barend Lubbe, and Barend Forster had spent six weeks in the field after a large San party had driven off great herds and murdered one Khoikhoi. That commando had killed sixty-four and brought home only seven head of cattle out of all that had been lost. June 1764 was a smaller field and a harder recovery: sixty-three sheep of three hundred, and a European servant who did not come home at all. [3] [4]
During the administration of Tulbagh the natives gave very little trouble to the colonists. 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. The greater number had lost old tribal distinctions and recognised no chief of their own race. Many lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered and took service as they felt 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. The government, being popular, was strong; oppression on any large scale could only take place in times of anarchy. Land was allotted to colonists without consulting them. As yet there was plenty of land left for them and their cattle. With San there were occasional contests. June 1764 was one of those contests, not a war of the twenty-one years. It was a station, a servant, a flock, a field corporal, and a retreat found. [3] [4]
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 to the peace of the colony 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 fourteenth year’s horse numbers still sat in the shadow of the 1763 die-off. The Zak-river raid did not repeal that anxiety. It showed what a station without enough armed men could lose in a night: a European servant and three hundred sheep. A little later in 1754 the cattle of Jacobus Gildenhuis had been driven from his farm in the Bokkeveld; neighbours—Dirk Koekemoer, Jan van Aswegen, and Andries van der Heiden, with twenty Khoikhoi—had pursued, shot down twenty-six, wounded eight, and recovered nearly all the cattle. Peace had then been made. In May 1758 a party of about two hundred San had again tested the north-western farms. June 1764 did not assemble six field corporals for six weeks. It assembled the nearest one. Gerrit van Wyk hunted, found, and attacked. [3]
Ten Children Taken as Servants — June 1764
The children were distributed as servants among some of the members of the commando, on the ground that it would be unjust to shoot them for the sins of their parents, that to leave behind those whose parents were killed would be to leave them to perish, and that those who had relatives to provide for them would assuredly become robbers if not removed from evil influences. That sentence is the Castle’s own account of the ten. It is not a baptism roll and not a slave code. It is a commando disposal. Twenty-five adults shot; ten children taken; the rest of the retreat not numbered in the report that reached Table Valley. The fourteenth year did not invent the practice. It wrote it on a June page after a murdered servant and a flock that came home short. [3]
Le Sueur sat the Stellenbosch drostdy that received such a report. He had held the chair only since August 1763, in a house rebuilt handsomer after the fire of the 31st of October 1762. Van Schoor, fifteen years in that same chair, had been promoted to an office in Cape Town. The three brothers Le Sueur were nephews of the governor’s late wife. The new landdrost inherited a court, not a new frontier. Swellendam remained a mere hamlet under Horak. The pontoon of 1757 on the Breede still carried the public road. The Zak-river station was not in that hamlet’s yard. It sat in the outward cattle country that Stellenbosch’s field corporals still covered. Gerrit van Wyk raised the men because he was nearest. The children went to members of the commando, not to the Company’s slave lodge in Table Valley. Distribution as servants among the men who had ridden was the border’s answer to orphans of a raid. [3] [9]
The slave code of the 3rd of September 1754, published two days later with the Company’s great seal, still stood for bondsmen: a male or female slave who raised a hand, though without weapons, against master or mistress was condemned to death without mercy; slaves found loitering at a church door when the congregation left, or found in a churchyard at a funeral, were to be severely flogged; no more than twenty slaves might follow a companion’s corpse. The ten children of June were not entered on that ordinance as Company slaves. They were entered as servants of commando members. The distinction mattered in the Castle’s wording and did not matter on a Zak-river run: the children were removed, the adults who had been found were shot, and the sheep that could be found were driven home. Sixty-three of three hundred. The fourteenth year did not rewrite the slave code. It applied the border’s older sentence—take the children, distribute them, give the grounds. [3]
Church, Drostdies, and Civic Works — 1764
The various churches in the colony were well supplied with clergymen during Tulbagh’s administration. When he became governor, Van der Spuy had been alone at the Cape, Stellenbosch vacant, Van Echten at Drakenstein, Meyring at Waveren, and Voltelen at Zwartland. By the fourteenth year the chairs had long been filled. Kroonenburg had arrived from Europe in October 1752 and been stationed at the Cape. Bode, sent out by the directors, had filled Voltelen’s place in November 1758 after Voltelen’s death in April. Serrurier of Hanau had arrived in March 1760; when the council tried to send Bode to Waveren, Bode declined on the ground that having been inducted as clergyman of the Cape he could not be required to fill a position of less dignity without being found guilty of misconduct. The directors decided that his contention was just. Instructions received in April 1761 ordered Serrurier inducted as third clergyman of the Cape, Bode restored as second with arrear salary, and no successor upon the first death or removal of either Kroonenburg, Bode, or Serrurier. They were all in active service in 1764. [3] [8]
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. Croeser still sat Zwartland, having gone there in November 1755 under an arrangement with Voltelen of which the government approved. Harders still sat Waveren, made permanent by the directors in 1761 after commissioner Looten had taken him off a ship in January 1758. Combined consistories still did not meet. The fourteenth year did not reshuffle the churches. It kept three pulpits in Table Valley, one at Stellenbosch, one at Drakenstein, one at Zwartland, and one at Roodezand, while Le Sueur sat a rebuilt drostdy and Horak still sat a hamlet. Two drostdies, one new landdrost of a Cape winter, one old one, and a rebuilt house at Stellenbosch: that was the country administration of 1764. [3]
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 was not yet finished. 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 Le Sueur in a new drostdy. [3] [9]
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 hospital in Table Valley was falling to ruins, and the directors had resolved to build a new one, but the work was not yet commenced, though the materials were being collected. Renault Berthault de St. Jean, chief surgeon of that house since the 1720s, had died on the 11th of March 1763. The fourteenth year sat a hospital without that French Protestant surgeon, still waiting for the new walls. The Wapen Pleyn no longer sounded only with militia drill. The Caabse Vlek was changing toward a name that strangers already used. [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 ran on through the female side of van der Riet. The fourteenth year did not invent those French names. It kept Serrurier in the pulpit, Le Sueur in the Stellenbosch chair, and still bought wine and butter from Drakenstein and the Paarl at packet prices—except when a placaat said the magazines came first. Martin Melck’s wine barn in Strand Street was already being converted, quietly, toward a Lutheran church. Tulbagh’s share in that conversion was to do nothing at all: to close the eye nearest to it. The Reformed monopoly still watched. The governor’s tolerance still sat. [7] [8] [9]
Lord Clive in the Kent — 17 December 1764
Among persons of note that called at the Cape during the government of Mr. Tulbagh was Lord Clive, who touched here when on his way to India for the last time, on the 17th of December 1764. Shortly after the anchor of his ship—the Kent—was dropped, a stiff south-easter set in, but Clive determined to try and get ashore. He left the ship in a large boat well manned, but could not reach the jetty, and after a long struggle against the gale, was obliged to run to Robben Island and pass the night there. The fourteenth year’s most famous guest therefore slept his first Cape night on the prison island, not in the garden house. The south-easter did not wait for a conqueror’s rank. It took the boat off the jetty and sent it to the island. [3] [9]
On landing at the Cape next morning, Lord Clive was received with all possible honour, and during his stay he resided in government house in the garden as the guest of the Company. He was provided with a military guard, not only for himself, but for the colonels who accompanied him. The garden house was the Company’s honour, not a hired lodging. The guard was the Castle’s honour, not a private escort. December’s south-easter had already shown that Table Bay could refuse a jetty. The morning reception showed that the Castle would not refuse a guest. Neutral refreshment cut both ways. The honour of the flag had been a no on impressment when Commodore Lynn demanded English seamen off Dutch decks in January 1762. The honour of a distinguished visitor was a yes on the garden house and a guard at the door. [3] [9]
Captain Collins, who commanded an English man-of-war lying in the bay, took offence at this. He was lodging on shore, and ascertaining late one evening that Clive’s colonels had a guard of soldiers, he sent to request the immediate attendance of the government secretary. When that gentleman arrived, Captain Collins demanded that he should be informed on the authority of the governor why he, who held the king’s commission, was treated with less courtesy than officers who held their rank from Lord Clive. It was with difficulty that the offended captain could be induced to let the matter rest for that night, as the governor had retired, and the secretary did not wish to disturb him. In the morning the matter was laid before Governor Tulbagh, who assured the captain that no slight whatever had been intended; and a guard was placed at his service, as he desired it. The fourteenth year thus spent a night of English rank on the secretary’s doorstep, and a morning of English rank in the governor’s assurance. The gilded coach remained the governor’s. The sentinel remained at Tulbagh’s door. The trumpet still sounded when he sat down to dinner. A king’s captain got his guard when he asked for it. Clive’s colonels kept theirs. [3] [9]
The name of Rijk Tulbagh as host of a well-managed tavern of the seas had already acquired international lustre. Among the distinguished guests of his years had been the Abbé Nicolas Louis de la Caille, who had arrived on the 19th of April 1751 and remained until the 8th of March 1758; botanists and sailors would later add their names to the same list. Clive’s December call sat in that company as the English conqueror of India on his last outward voyage, received in the garden house after a night on Robben Island. Visitors already knew the town as Cape Town. Colonists still termed it the Cape. The house by the canal, shaded with chestnut trees, distinguished from the others only by the sentinel and the trumpet, still suited the few people who had affairs to solicit with him. The inhabitants did not pass his door without showing some mark of respect. The best policy was still to deal justly and honestly with every man. December 1764 put that policy to an English test: a guest of the Company in the garden, a king’s captain on shore without a guard until morning, and a south-easter that had already treated conqueror and boat’s crew alike. [3] [9]
Liberal treatment of English visitors had been restored in 1761 after the directors’ earlier instruction, in the Chinsurah scare, that the Cape was not to supply English shipping with anything that could possibly be denied them. The controversy had been settled by the time Commodore Lynn arrived in January 1762; the new bonds of friendship were still delicate, and Tulbagh’s one-word no on impressment had shown that courtesy was not meekness. December 1764 put the restored courtesy in a garden house and a military guard. The Kent sat in Table Bay. An English man-of-war sat there too, under Collins. French packets still bid for cattle, meal and wine. The Prussian flag had been seen since 1755; the Swedish since 1759. Foreigners obtained whatever they chose to pay for, except when the council prohibited sale of what the Company needed. Clive did not come as a purser. He came as a guest. The Castle lodged him. The south-easter lodged him first. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s need and then received a guest: drought again in the corn districts after the wrecked harvest of 1763; in June a San raid on Jacob van Reenen’s Zak-river station, the European servant murdered, three hundred sheep driven off, Gerrit van Wyk’s commando shooting twenty-five and taking ten children as servants, only sixty-three sheep recovered; on the 17th of December the Kent in Table Bay, a south-easter, a night on Robben Island, and Lord Clive received next morning in the garden house with a guard for himself and his colonels, and a king’s captain given a guard when he demanded one. Under Tulbagh, 1764 was not a year of conquest but of another dry corn list, a border commando, and an English guest—while farmers still sold dear to the fleets of two empires at a neutral tavern of the seas, except when the Castle took first and kept India on a short wheat ration. The fourteenth 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 Clive in the Company’s garden house. The gardens of 1652 were a hundred and twelve years behind. The boom still paid. The south-easter still decided who slept on the island. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]