Boer History1765 at the Cape of Good Hope: Clive Sails, Continued Drought, the Meermin Slaving Voyage, and Simon’s Town Hospital
Fifteenth Year: Castle Continuity — 1765
Calendar 1765 opened in the fifteenth 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 fourteenth year had closed with the chairs filled, and the fifteenth opened with the same men in them: 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 still held 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 fifteenth 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 fifteenth year tested that strength on a roadstead still paying after the India war, on corn districts counted a third dry year after the wrecked harvest of 1763, on a Madagascar packet sent for Company slaves, and on an English conqueror of India who had slept his first Cape night on Robben Island and who still sat in the garden house when January opened. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the fifteenth year as much as novelty of voyage. 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 fifteenth 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 1765. 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 fifteenth 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 three Cape summers sat the high court. A landdrost of two Cape winters 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 1765 added no second Beutler-scale trek and no second Hop caravan. What it added was a third dry corn year after the wrecked harvest of 1763, a Madagascar packet for Company slaves, a hospital square of 130 feet finished at the winter port, and, in the first fortnight, an English guest who embarked from the garden house. 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 fifteenth year sat inside that average after a thirteenth that had cut the India wheat to a quarter and a fourteenth that had been counted among the drought years. What it added was hardly any harvest at all, rice bought to compensate, and Lord Clive sailing on the 16th of January. [3] [4] [7]
Clive Sails — January 1765
Among persons of note that called at the Cape during the government of Mr. Tulbagh was Lord Clive, who had 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 had set in, but Clive had determined to try and get ashore. He had left the ship in a large boat well manned, but could not reach the jetty, and after a long struggle against the gale had been obliged to run to Robben Island and pass the night there. The fourteenth year’s most famous guest had therefore slept his first Cape night on the prison island, not in the garden house. January found him still ashore. The south-easter had not waited for a conqueror’s rank. It had taken the boat off the jetty and sent it to the island. The Castle had taken him in the morning. [3] [9]
On landing at the Cape the morning after that island night, Lord Clive had been 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 had shown 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. January 1765 still sat that yes. [3] [9]
Captain Collins, who commanded an English man-of-war lying in the bay, had taken offence at the colonels’ guard. He was lodging on shore, and ascertaining late one evening that Clive’s colonels had a guard of soldiers, he had 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 had thus spent a night of English rank on the secretary’s doorstep, and a morning of English rank in the governor’s assurance. The fifteenth opened with that settlement already made. 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 had his guard. Clive’s colonels kept theirs. The guest still sat in the garden until the 12th. [3] [9]
Lord Clive remained ashore until the 12th of January 1765, when he embarked, and sailed on the 16th. Twenty-six nights of Company hospitality, counting from the morning after Robben Island, closed with a boat back to the Kent and four days more at anchor before the ship stood out. The garden house went back to being the governor’s house. The military guard went back to Castle duty. The Kent went on to India. Clive had arrived in all his glory as the Great Conqueror of India; Tulbagh had met whatever insolence sat in that glory with quiet courtesy, a gilded coach, and a sentinel. January’s sailing did not cancel December’s island night. It closed it. The south-easter had lodged him first. The Castle had lodged him after. The bay let him go on the 16th. [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. Clive’s December-to-January 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, and sent on in mid-January. 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. January 1765 put that policy to an English close: a guest of the Company out of the garden, a king’s captain already given his guard, and a south-easter that had already treated conqueror and boat’s crew alike. 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. January 1765 put the restored courtesy in a sailing, not a refusal. [3] [9]
Paying Roadstead on Short Grain — 1765
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 1765 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—and while the corn districts sat a third thin year. 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 fifteenth year sat inside that traffic. Clive’s Kent was one English hull in it. Collins’s man-of-war was another. French packets still bid for what wheat the drought had left. [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 fifteenth 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. In a year of hardly any harvest the magazines needed more, not less. [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 through the fifteenth year: peace news between France and England had not yet arrived to empty the bay. 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 1765, 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 1765 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 on top of a wrecked harvest. [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 fifteenth 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. Wine could still fill a legger. Wheat could not fill a muid. [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 fifteenth 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. A junior merchant bound for India, Abraham Josias Sluysken, fell ill on the outward voyage in 1765 and stayed a few months at the Cape to recover. Table Valley looked smaller then than it would later look to him; he remembered Father Tulbagh as a good man. The fifteenth year’s roadstead lodged the sick as well as the great. Clive sailed. Sluysken sat ashore until he could go on. [3] [7] [9]
Drought and Imported Rice — 1765
During the period from the 1st of January 1751 to the close of Tulbagh’s twenty-one years there were five years of drought, more or less severe, in the corn-growing districts. The list that would later be counted named 1755, 1756, 1763, 1764, and 1771 among the hard years; 1763 had not only been severe but had seen south-east gales set in early and with such force as partly to destroy what wheat was growing, and a plague of caterpillars had followed, so that little or nothing was reaped. There had been plenty of grain in reserve, but it was considered prudent only to send one-fourth of the usual quantity to India. In 1764 the drought had been counted again. In 1765 the drought continued, and there was hardly any harvest. Of the grain which remained in stock, a small quantity was sent to India, but rice was imported to compensate for it. The fifteenth year was therefore not a first dry year. It was a third. Magazines that had already been drawn down for India on a quarter ration now sat a year of drawing down further and buying rice. [3]
Across those twenty-one years the average quantity of farm produce exported to India 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. A small quantity of dried fruit and a little ivory went the same way. Calendar 1765 sat far under that wheat average. A muid that was not grown could not be loaded. A legger of wine could still be loaded, because the vineyards of Drakenstein and the Paarl did not fail with the same stroke as the corn districts. The Castle’s prudence in 1763—one-fourth to India—had been a choice against emptying the magazines. The Castle’s prudence in 1765 was a smaller choice: a little grain still, and rice bought to put meal in the bowls that wheat could not fill. Rice was not a Cape crop. It was an Indian and Java answer to a Cape failure. [3] [7]
The Huguenot valleys that had planted vines after 1688 now watched wheat as well as wine. Drakenstein, the Paarl, Fransche Hoek, and Val du Charron were agricultural settlements whose fruit and grain had become plentiful while cattle remained scarce. Under the second van der Stel the settlement had been stretched over the first mountain range to place colonists for cattle farming and grazing. The Tulbagh kloof remained the gateway to that inland basin. Piketberg, from which Jacobus Coetsee had gone north in 1760, and the Breede with its pontoon, still sat the same geography. A dry year in the corn districts did not empty the kloof. It emptied the magazines. Farmers who had sold dear to French and English packets since 1759 now had less meal to sell, and the Company had less to send east. The fifteenth year’s paying bay therefore paid for wine and cattle more surely than for wheat. Rice filled the gap the corn lands left. [3] [4] [7]
Horse sickness had been unusually severe six years earlier: the burghers had lost over 2,500 within a few months, but the loss had been made good by breeding. The fifteenth year did not count another such stroke among the horses. It counted the corn. Cattle still walked the five- and six-thousand-acre runs. Sheep still sat the Zak-river country where a European servant had been murdered the June before. Wheat did not sit the lands that needed winter rain. The government as well as individuals had profited by strangers while surplus wheat lasted. When the surplus thinned, the same strangers still wanted meal, and the magazines had to choose between India and the roadstead—and then between both and an imported grain. Rice was that choice. A small quantity of remaining wheat still went east. The rest of the bowls were filled from elsewhere. [3] [4]
The fifteenth year’s drought was therefore a Castle arithmetic as much as a farmer’s. One-fourth to India after 1763; a drought year counted in 1764; hardly any harvest in 1765; a little grain still sent; rice imported to compensate. Average wheat across the twenty-one years would still read nearly twelve thousand muids, because other years filled the column. This year did not. The father of the country who heard grievances in the garden house heard them from corn districts that had already failed twice. He could redress a fee. He could not redress a rain. What he could do was keep India on a short ration, buy rice, hold the magazines against packet prices, and finish a hospital at the winter port while Table Valley’s own hospital still waited for new walls. [3] [7]
Meermin Sent to Madagascar — 1765
There were then more slaves than Europeans in South Africa, notwithstanding the manumission of such as were considered deserving of freedom and of those who could lay claim to it under the law. Some were sent here from Batavia, sentenced to periods of servitude varying in length. Officers of ships and private individuals regarded them as the most profitable article in which they could carry on a small trade, and brought so many from India that the government became apprehensive that this class of the population might too greatly preponderate, for when excited they were prone to commit appalling crimes. The council of India was therefore earnestly requested to prohibit the exportation of Asiatic slaves to this colony, but they continued to arrive in considerable numbers through the fifteenth year. A few were brought from the east coast of Africa. With Madagascar there was a regular trade in slaves, small vessels being sent frequently from the Cape to procure them. They cost there less than three pounds sterling each, though the rivalry of the English, French, and Portuguese was complained of as increasing the price and making it difficult to obtain cargoes. [3]
It was nothing unusual when one fourth to one third of the number taken on board died during the passage. And frequently from one third to half of those landed died within three months, from despondency and change of climate and food. After the arrival of a slave-ship, it is not uncommon to find in the journal whole pages of names of those who died during the preceding month, with an occasional comment as to the loss to the Company, but never a word of compassion for the wretched negroes. And this during the government of such a thoroughly good man, according to the views of his time, as Ryk Tulbagh. More pity would be expressed today for a shipment of horses. Occasionally captives on board ship made attempts to regain their liberty, but in general such precautions were taken that they were utterly helpless. The slave code drawn up in the castle on the 3rd of September 1754 and published two days later still sat on the notice board in the fifteenth year: a male or female slave who raised a hand against master or mistress, even without weapons, was condemned to death without mercy; slaves 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 number regulated by the owner’s rank. [3]
In 1765 the Cape packet Meermin was sent to Madagascar to procure slaves for the Company. Her supercargo called at several ports in the island, and succeeded in purchasing one hundred and forty of both sexes. They cost there less than three pounds sterling each, though English, French and Portuguese rivalry was already raising the price. The Meermin was not a private venture. She was a Cape packet on Company business. The cargo was for the Castle’s own account, not for a skipper’s side trade. One hundred and forty people bought at several Madagascar ports sat that account. Death on the passage of one fourth to one third, and further deaths after landing, were common in that trade. The fifteenth year sent the packet into that arithmetic. It did not invent the trade. It used it. [3]
The nature of the industries carried on in the colony prevented slavery from becoming here what it was on an American cotton or sugar plantation, and few instances of extreme cruelty are on record; but under the law bondsmen were in a very abject position. Asiatic slaves still arrived from India in numbers that worried the Cape council. The Madagascar voyage of 1765 was a different cargo: African, bought for the Company itself, loaded into a Cape packet rather than into a private hold. The council that asked India to stop Asiatic export still sent its own vessel west of that sea. The fifteenth year’s labour question was not a new code. It was another hull. The 1754 ordinance still named the punishments. The magazines still needed hands. The corn districts, sitting a third dry year, needed them more, not less. A hospital finishing at Simon’s Town would need them too. [3]
The Huguenot surnames that still sat the valleys did not sit this packet. Serrurier of Hanau still preached in Dutch in Table Valley. Le Sueur still sat Stellenbosch. The Meermin sat Madagascar. Company labour and freehold labour were not the same column. Free burghers sold wine and, when rain allowed, wheat into a paying bay. Company slaves were bought at less than three pounds a head to work magazines, hospital, garden, and fleet. The fifteenth year kept both columns open. It sent Clive out in January and a slaving packet out across the same year. The gardens of 1652 had been laid out by servants of the Company. A hundred and thirteen years later the Company still sent a packet for more hands. [3] [8]
Simon’s Town Hospital Completed — 1765
At Simon’s Town expensive works were carried out under Tulbagh. The hospital—a square building of 130 feet frontage—was commenced in 1760 and completed in 1765. Substantial storehouses were then put up. A slaughter house, a bakery, workshops for smiths and carpenters, and a dwelling house for the officer in charge of the station, followed as the station grew. 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. Completion of the hospital made False Bay’s winter station a built second face of Company power beside Table Bay. Ships that could not lie in the summer bay in a north-wester could lie here. Sick men who could not be landed into Table Valley’s falling hospital could be landed into a square of 130 feet that was new. [3] [9]
The resident was still Jan Frederik Kirsten, appointed after the death of Adriaan de Nys in May 1761. In March 1751 De Nys had been appointed postholder in succession to Justinus Blas. Kirsten’s title of resident marked the station’s rise from a post to a winter port with an officer in charge. The fifteenth year did not change that title. It gave the title a hospital to match. Five years of building, from the first stone in 1760 to the last in 1765, sat under two governors’ names only in the sense that Tulbagh had ordered the work and Kirsten had watched it rise. The expensive works were Company works. The square front was a Company front. False Bay in winter was no longer only a roadstead and a long shed. [3]
During the twenty-one years, 129 Dutch ships, 14 English, 11 French, 13 Danish, and 2 Swedish put into Simon’s Bay. The winter port was not Table Bay’s equal in numbers. It was Table Bay’s equal in need when the north-west gales came. Completing the hospital in a year of drought and a year of a Madagascar slaving voyage was not a contradiction. Sick sailors had to land somewhere. Table Valley’s hospital was falling to ruins. The directors had resolved to build a new one there, 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 fifteenth year sat a Table Valley hospital without that French Protestant surgeon, still waiting for the new walls—and a False Bay hospital that no longer waited. The winter station finished first. [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. Completing a hospital at Simon’s Town was the same civic energy pointed at the winter bay. Not only in town, but in the country districts, the impact of Tulbagh’s energy was felt. Simonstown was enlarged. Stellenbosch had already been expanded after the drostdy fire of October 1762. The fifteenth year finished the square at False Bay while the capital still collected stone for its own sick. [3] [9]
A hospital of 130 feet frontage was a statement in stone that the winter port had become a second Cape. The long Swellengrebel shed of 450 feet, once used for all purposes, became quarters only because there was now a hospital, and there would be storehouses, to take the other purposes off it. Kirsten sat that change with the title of resident. The fifteenth year’s expensive works did not wait for a good harvest. They finished in a year of rice. Sick men from seventy ships a year, averaged across the twenty-one, needed a ward more than they needed a muid. The Castle spent on both: a little grain still to India, rice to compensate, and a square building completed at Simon’s Town. [3] [9]
Church, Drostdies, and Civic Works — 1765
The various churches in the colony were well supplied with clergymen during the administration of Mr. Tulbagh. At the Cape, Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau were all in active service, as the directors had ordered in April 1761 after Bode’s suspension and restoration with arrears. Appeldoorn still sat Stellenbosch, where he had been stationed since October 1753. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein, having gone there at his own request in January 1758. Croeser still sat Zwartland, having exchanged with Voltelen in November 1755. Harders still sat Waveren, made permanent there by the directors in 1761 after commissioner Looten had taken him off a ship in January 1758. Combined consistories had ceased in 1759 because the council considered that the meetings served no useful purpose and that the travelling charges of clergymen and elders were burdens too heavy for the congregations. The fifteenth year inherited that saving. It did not restore the combined meetings. Three pulpits in Table Valley, one at Stellenbosch, one at Drakenstein, one at Zwartland, and one at Roodezand, were enough. [3] [8]
The village of Stellenbosch was considerably enlarged and improved in appearance during this period. On the 31st of October 1762 the drostdy buildings had been destroyed by fire, but they were shortly rebuilt in a handsomer style. Le Sueur sat that handsomer drostdy through the fifteenth year, as he had sat it since August 1763. Swellendam remained a mere hamlet. To facilitate access to it from the Cape, in 1757 a pontoon had been placed on the Breede river, close to the junction of the Zonder End. Horak still sat that hamlet, as he had sat it since April 1749. The two outer chairs therefore did not change in 1765. The inner chairs did not change either. Van Oudtshoorn, Cloppenburg, Le Sueur, Horak, Kirsten: the same five names under Tulbagh that had closed 1764. Continuity of persons was the civic fact as much as a new hospital wall. [3] [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 fifteenth 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, and except when drought said there was no wheat to buy. 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]
During the administration of Mr. 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. Many lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. There were instances of harsh and unjust treatment, especially on the remote border; but the courts of law were open for their protection, and 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. The government was anxious to prevent Khoikhoi from becoming possessed of guns and horses. With San there were occasional contests. June 1764 had already written one on the Zak river: Jacob van Reenen’s 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. The fifteenth year sat that aftermath. The children were already distributed. The sheep were already gone. No second Zak-river raid sat the 1765 journal as a new stroke. The border remained a place where a field corporal could still raise a commando, and where ten children could still be taken as servants on the ground that it would be unjust to shoot them, unjust to leave them to perish, and dangerous to leave them to become robbers. [3] [4]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s need and then finished a wall: drought continued in the corn districts after the wrecked harvest of 1763 and the dry count of 1764, hardly any harvest, a little grain still sent to India, rice imported to compensate; in January Lord Clive remained ashore until the 12th and sailed on the 16th from the garden house that had received him after a night on Robben Island; in the same year the Cape packet Meermin was sent to Madagascar and bought one hundred and forty people of both sexes for the Company at less than three pounds a head; at Simon’s Town the hospital of 130 feet frontage, begun in 1760, was completed, Kirsten still styled resident, the long Swellengrebel building now quarters only. Under Tulbagh, 1765 was not a year of conquest but of another dry corn list, a slaving packet, a finished winter hospital, and an English guest sent on—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 and bought rice for the rest. The fifteenth year closed with cash in the bay, magazines on a short India export and an imported grain, Van Oudtshoorn in the second chair, Cloppenburg independent, Le Sueur in a handsomer drostdy, Horak still at the hamlet, Kirsten still styled resident at a winter port that now had a hospital, and Clive already gone. The gardens of 1652 were a hundred and thirteen years behind. The boom still paid. The rain still decided the muids. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]