Boer History1767 at the Cape of Good Hope: Smallpox, Clive’s Return, Plettenberg, and Tulbagh as Ordinary Councillor
Seventeenth Year: Castle Continuity — 1767
Calendar 1767 opened in the seventeenth 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 sixteenth year had closed with the Cape packet Meermin wrecked after a mutiny on the 18th of February, Van Oudtshoorn gone to Europe in April, Tulbagh’s life despaired of and then rallied without his former strength, a slight earthquake a little before two in the morning of the 14th of July, and Horak retired from Swellendam in December. The seventeenth opened with acting names still on the inner chairs: Jan Willem Cloppenburg sat the second chair as acting secunde; Otto Luder Hemmy sat the fiscal’s pen until a Batavia appointment could land; Jacobus Johannes le Sueur sat Stellenbosch; Joachim Frederik Mentz sat the hamlet that Horak had left; 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 seventeenth 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. His house was distinguished from the others only by the sentinel at the door and by sounding the trumpet when he sat down for dinner. It stood by the side of a canal shaded with chestnut trees. 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 seventeenth year tested that strength on a rank that added honour without adding duties, on a Danish infection in Table Valley, on a returned English commander who declined the garden house, and on a Friesland lawyer who would land in December as fiscal independent. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the seventeenth year’s opening as much as novelty of rank and infection. The same castle, the same boards, and many of the same officers remained—until a March despatch confirmed the second chair and named a Batavia judge for the fiscal’s, and until the 21st of December put that judge ashore. 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 seventeenth 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 1767. 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 seventeenth year therefore still lived inside that shadow when a Danish ship brought the infection again: fewer free households than before 1755, more slaves than Europeans in the colony as a whole, and a capital that sold grain and wine into a paying bay while the 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, often tied to his bed after the sixteenth year’s despair. An acting secunde sat the second until the March despatch confirmed him. An acting fiscal sat the high court until December. A landdrost of four Cape winters sat Stellenbosch. A landdrost of one Cape summer sat Swellendam. [3] [7] [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 1767 added no second Beutler-scale trek and no second Hop caravan. What it added was an ordinary councillor’s rank in March, a directors’ despatch that confirmed Cloppenburg and named Plettenberg, a returned English commander in April, a Danish infection from May, a stop on Asiatic slave export, and a new fiscal independent in December. In the Republic, Prince William V had already come of age in 1766 and sat as Stadholder. The Cape still sat under the Seventeen and a governor already councillor extraordinary, soon to be ordinary. 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 seventeenth year sat after a fifteenth that had hardly any harvest and had bought rice to compensate, and after a sixteenth that had not been named among the drought years of the twenty-one. Those named years were 1755, 1756, 1763, 1764, and 1771; 1765 had continued that dryness. 1766 and 1767 were not among them. The Castle still sat inside the average, with a Danish ship in the bay and a paying roadstead that did not pause for rank or pox. [3] [4] [7] [9]
Tulbagh Ordinary Councillor — March 1767
Governor Tulbagh was regarded as a model officer by his superiors in Europe and India. In March 1755 he had been raised to the dignity of councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India, a position which gave him higher rank than that of governor, though it did not add to his duties. In March 1767 he was further elevated to be an ordinary councillor. He had now only two superiors out of Europe: the governor-general and the director-general. The seventeenth year therefore opened a man already father of the country to a rank that sat above the Cape chair without changing the Cape chair’s work. The gilded coach remained his. The sentinel remained at the door. The trumpet still sounded when he sat down to dinner. What changed was the Company’s table of honour: the second Cape governor raised to the third top position in the commercial empire. [3] [9]
The rank did not empty the first chair of its old work. Accessibility, fixed fees, and a refusal of private trade remained the seventeenth year’s habit as they had been the first year’s. Ordinary councillor was not a new government. It was a new place on a Batavia list for a man who still heard grievances in Table Valley. The humblest individual could still pour those grievances into the ears of the father of the country—if the father of the country was out of bed. By that time the governor was sixty-eight, and after a serious illness a year previously he was often tied to his bed. The sixteenth year’s despair of his life had not taken the chair. It had taken the former strength. March 1767 gave the weakened man the highest executive rank short of the two Indian chairs. The Castle recorded both facts without treating them as a contradiction. [3] [7] [9]
He had entered the Company’s service in 1716 and had been sent to South Africa; he had conducted himself in a most exemplary manner and had risen gradually—clerk, secretary of the council of policy from 1725, member of that council from the 16th of September 1728, secunde from the 14th of April 1739, governor from February 1751. March 1755 had been the first Indian honour. March 1767 was the second. The index of the Company’s Cape years would later write the ordinary councillor’s rank against printed page 180 and the death against a later winter. Calendar 1767 held only the honour. The man who paid the fiftieth penny first with his wife in 1751, who had set his face against officers’ private trade, and who lived well within his income, now sat with only two names above him out of Europe. The Cape still needed the same governor. Batavia and the Seventeen had given him a higher style in which to be that governor. [3] [9]
The people still called him Father Tulbagh. Kind, homely, fatherly, he remained among the most popular of the Dutch Company’s rulers, and the sumptuary laws he had introduced still discouraged luxurious living that the Castle did not need. Ordinary councillor did not repeal those laws. It did not restore combined consistories. It did not open the gilded coach to anyone else. It did not put a new man in the first chair. What it did was to write, in March, that the model officer of Europe and India’s opinion now sat two steps from the top of the empire that had planted gardens in 1652. The seventeenth year kept the sentinel, the trumpet, and the chestnut trees. It added a Batavia dignity to a man often tied to his bed. [3] [7] [9]
Plettenberg Appointed Fiscal — 1767
In April 1766 the secunde Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn had gone to Europe on leave of absence to attend to his private affairs, when the fiscal Cloppenburg was chosen to act for him, and Otto Luder Hemmy was directed to act as fiscal. In March 1767 a despatch from the directors was received, announcing that Van Oudtshoorn had resigned, that Cloppenburg was to succeed as secunde, and that Joachim van Plettenberg —then a member of the high court of justice at Batavia—was appointed fiscal. The second chair, acting since April, became a confirmed chair. The fiscal’s pen, acting since April, became a named chair that had not yet landed. Hemmy kept the acting work until the Batavia judge could come. Cloppenburg, who had arrived in September 1762 as fiscal independent and had held that pen until the secunde’s leave took him into the second chair, now held the second chair in his own name. The March paper closed Van Oudtshoorn’s Cape service as a resignation from Europe, not as a return. [3]
Joachim van Plettenberg was born in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland, on the 8th of March 1739. His father was Hendrik Casimir Baron van Plettenberg, captain and afterwards colonel of the cavalry; his mother was Agatha Petronella van Ammema. To distinguish him as a son of his father’s third wife, he was given his mother’s surname as a second Christian name. After the Latin school he went to Utrecht to study law, that university already the favoured house for Dutch nobility. Having graduated as a lawyer he was appointed a delegate by the States of Friesland. He joined the Dutch East India Company a few years later, sailing as adjunct-fiscal when only twenty-five. He departed on the 8th of May 1764 on board the Amerongen, commanded by his brother-in-law Jacob Pieter van Braam, and arrived in Batavia on the second day of 1765. Two years later he married Cornelia Charlotte Feith, widow of Louis Taillefer, Director of Bengal. That same year, 1767, saw the Van Plettenbergs at the Cape, where Joachim had been appointed independent fiscal. The March despatch named the Batavia judge. The December landing would put the Friesland lawyer, his wife, and the independent fiscal’s commission on the same shore. [3] [9]
The fiscal independent’s succession already ran a long Cape list: Cornelis Joan Simons from October 1690, Johan Blesius from November 1694, a vacancy in which Willem van Putten acted, Cornelius van Beaumont from March 1713, Adriaan van Kervel from June 1724, Daniel van den Henghel from March 1731, Van Oudtshoorn from September 1741 to September 1762, Cloppenburg from September 1762. December 1767 would close Cloppenburg’s fiscal years and open Plettenberg’s. Until that landing Hemmy sat the acting work. The high court did not stand empty. It stood under an acting name waiting for a confirmed one. The March despatch was the confirmation. The roadstead in December would be the arrival. [3]
On the 21st of December 1767 Van Plettenberg arrived in South Africa and assumed duty as fiscal independent. Nine months had sat between the paper and the man. Cloppenburg, confirmed secunde since March, no longer needed to look back at the fiscal’s pen. Hemmy no longer needed to hold it as a stand-in. The Castle’s inner chairs, which had been acting since April 1766, were both named by Christmas: Cloppenburg in the second, Plettenberg at the high court, Tulbagh still in the first, now ordinary councillor as well as governor. The seventeenth year therefore closed its appointments as it had opened its rank: a Batavia honour in March, a Batavia officer in December. The records did not write the relations between the old governor and the new head of police. Both sat the same castle. One was sixty-eight and often tied to his bed. The other was twenty-eight, a Friesland baron, a Utrecht lawyer, and a husband of one Cape summer. [3] [9]
Clive’s Return Call — April 1767
On the 22nd of April 1767 Lord Clive arrived at the Cape again, on his return passage to England. On this occasion also the government house in the garden was placed at his disposal, but he declined it with thanks, and took lodgings with the burgher Petrus Johannes de Wit. He left on the 4th of May. Twelve days ashore, not in the Company’s garden house, but in a burgher’s lodgings. The seventeenth year’s English call was shorter than the sixteenth year’s memory of the same man. He had last been here from the 17th of December 1764 until he embarked on the 12th of January 1765 and sailed on the 16th in the Kent. That first call had put him in government house as the Company’s guest, with a military guard. The second put him at De Wit’s table. The garden house was offered twice. It was accepted once. [3] [9]
De Wit was not a chance landlord. In 1761 the first aloes had been exported from South Africa: two hundred and eighteen pounds in weight, produced by the old burgher councillor Petrus Johannes de Wit, who lived at the Cape but had a farm in the country and had caused the drug to be prepared there. The council of policy had sent it to Europe, where it was pronounced of good quality. The directors had issued instructions to purchase it at the stores at a price not exceeding two shillings and three pence halfpenny a pound. From that date it had been an article of export to Europe, though the quantity in demand was inconsiderable. The man who had prepared the first exported aloes now lodged the returned English commander. A burgher’s house held for twelve days what the garden house had held for weeks on the outward call. The Castle offered the same honour. Clive chose the burgher. [3]
Distinguished guests had already given the little colonial town an international name as a well-managed tavern of the seas. The first time Clive arrived, the gilded coach with six horses had been sent to take him to the Castle. The second time his entry was a little less conspicuous. It was typical of the Dutch governor to treat the man in exactly the same manner: quiet courtesy against whatever insolence the roadstead brought. The sumptuary coach remained the governor’s. It had been sent once for the outward conqueror. It was not the point of the return. The point of the return was a declined garden house, a burgher’s lodgings, and a departure on the 4th of May—two and a half weeks before smallpox, brought in a Danish ship, would be prevalent in Cape Town. [3] [9]
Foreigners obtained whatever they chose to pay for, excepting when the council thought it necessary to prohibit the sale of such articles as the Company needed and of which the supply was insufficient for all. During the twenty-one years 1751–1771 there put into Table Bay 988 ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company, 168 English, 147 French, 31 Danish, 13 Swedish, 4 Prussian, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Spanish. The whole number that touched at the two ports was 1,472, and the average yearly number 70. The Prussian flag had first been seen in 1755, the Swedish in 1759. Clive’s twelve days sat inside that average as an English count, not as a fleet. A Danish ship would sit inside it as an infection. The tavern of the seas did not close for either. The seventeenth year entertained the returned commander in a burgher’s house and then, from May, took precautions against a disease that a Danish homeward ship had brought into the same bay. [3] [9]
Smallpox from a Danish Ship — May 1767
In 1767 smallpox was again brought into the colony. On this occasion it was introduced by a Danish ship returning to Europe. From May until November it was prevalent in Cape Town, but owing to precautions which were taken, only a few families in the country districts were attacked by it. In 1718 and 1755 it had died out entirely when the hot weather set in; but there were occasional cases throughout the summer of 1767–68. Altogether between eighteen and nineteen hundred persons were attacked, of whom one hundred and seventy-nine Europeans, one hundred and forty-five free blacks, and two hundred and fifty-one slaves died. Five hundred and seventy-five dead from eighteen or nineteen hundred attacked. The ravages of the disease were thus slight when compared with earlier years. Table Valley in 1755 had buried 963 Europeans and 1,109 blacks in six months. The seventeenth year’s pox killed 575 in town and country together, and kept the farms to a few families. Precaution was the difference. A Danish homeward ship was the source. [3] [9]
The index of the Cape years would later write the third appearance against printed page 167 and add that it did not cause such great loss of life as on the former occasions. The first appearance had almost destroyed the Khoikhoi. The second had been felt in Great Namaqualand to the twenty-sixth parallel and in the east to the Great Fish. The third was a town disease with a country edge. Precautions kept it there. Public as well as private enterprise slackened, but the traces left behind were not difficult to erase. The seventeenth year therefore sat a lighter pox than 1755 and a heavier interruption than a quiet shipping year. Five hundred and seventy-five names still sat on the burial list. Eighteen or nineteen hundred still sat on the sick list. The farms mostly did not. [3] [9]
Among the Khoikhoi there was another outbreak in 1767. The mortality among the tribesmen at the different epidemic dates had been very great. Previous to that of 1713, epidemics had occurred among them in 1663, 1666, and 1674. In 1713 and 1714 thousands of dead bodies and empty huts had been found where previously flourishing kraals had stood. The five most powerful tribes of the south—the Hessequa, the Goringhaiqua, the Cochoqua, the Chainouqua, and the Grigriqua—had almost entirely disappeared, having been literally killed out by the disease. The seventeenth year’s town pox therefore sat on a people already thinned by earlier visitations. In the older and more settled portions of the colony, Khoikhoi still had tracts of land not in occupation by colonists set aside for their own use; those who preferred could settle as servants or labourers on the farms; those not in occupation were allowed to travel. Compact bodies still retained their own government, with chiefs practically appointed by the Dutch authorities. The greater number had lost old tribal distinctions. A Danish ship in Table Bay did not redo 1713. It added 1767 to a list that already ran 1663, 1666, 1674, 1713, and 1755. [3] [7]
Unlike 1718 and 1755, the infection did not die out entirely when the hot weather set in. Occasional cases ran through the summer. The seventeenth year’s pox was therefore not a six-month fever that ended with the heat. It was a May-to-November prevalence in Cape Town that left a tail. Precautions had kept the country districts to a few families; they had not kept the capital’s summer empty of cases. The hospital in Table Valley was falling to ruins; materials were being collected for a new one, but the work was not yet commenced. The Simon’s Town hospital—a square of 130 feet frontage, completed in 1765—had already felt a slight earthquake in July 1766. The seventeenth year’s sick in town sat a ruin and a collected pile of materials. The winter port’s finished ward sat False Bay. Between eighteen and nineteen hundred attacked, 575 dead, a slackened enterprise, and a few country families: that was the Danish ship’s Cape account. [3] [9]
Clive had left on the 4th of May. The infection was prevalent from May. The returned commander’s twelve days closed as the Danish ship’s gift opened. The Castle did not treat the two as one story, but the bay held both. An English guest in a burgher’s house; a Danish homeward ship; a town pox from May to November; a governor sixty-eight and often tied to his bed, now ordinary councillor, still the father of the country. The seventeenth year had rank in March, a guest in April, and graves from May. The graves were fewer than in 1755. They were not none. [3] [9]
Asiatic Slave Export Stopped — 1767
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 until 1767, when the request of the Cape government was complied with, and further importations ceased. 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, whole pages of names of those who died during the preceding month sat in the journal, with an occasional comment as to the loss to the Company. Occasionally captives on board ship made attempts to regain their liberty, but in general such precautions were taken that they were utterly helpless. The Cape packet Meermin had been the sixteenth year’s proof: sent to Madagascar in 1765 for one hundred and forty of both sexes, irons taken off, assegais given to polish on the 18th of February 1766, twenty-four of the watch killed, the packet deceived into Agulhas and wrecked, one hundred and twelve slaves finally reaching the Cape. The seventeenth year did not send that story again. It closed the Indian side of the small trade. Madagascar and a few from the east coast remained. [3]
The slave code of the 3rd of September 1754, published two days later, still sat over the colony: death without mercy for a slave who raised a hand against master or mistress, even without inflicting a wound; a slave who set a house on fire, or who conspired with others to run away, could be punished with death; a slave could be flogged without trial; impalement, breaking on a wheel, and slow strangulation remained among the court’s tools. The seventeenth year’s stop on Asiatic export did not repeal that code. It changed the source. India would no longer send the most profitable small-trade article in officers’ cabins. Batavia sentences could still arrive. Madagascar cargoes could still be bought at less than three pounds. A few could still come from the east coast. What would not come was the Indian overflow that had made the government apprehensive of preponderance. More slaves than Europeans remained the colony’s arithmetic. The request of 1767 made that arithmetic no longer an Indian one. [3]
Census 1754 had already shown 6,279 slaves against 5,510 colonists; census 1756, after the great pox, 5,787 against 5,128. No later count sat in 1767, but the Castle’s apprehension was not a census paper. It was the sight of Indian cargoes in officers’ private trade. Manumission of the deserving and of those who could lay claim under the law had not reversed the numbers. The Danish infection would take 251 slaves among its 575 dead, and 145 free blacks, and 179 Europeans. The stop on Asiatic export and the town pox sat the same calendar without being the same measure. One was a Batavia compliance with a Cape request. The other was a Danish ship. Both thinned, or promised to thin, the bonded population. Madagascar would still fill what India no longer sent. [3] [9]
Church, Drostdies, and Civic Works — 1767
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 seventeenth 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. At Drakenstein, Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, discharged from the Company’s service in 1766, still resided; Serrurier of Hanau, married on the 9th of November 1760 to Margaretha Elisabeth Timmendorf, still sat the Cape pulpit as third clergyman. [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 seventeenth year, as he had sat it since August 1763. Swellendam remained a mere hamlet, now with Mentz in Horak’s chair since December 1766. The two outer chairs therefore did not change in 1767. The inner chairs did: Cloppenburg confirmed secunde in March, Plettenberg landed fiscal independent on the 21st of December, Hemmy’s acting fiscal closed with that landing. Kirsten still sat Simon’s Town. Continuity of persons, which had been the civic fact of the fifteenth year and the broken fact of the sixteenth, was the civic fact of the seventeenth only until March confirmed one acting name and December landed the other. [3] [9]
During the 21 years 1751–1771 there 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. During the same period 129 Dutch, 14 English, 11 French, 13 Danish, and 2 Swedish put into Simon’s Bay. The whole number that touched at the two ports was 1,472, and the average yearly number 70. The Prussian flag had first been seen on a ship in Table Bay in 1755, and the Swedish in 1759. Foreigners obtained whatever they chose to pay for, excepting when the council thought it necessary to prohibit the sale of such articles as the Company needed and of which the supply was insufficient for all. The seventeenth year sat inside that average after a fifteenth that had hardly any harvest and a sixteenth that had wrecked a Madagascar packet. A paying roadstead did not require a named drought year to stay a paying roadstead. Seventy ships a year still needed beef, wine, water, and a hospital ward. One of those seventy, in 1767, was the Danish ship that brought smallpox. One of those 168 English was Clive’s return. The tavern of the seas counted both. [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; materials were being collected for a new one, but the work was not yet commenced. 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 in 1765, and feeling a slight earthquake in its wards in July 1766, 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 seventeenth year sat those works under a governor whose life had been despaired of, who had rallied without his former strength, who was sixty-eight and often tied to his bed, and who in March had been made ordinary councillor of Netherlands India. Public as well as private enterprise slackened under the pox. The oak hedge, the fountains, and the town house still stood. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s honour and then its graves: in March Tulbagh was raised ordinary councillor of Netherlands India, with only the governor-general and the director-general above him out of Europe; in the same month a despatch announced Van Oudtshoorn’s resignation, named Cloppenburg secunde, and appointed Joachim van Plettenberg—then of the high court at Batavia—fiscal; from the 22nd of April to the 4th of May Clive, on his return passage to England, declined the garden house and lodged with Petrus Johannes de Wit, the burgher who had prepared the first exported aloes; from May until November smallpox, brought in a Danish ship returning to Europe, was prevalent in Cape Town, attacking between eighteen and nineteen hundred persons and killing 179 Europeans, 145 free blacks, and 251 slaves, with only a few families in the country districts; in the same calendar the council of India’s prohibition closed further Asiatic slave export, leaving Madagascar and a few from the east coast; on the 21st of December Van Plettenberg arrived and assumed duty as fiscal independent, twenty-eight years old, a Friesland baron, with Cornelia Charlotte Feith. Under Tulbagh, 1767 was not a year of conquest but of a Batavia rank, a Batavia officer, a returned English commander in a burgher’s house, a Danish pox that killed 575, and a stop on Indian slave cargoes—while farmers still sold into the fleets of two empires at a neutral tavern of the seas, except when the Castle took first. The seventeenth year closed with cash in the bay, Cloppenburg confirmed, Plettenberg landed, Le Sueur in a handsomer drostdy, Mentz at the hamlet, Kirsten still styled resident at a winter port, and Tulbagh still in the first chair, ordinary councillor, sixty-eight, often tied to his bed, without his former strength. The gardens of 1652 were a hundred and fifteen years behind. The boom still paid. The Danish ship had come in. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]