Boer History1768 at the Cape of Good Hope: Peace Ends the Boom, Stellenbosch Flood, and the Loubser Raid
Eighteenth Year: Castle Continuity — 1768
Calendar 1768 opened in the eighteenth 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; March 1767 had raised him ordinary councillor, with only the governor-general and the director-general above him out of Europe. The seventeenth year had closed with a Danish infection still in Table Valley, Clive gone on the 4th of May after lodging with Petrus Johannes de Wit, Asiatic slave export stopped from India, and Joachim van Plettenberg landed on the 21st of December as fiscal independent. The eighteenth opened with confirmed names on the inner chairs: Jan Willem Cloppenburg sat the second chair as secunde, no longer acting; Plettenberg sat the fiscal’s pen, twenty-eight years old when he landed, a Friesland baron with Cornelia Charlotte Feith; 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 an eighteenth 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 eighteenth year tested that strength on a peace that closed a paying boom, on a flood that for some hours threatened Stellenbosch, on a Bokkeveld raid that killed a European with poisoned arrows, and on a stone pier at the winter port—while a governor already sixty-eight, often tied to his bed after the sixteenth year’s despair, sat ordinary councillor without his former strength. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the eighteenth year’s opening as much as novelty of peace and flood. The same castle, the same boards, and many of the same officers remained—Cloppenburg now confirmed, Plettenberg now landed, Hemmy’s acting fiscal closed. 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 eighteenth 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 1768. 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 eighteenth year therefore still lived inside two shadows: the 1755 graves, and the Danish infection of 1767 that had attacked between eighteen and nineteen hundred persons and had killed 179 Europeans, 145 free blacks, and 251 slaves. Occasional cases ran through the summer of 1767–8. Public as well as private enterprise had slackened. 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. A confirmed secunde sat the second. A new fiscal independent sat the high court. A landdrost of five Cape winters sat Stellenbosch. A landdrost of two Cape summers 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 1768 added no second Beutler-scale trek and no second Hop caravan. What it added was a March peace that ended the provision boom, a May flood at Stellenbosch, a winter raid in the Bokkeveld, and a stone pier at Simon’s Town. 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 ordinary councillor. 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 eighteenth year sat after a fifteenth that had hardly any harvest and had bought rice to compensate, and after a sixteenth and seventeenth 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. 1768 was not among the years then described as drought. The Castle still sat inside the average, with a paying roadstead that did not pause for peace, flood, or a lingering pox. [3] [4] [7]
Peace Ends the Provision Boom — March 1768
Matters had been at their worst when in December 1758 and January 1759 a fleet of seventeen French men-of-war and transports with troops arrived from Mauritius. They were sent here purposely to refresh and lay in a supply of provisions. At once the price of farm produce doubled or trebled, all the surplus stock was disposed of, and everything was paid for in money. From that date until the termination of the war in India between the English and the French, the farmers were in a prosperous condition. French men-of-war until 1761, and after that date ships of both nations, came here to refresh and take in supplies. The officers of French packets from Mauritius and of English packets from St. Helena bid against each other for cattle and meal and wine. On more than one occasion the government was unable to procure as much provision as was needed for the Company’s ships, as the burghers were desirous of selling at high prices to strangers. [3] [9]
There was a remedy for that competition. In August 1762 a placaat was issued prohibiting the sale of wine to foreigners under penalty of confiscation of all that was offered and a fine of £66 13s. 4d. This had the desired effect: the Company obtained as much as was needed, and four weeks from the date of its issue the placaat was withdrawn. In January 1763 it was necessary to resort to the same means to procure a supply of butter. The 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. [3]
The eighteenth year therefore opened inside a boom that the Castle already knew how to ration, and closed the first quarter by ending it. From the French refreshment fleets of 1758–59 until that March news, farmers had lived in a prosperous provision market: doubled and trebled prices, cash from strangers, magazines emptied of surplus wheat. The boom ended with the peace. What remained was the ordinary tavern of the seas—seventy ships a year on the twenty-one-year average, foreigners obtaining whatever they chose to pay for except when the council prohibited the sale of articles the Company needed. English visitors had been treated in a liberal manner since the 1761 instructions, after the Chinsurah affair of 1759 had briefly disturbed the friendly feeling between Great Britain and the United Provinces. Lynn in the Chatham and York in January 1762 had been refused English seamen out of Dutch ships; Clive in the Kent in December 1764 and again in April 1767 had been received with all possible honour. Peace did not cancel that hospitality. It cancelled the wartime bid. [3] [9]
Wine had already been a special object of taxation. In 1756 an export duty of £1 per legger had been laid by the directors 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 it rose to £400. The quality of the wine sent to India was frequently complained of. The council of India declined to take as large a quantity as previously, and the exportation to Batavia, which for the five years 1751–5 had averaged 558 leggers, fell off to 262 leggers on an average during the next ten years. A project to convert wine into brandy at not more than £14 11s. 8d. a legger for 400 leggers a year fell through because the samples were so objectionable. Peace in March did not restore that Indian wine market. It removed the strangers who had bid the Cape price up. Farmers who had sold at high prices to French and English packets now sold into a quieter bay. The Castle still sat inside the twenty-one-year average of 346 leggers of common wine to India, and rather over 100 leggers of common wine to Europe, with as much Constantia as could be obtained—usually not more than 14 or 15 leggers. [3]
Grain sat the same arithmetic. Average wheat to India across the twenty-one years was 11,791 muids; rye 202; barley 68; peas 202; beans 174. Butter, first exported to India in 1754, averaged 22,322 pounds a year, usually purchased at the Company’s stores at six pence to eight pence a pound, occasionally a shilling in times of scarcity. A small quantity of dried fruit and a little ivory also went to India. Aloes had been an article of export to Europe since 1761, when Petrus Johannes de Wit—the same burgher with whom Clive lodged in April 1767—had produced 218 pounds, pronounced of good quality, purchased at not more than two shillings and three pence half-penny a pound. The quantity in demand was inconsiderable. March peace did not stop those averages. It stopped the doubled and trebled prices that strangers had paid since the Mauritius fleet. The magazines no longer emptied surplus wheat into a wartime bid. The eighteenth year’s first news from Europe was that the bid was over. [3]
Smallpox Lingered Through the Cape Summer — 1768
In 1767 the smallpox had again been brought into the colony. On that 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 1713 and 1755 it had died out entirely when the hot weather set in; but there were occasional cases throughout the summer of 1767–8. 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. The ravages of the disease were thus slight when compared with earlier years. Five hundred and seventy-five dead was not Table Valley’s 963 Europeans and 1,109 blacks of May–October 1755. It was still a Danish ship in a paying bay, and it was still in the eighteenth year. [3] [7] [9]
The eighteenth year therefore inherited a town pox that had not followed the old rule of dying with the heat. Occasional cases still sat in Cape Town after November 1767. Precautions that had kept the country districts almost free did not keep the capital empty of infection. Public as well as private enterprise slackened. The hospital in Table Valley was already falling to ruins; materials were being collected for a new one, but the work was not yet commenced. Simon’s Town’s square hospital of 130 feet frontage, completed in 1765, had already felt the slight earthquake of the 14th of July 1766 throw bedsteads against the walls of the wards. The eighteenth year’s lingering cases did not fill that winter hospital as 1755 had filled two great hospitals in Table Valley—one for poor Europeans, supported by the board of deacons, the other for blacks, at one shilling and four pence a day charged to owners. They filled enough houses to keep the Danish ship’s name on the year. [3] [9]
The slave arithmetic of the stop of 1767 still sat under that lingering pox. There were then more slaves than Europeans in South Africa, notwithstanding manumission of such as were considered deserving of freedom and of those who could lay claim to it under the law. Further Asiatic importations had ceased when the council of India’s prohibition answered the Cape request. A few were still brought from the east coast of Africa. With Madagascar there was still a regular trade, small vessels being sent frequently from the Cape to procure them, at less than three pounds sterling each. The slave code of the 3rd of September 1754 still sat over the colony. The eighteenth year’s lingering cases took from a bonded population that India no longer replenished and that Madagascar still might. Census 1756 had already shown 5,787 slaves against 5,128 colonists. No later count sat in 1768. The Danish dead among the slaves—251—were already in the ground before January opened. Occasional cases through the Cape summer were the remainder. [3]
In the old districts Europeans and Khoikhoi still lived on friendly terms. The courts were open. The government was anxious to prevent Khoikhoi from becoming possessed of guns and horses, as many who accompanied the elephant hunters had learned to be expert marksmen. That anxiety was a 1755 instruction still in force, not a new placaat of 1768. What 1768 added to the coloured file was not a new code and not a new census. It was a pox that had not yet died with the heat, a boom that died with a March despatch, and a winter raid in the Bokkeveld that would kill a European with poisoned arrows. The eighteenth year sat all three without confusing them. A Danish remainder is not a French peace. A French peace is not a San descent on Loubser’s cattle. [3] [7]
Stellenbosch Flood — 30 May 1768
The village of Stellenbosch was considerably enlarged and improved in appearance during Tulbagh’s administration. On the 31st of October 1762 the drostdy buildings had been destroyed by fire, but they were shortly rebuilt in a handsomer style. In August 1763 Jacobus Johannes le Sueur had succeeded Adriaan van Schoor as landdrost, Van Schoor having been promoted to an office in Cape Town. Le Sueur still held the appointment through the eighteenth year. On the 30th of May 1768 much damage was done to the village by a flood, which for some hours threatened the total destruction of the place. The same thing had occurred once before—on the 13th of October 1716. [3] [9]
To prevent similar disasters in future, the course of the river was altered, according to plans furnished by the heemraad Martin Melk, under whose supervision the work was carried out. The Eerste River, which had already once in living memory—1716—risen over the village, was not left to rise over the handsomer drostdy a third time without a plan. Melk sat the heemraad’s bench, not the landdrost’s. Le Sueur sat the drostdy. The flood of the 30th of May was a few hours’ threat of total destruction, then a diversion of the river’s course. It was not a fire. The 1762 fire had already given Stellenbosch a handsomer drostdy. The 1768 flood gave it a different river. [3]
Stellenbosch had been Simon van der Stel’s village since 1679, planted with vines and fruit-trees under the mountain. When the Huguenots came, the valley of Drakenstein was colonised; more vineyards and orchards were planted; between the Paarl mountain and the Berg river the township of the Paarl was built; in the valley at the foot of the Simonsberg the little settlement of Fransche Hoek was formed, and those farms to this day bear French names. Val du Charron, later Wellington, sat north-east of the Paarl hamlet. The 30th of May did not wash those French names off the Berg. It threatened the drostdy village itself—the court, the handsomer buildings after 1762, the street that a flood of 1716 had already once entered. Appeldoorn still sat the Stellenbosch pulpit, as he had since October 1753. Combined consistories no longer met. The flood did not wait for a consistory. It waited for Melk’s plans. [3] [7] [8]
A 1768 memorial among the Requesten still named the Savoye line that had come in the Oosterlandt in 1688: Jacques de Savoye of Aeth, born 1636, with Marie Madeleine le Clercq of Tournay and three children, an eminent merchant of Ghent who had taken Flemish farmers of the reformed religion beyond Jesuit reach. That memorial did not sit the flood. It sat the same calendar as Melk’s diversion and Le Sueur’s drostdy. French names on Drakenstein farms, a Huguenot pulpit at the Cape in Serrurier of Hanau, and a Requesten number for 1768 were the same eighteenth-year fact as a river moved to spare Stellenbosch: the old settlement still named its people, and still had to move water when the water moved the village. [3] [8]
Swellendam remained a mere hamlet. Mentz sat it, as he had since Horak retired in 1766. The pontoon on the Breede, close to the junction of the Zonder End, still carried the Cape road. The May flood was a Stellenbosch disaster, not a Swellendam one. The two outer chairs did not change in 1768. The river at Stellenbosch did. Le Sueur would hold the drostdy until June of the next calendar; Faber’s name is that next calendar’s, not this one’s. The eighteenth year kept Le Sueur, kept Mentz, kept Appeldoorn, and moved the Eerste under Melk. [3]
Loubser Raid in the Bokkeveld — Winter 1768
During Tulbagh’s administration 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 their old tribal distinctions and recognised no chief of their own race. Many lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered about the country, taking service occasionally as they felt so disposed. There were instances of harsh and unjust treatment of Khoikhoi by colonists, especially on the remote border; but the courts of law were open for their protection, and the heavy sentences recorded against European criminals in such cases prove that the law was not a dead letter. Land was allotted to colonists without consulting them. As yet there was plenty of land left for them and their cattle. With San there were occasional contests. [3] [4]
The Bokkeveld was already a grazier’s country. After the first graziers’ settlement in the valley of Tulbagh, young colonists had crossed into the Warm Bokkeveld, where more grazing farms were selected. Musket in hand they had explored the Witsenberg and gone down the Breede toward Swellendam, or north-west into the Piketberg and along the Olifants. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough. San descents on those runs were not new in 1768. In the spring of 1754 a large party had driven off great herds in the Roggevelden; a commando under the field corporals Willem van Wyk, Godlieb Opperman, Nicholas Ryk, Pieter van Zyl, Barend Lubbe, and Barend Forster had been six weeks in the field and had killed sixty-four San at a cost of one white man and two Khoikhoi wounded, recovering only seven head. Later in 1754 the cattle of Jacobus Gildenhuis had been driven from his farm in the Bokkeveld; his neighbours Dirk Koekemoer, Jan van Aswegen, and Andries van der Heiden, with twenty Khoikhoi, had pursued, shot twenty-six, wounded eight, and recovered nearly all the cattle. Peace had then been made. In May 1758 about two hundred San from beyond the interior range had driven off some four hundred head in the Roggeveld; David van der Merwe had pursued fourteen days, shot fifty-six, and recovered all but forty-eight. In June 1764 San had murdered Jacob van Reenen’s European servant on the Zak river and driven off three hundred sheep; Gerrit van Wyk had shot twenty-five and taken ten children as servants. [3] [7]
In the winter of 1768 a party of San drove off the cattle of Pieter Loubser from his farm in the Bokkeveld. A European named Hermanus Vos and a few Khoikhoi pursued the robbers, but upon being overtaken the San turned and killed Vos with poisoned arrows, when the Khoikhoi retreated. The Stellenbosch landdrost called out a commando, which was placed under order of Dirk Koekemoer. The commando searched for the San for three weeks without success, and then broke up. Le Sueur still held the drostdy. Koekemoer’s name was already on the 1754 Bokkeveld pursuit that had recovered Gildenhuis’s cattle. The winter of 1768 did not recover Loubser’s. Poisoned arrows and a three-week blank were the eighteenth year’s San file, not a sixty-four killed and seven recovered. [3]
The government remained anxious that Khoikhoi not sit guns and horses. Vos had gone out with a few Khoikhoi, not with a mounted commando. When the San turned, the Khoikhoi retreated and the European was dead. Koekemoer’s three weeks then sat the krygsraad’s answer: a commando in the field, no contact, no cattle recovered, no San shot. That blank is the winter fact. It is not the 1754 six weeks, and it is not the 1758 fourteen days. The Bokkeveld in 1768 still paid £5 a year when the rental could be recovered, still ran five or six thousand acres, still sat inside Stellenbosch and Drakenstein rather than Swellendam. Mentz’s hamlet was not called. Le Sueur’s district was. [3] [4]
The farms of Nicholas Loubser and Willem Engelbrecht would be cleared of cattle in January following; that commando is the next calendar. Winter 1768 stopped at three weeks without success. Vos was dead. Loubser’s cattle were gone. Koekemoer’s men had gone home. The eighteenth year’s San file closed on a blank, not on a count of dead. [3]
Simon’s Town Stone Pier — 1768
At Simon’s Town expensive works were carried out. The hospital—a square building of 130 feet frontage—was commenced in 1760 and completed in 1765. Substantial storehouses were then put up, and when these were finished, in 1768 a stone pier was constructed. A slaughter house, a bakery, workshops for smiths and carpenters, and a dwelling house for the officer in charge of the station, followed. 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. In March 1751 Adriaan de Nys had been appointed postholder in succession to Justinus Blas. De Nys died in May 1761, when Jan Frederik Kirsten was appointed officer in charge at Simon’s Town, with the title of resident. Kirsten still sat that title through the eighteenth year. [3] [9]
Not only in town, but also in the country districts, the impact of Tulbagh’s energy was felt. Simonstown was enlarged. The winter port that had been a postholder’s station under De Nys was, under Kirsten, a resident’s station with a hospital, storehouses, and now a stone pier. False Bay in the winter months was the roadstead when Table Bay was unsafe. Seventy ships a year on the twenty-one-year average still needed a winter face: 129 Dutch, 14 English, 11 French, 13 Danish, and 2 Swedish had put into Simon’s Bay across 1751–1771, against 988 Dutch, 168 English, 147 French, 31 Danish, 13 Swedish, 4 Prussian, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Spanish in Table Bay. The whole number at the two ports was 1,472, average 70 a year. The Prussian flag had first been seen in Table Bay in 1755, the Swedish in 1759. The stone pier of 1768 did not wait for a wartime bid. It sat after the bid had ended in March. Peace ended the boom; it did not end the winter port. [3] [9]
The slight earthquake a little before two in the morning of the 14th of July 1766 had already thrown the bedsteads in that hospital against the walls of the wards. No damage was caused, though at Simon’s Town it was sufficiently violent. The eighteenth year’s pier sat after that shake and after the 1765 completion of the square hospital. Storehouses first, then the pier, then slaughter house, bakery, workshops, and a dwelling for the officer in charge. The 450-foot Swellengrebel building, which had previously served for all purposes, was now only garrison and workmen. The winter port had a face. Kirsten’s title of resident, given in May 1761, now sat over a pier as well as a hospital. [3]
Table Valley’s hospital was falling to ruins while Simon’s Town’s was new. Materials were being collected for a new Cape hospital, but the work was not yet commenced. The contrast is the civic fact of 1768: a stone pier and a finished winter hospital at False Bay, a ruined hospital and collected materials in Table Valley, a town house already built by the burgher council, a parade again levelled with an oak hedge, fountains renewed, fortifications repaired, a new battery near the mouth of Salt River, and a church tower raised a few feet higher with a clock that did not yet indicate the time. Strangers had begun to know the town by the name of Cape Town, though by the colonists it was still termed the Cape. The pier did not rename the Cape. It gave the winter bay a stone edge. [3] [9]
Church, Drostdies, and Civic Works — 1768
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 eighteenth 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, after the flood of the 30th of May and Melk’s diversion of the river, still sat Le Sueur’s handsomer drostdy. Swellendam remained a mere hamlet, Mentz in Horak’s chair. The two outer chairs therefore did not change in 1768. The inner chairs had already changed in 1767: Cloppenburg confirmed secunde in March, Plettenberg landed fiscal independent on the 21st of December. The eighteenth year was their first full calendar in those chairs. Kirsten still sat Simon’s Town, now with a stone pier under the resident’s title. 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 eighteenth after March 1767 had confirmed one acting name and December 1767 had 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. 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 eighteenth year sat inside that average after a March peace had ended the wartime bid. A paying roadstead did not require a named drought year to stay a paying roadstead. Seventy ships a year still needed beef, wine, water, a hospital ward, and now a stone pier at the winter bay. The tavern of the seas counted the peace as it had counted the boom. [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 graveyard round the church still sat; the cemetery between the Lion’s Rump and the shore of the bay was not yet opened. The Wapen Pleyn no longer sounded only with militia drill. The Caabse Vlek was changing toward a name that strangers already used. Completing a stone pier at Simon’s Town in 1768 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. Stellenbosch had already been expanded after the drostdy fire of October 1762, and in May the river was moved. The eighteenth 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 1767 had been made ordinary councillor of Netherlands India. Public as well as private enterprise had slackened under the lingering pox. The oak hedge, the fountains, the town house, and now the stone pier still stood. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s purse and then its river and its cattle: in March intelligence of peace between France and England ended the provision boom that had doubled and trebled prices since the Mauritius fleet of December 1758 and January 1759; occasional smallpox cases still ran after the Danish ship of 1767, which had attacked between eighteen and nineteen hundred and killed 575; on the 30th of May a flood threatened the total destruction of Stellenbosch for some hours, and Martin Melk altered the river’s course; in winter San drove off Pieter Loubser’s cattle in the Bokkeveld and killed Hermanus Vos with poisoned arrows, and Dirk Koekemoer’s commando searched three weeks without success; in the same calendar a stone pier was constructed at Simon’s Town after the 1765 hospital and the storehouses, with slaughter house, bakery, workshops, and a dwelling for the officer in charge. Under Tulbagh, 1768 was not a year of conquest but of a closed bid, a lingering Danish remainder, a diverted river, a blank commando, and a winter pier—while farmers still sold into a quieter bay at a neutral tavern of the seas, except when the Castle took first. The eighteenth year closed with Cloppenburg confirmed, Plettenberg in his first full calendar as fiscal independent, Le Sueur in a handsomer drostdy beside a moved river, Mentz at the hamlet, Kirsten still styled resident at a winter port that now had a stone edge, 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 sixteen years behind. The boom had ended. The pier had been built. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]