Boer History1776 at the Cape of Good Hope: Councillor Extraordinary, Mentz Retires, Nieuw Rhoon, and Cook’s Last Outward Call
Second Full Installed Year: Castle Continuity — 1776
Calendar 1776 opened in the same installed chairs that 1775 had sat through its first full year. Joachim van Plettenberg had sat the first chair by the Prince’s commission since the 18th of May 1774. A Friesland baron, born at Leeuwarden on the 8th of March 1739, son of Hendrik Casimir Baron van Plettenberg and Agatha Petronella van Ammema, he had gone from the Latin school to Utrecht, sailed for Batavia on the Amerongen on the 8th of May 1764 as adjunct-fiscal at twenty-five, and arrived in the colonial capital on the second day of 1765. In 1767 he married Cornelia Charlotte Feith, widow of Louis Taillefer, Director of Bengal. That same year saw the Van Plettenbergs at the Cape, where Joachim had been appointed independent fiscal. From the 30th of May 1770 he had sat the second chair as well as the fiscal’s duties; from the 12th of August 1771, the morning after Ryk Tulbagh died, he sat both. Called to succeed a model governor, he was from the first moment at a disadvantage. January 1773 had buried the named governor Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn under the same pavement as the landsfather. The Prince of Orange had then, upon the nomination of the directors, named Van Plettenberg governor, Otto Luder Hemmy secunde, and Advocate Willem Cornelis Boers fiscal. Those three names had all been on the ground since December 1774. Calendar 1776 was the second full year in which they sat together, and February would add a Batavia dignity to the first chair without changing the men. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was still the civic fact of the second full installed year as much as novelty of a Batavia title on paper. Marthinus Adriaan Bergh sat Stellenbosch, the chair Lucas Sigismundus Faber had left in August 1773, after Abraham Faure had acted through September. Joachim Frederik Mentz still sat the hamlet that Horak had left, until February asked him to retire. Christoffel Brand sat the winter port, the chair Jan Frederik Kirsten had left in May 1774, with a stone pier. Damien Hugo Staring sat the naval establishment, confirmed by the supreme authorities after a provisional detention. 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. Stellenbosch’s pulpit, emptied by the Rev. Johannes Appeldoorn in September 1772, still sat a consulent. The Rev. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein, and sat it inside the elder controversy that January 1772 had opened over Thomas Arnoldus Theron, and that 1775 had already sent Marais and Roos to Holland. Waveren, emptied in June 1774 when Remmerus Harders retired on pension, still sat without a clergyman. The Rev. Daniel Goldbach sat Zwartland, the charge he had taken in April 1774. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trading by officers—had been the landsfather’s habit. The second full installed year inherited the habit, two coffins under the church pavement, a hospital still rising on a November stone, a Hague advocate in his second full fiscal year, and a first chair that May 1774 had filled with ceremony and that February would raise a rank without changing the man. [3] [8] [9]
Outward, the land regime still opened on the 11 July 1775 names. The eastern boundary of Stellenbosch, according to the resolution of the council of policy, remained the Fish river; Swellendam’s eastern paper remained the Bushman’s river. The Gamtoos name of 18 February 1770 had already ceased to be Swellendam’s eastern paper; Bruintjes Hoogte had already ceased to be Stellenbosch’s eastern paper. 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. Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in the old districts, but occasionally the peace was disturbed by San marauders. About the year 1770, cattle thefts and massacres of native herdsmen, and even of white colonists, had become events of such frequent occurrence that farms along the Nieuwveld, the Sneeuwberg, and the Winterberg were unsafe. The summer commando of 1774 under Godlieb Rudolph Opperman had reported five hundred and three San killed and two hundred and thirty-nine taken. It had no such effect as was hoped. They became even more troublesome than before. Year after year it was necessary to call out commandos against them. Calendar 1776 inherited that northern paper, that eastern line already renamed Fish and Bushman’s, a hunter who had evaded an October 1772 summons, a hospital stone of the 2nd of November 1772, and a first chair that May 1774 had already filled and that February would raise. [3] [4] [7]
In the Republic, Prince William V still sat as Stadholder, of age since 1766. The Cape still sat under the Seventeen and an installed baron. 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. The second full installed year sat one hundred and twenty-four years from those gardens, with a first chair emptied in August 1771, a named governor buried under the church in January 1773, a hospital ground that from November 1772 held a stone, and a roadstead that from 1772 had jumped its seventy-a-year tally. During the twenty-one years 1751–1771 the average yearly number of ships at the two ports had been 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. On the surface, the first years of Van Plettenberg’s administration—following the two in which he had held the reins as acting governor—did not give any clear indication of the explosive situation in which the settlement would later find itself. The economic conditions were not bad. Foreign shipping had greatly increased. Not only Table Bay but also the roads of Simonstown were full of Dutch, French, English, Scandinavian and even Austrian vessels, all requiring fresh produce. Calendar 1776 sat inside those averages as the fifth produce year and the fifth year of the shipping jump, with a Hague advocate already in his second full fiscal year, an eastern paper that July 1775 had already renamed, and a January wreck that would open the year on Robben Island. [3] [9]
The town in Table Valley had already been considerably enlarged. Strangers had begun to know it by the name of Cape Town, though by the colonists it was still termed the Cape. Several new streets had been laid out. The parade ground had been levelled again, and an oak hedge planted round it. The artificial fountains had been renewed. The town house had been built by the burgher council. The fortifications had been repaired, and a new battery constructed near the mouth of Salt River. The tower of the church had been raised a few feet, and a clock placed in it that from the 25th of November 1771 at last indicated the time. The graveyard round the church had been closed; the cemetery between the Lion’s Rump and the shore of the bay had been opened early in 1770. Two governors still lay under the pavement of the church, not in the new cemetery: Tulbagh since the 17th of August 1771, Oudtshoorn since a few days after the Asia arrived. The hospital in Table Valley had been falling to ruins; the directors had resolved to build a new one; the ground had been prepared before Tulbagh’s death; the foundation stone had been laid by Van Plettenberg on the 2nd of November 1772, designed for one thousand four hundred and fifty patients, with quarters for the medical officers and attendants, and spacious storehouses. Most of the materials came from the Netherlands. January therefore opened on an installed settlement, a paying roadstead, a clock that told the hour, a stone in the hospital ground still rising, two coffins under the church, a first chair that May had already filled, and a homeward Indiaman that a southeaster would drive upon a reef. [3] [9]
Nieuw Rhoon at Robben Island — 31 January 1776
On the 31st of January 1776 the Company’s homeward-bound ship Nieuw Rhoon, when attempting to enter Table Bay, was driven by a violent southeaster upon a reef at Robben Island and was badly damaged. She was got off, and was brought up to the anchorage; but it was found necessary to beach her by the jetty to save her cargo. The second full installed year therefore opened not with a Batavia title and not with a Swellendam retirement, but with a homeward hull on a reef, then at the anchorage, then on the beach by the jetty, so that what she carried might still be landed. January 1773 had already shown what a north-west gale could do to five Indiamen against the directors’ instructions; Wolraad Woltemaade had ridden into those breakers and fourteen men had come ashore on a horse’s tail before the dairyman drowned and the Jonge Thomas broke up. The Nieuw Rhoon was another paper. She was not a June gale from the north-west. She was a January southeaster on the island reef, a ship got off, a cargo saved by beaching. The year opened on that beach. [3]
The wreck sat the roadstead’s arithmetic as every foreigner and every Dutch hull sat it: a jetty, a beach, a cargo that the Company still wanted landed. The directors admitted that callers should be encouraged, as they brought ready money into the country and increased the revenue. A homeward Company ship on the island reef was not a caller. She was the Company’s own oak, driven in attempting to enter, saved as far as a beach by the jetty could save her. Calendar 1776 therefore sat its first month as a salvage month, before February’s despatch raised the first chair and before February’s council filled Swellendam from the military branch. [3]
The winter port sat Brand. Kirsten had been promoted in May 1774; the bookkeeper Christoffel Brand had been appointed to succeed him. Simon’s Bay had already taken Kerguelen’s Rolland and Oiseau in May 1773, and had taken them again a year later on the return to Brest. Table Bay in January took the Nieuw Rhoon on a reef and then on a beach. The two open ports of the second full installed year therefore sat both a Dutch homeward wreck in the summer roadstead and a Dutch resident in the winter one, with Staring confirmed over the naval establishment and a hospital still rising on Dutch materials for one thousand four hundred and fifty. January did not rename an eastern river. It filled a Table Bay beach that a southeaster had made necessary. [3]
The outposts at Saldanha Bay, Groenkloof, Klapmuts, Zonder End, and Buffeljagts River were still maintained. They did not take the Nieuw Rhoon. The jetty took her. The island reef had already taken her first. A Company ship homeward, a violent southeaster, a reef, an anchorage, a beach: January’s sequence sat the settlement’s oldest work, the work the gardens of 1652 had been planted to do—take a hull in, land what she carried, keep the roadstead a place a ship could still use. The Nieuw Rhoon used it as a wreck uses it. [3]
Councillor Extraordinary — February 1776
In February 1776 a despatch was received, announcing that the governor had been raised to the dignity of councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India. The first chair did not change its man. It changed its rank. Tulbagh had sat that dignity from 1755 and had sat ordinary councillor from March 1767. The son of Hendrik Casimir now sat the extraordinary paper that the landsfather had sat before the ordinary one. February did not install him. May 1774 had already installed him. February added Batavia’s council to a Cape chair already two full years in the commission, after two acting years and a fiscal’s years before those. [3] [9]
The dignity sat the Company’s eastern hierarchy more than it sat Table Valley’s streets. A councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India was a Batavia rank worn at the Cape, a paper that told the Seventeen and the high government that the man in the first chair was no longer only a Cape governor. Hemmy still sat the second chair. Boers still sat the fiscal’s. The council of policy still sat the same names. February’s despatch did not fill a vacancy and did not empty one. It raised the installed baron without moving the Capetonian secunde or the Hague advocate. On the surface, the first years of the administration still did not show the later explosion. February’s rank sat inside that surface. [3] [9]
The farmers of the more distant districts were still, in this second full year, appreciative of honest attempts to understand them and their needs. Most settlers still agreed that the Baron was a solid worker, who tried hard to be a good governor, though the comparisons made between his and Tulbagh’s administration always went in favour of the latter. Governor and fiscal spoke the same language. They could even share the same jokes, whether these were told in Dutch, French or Latin. February’s Batavia paper did not change that pair. It hung another title on the first chair while the second chair still sat Hemmy and the grain leave still sat Boers. [3] [9]
Calendar 1776 therefore sat its February as a rank month on the Castle side and, the same month, as a drostdy month on the Breede. The despatch and the Swellendam retirement arrived in the same paper year, in the same month, on a roadstead that January had already used as a beach. The second full installed year did not need a new first chair. It received a new dignity for the chair it had. [3]
Mentz Retires; Boonaker at Swellendam — February 1776
In February 1776 Landdrost Joachim Frederik Mentz of Swellendam retired from the service at his own request, and Sergeant Pieter Diederik Boonaker was appointed by the council to succeed him. Mentz had sat the hamlet since 1766, the chair Jan Andries Horak had left. Ten years of that drostdy, through Tulbagh’s last years and through the acting years and through the first full installed year, ended in the same February that raised the first chair. Swellendam’s eastern paper already ran to the Bushman’s river from the 11th of July 1775. The man who had sat that district when the Gamtoos was still the name, and who had sat it when the Bushman’s became the name, now left it at his own request. [3]
Upon this appointment being reported to the directors, they expressed their disapproval of it, on the ground that a new landdrost should have been chosen from the civil—not from the military—branch of their service. The council had filled a country court from the sergeant’s mess. Amsterdam wanted it filled from the clerks. February’s Swellendam paper therefore sat a man the Castle had named and a rule the Seventeen would not accept. The disapproval came back along the same slow letters that May 1774 had already measured: an installation two years after a death at sea, a rank in February for a chair filled in May, a landdrost named from the military branch against a civil rule the directors still held. [3]
Bergh still sat Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, the chair he had taken in October 1773 after Faber’s death and Faure’s acting months. The outposts at Saldanha Bay, Groenkloof, Klapmuts, Zonder End, and Buffeljagts River were still maintained. July 1775 had already asked Bergh and Mentz, with their heemraden combined, to draw a Zwartberg-parallel through the new portions, now that Stellenbosch ran to the Fish and Swellendam to the Bushman’s. Mentz’s last months had sat that combined paper. Boonaker’s first months sat a Swellendam already defined on all sides, a Stellenbosch still without a northern limit, and a directors’ letter that would not have chosen him. The farm child’s apprenticeship register of 1775 still went through landdrost and heemraden. Swellendam’s board changed its first name in February and did not change that register. [3]
The hamlet on the Breede had been a drostdy since August 1745, when Johannes Theophilus Rhenius sat the first chair there. Horak had sat it from April 1749. Mentz had sat it from 1766. Boonaker sat it from February 1776 as a sergeant the council had raised, against a civil rule the directors still named. Calendar 1776 therefore sat Swellendam as a military appointment in a civil office, on a district whose eastern river had been the Bushman’s since July, and whose first chair the Seventeen would not have filled from the ranks. [3]
Van Jaarsveld Moves to Bruintjes Hoogte — 1776
Adriaan van Jaarsveld retired to Bruintjes Hoogte from the Sneeuwberg in 1776 to be free of depredations by San, and he was resolved not to move again if he could by any means hold his own. Accustomed from his earliest boyhood to warfare with raiders, compelled to be ever ready to defend his family and his flocks from marauders, he knew exactly how to act in an emergency of that kind. The Sneeuwberg had been occupied for several years. It sat inside Stellenbosch’s northern occupation—the Kamiesberg, the Hantam mountain, the country about the sources of the Zak river in the Nieuwveld mountains, and the Sneeuwberg—without a fixed northern limit. Bruintjes Hoogte had been the colonial boundary name of 18 February 1770. From the 11th of July 1775 Stellenbosch’s eastern paper ran past it to the Fish. Van Jaarsveld’s 1776 move was not a flight beyond the line. It was a move from a northern mountain that San still scoured to an eastern height that 1770 had named as a limit and that 1775 had already taken inside a district. [3] [4]
The struggle between the farmers along the northern border and the San had become almost incessant. The two races could not live side by side. The method of conducting warfare against them needed no knowledge of complicated military movements. There were probably many contests of which the government never heard. Opperman’s summer of 1774 had scoured a base of operations more than three hundred miles in length. Five hundred and three killed, two hundred and thirty-nine taken, some afterwards released, others apprenticed to the farmers for a term of years, only one European killed: the numbers had been reported, and they had not closed the border. The San became even more troublesome than before. Year after year it was necessary to call out commandos against them. Thus it often happened that the burghers were unable to attend the musters for drill which took place at the drostdies early in October. They had come to regard their first duty as the protection of their families against raiders, and hardly gave a thought to the Company’s interest in the event of a European combatant. [3] [7]
Khoikhoi and half-breeds had been as anxious as the colonists to chastise the San, for they had suffered equally from their attacks. Some of the Khoikhoi were living in reserves, under captains recognised by the Cape government, and were not subject to colonial courts of law except in cases affecting white people. The tract called Lily Fontein, in the Kamiesberg, was a reserve secured to the Khoikhoi captain Wildschut and his people by Van Plettenberg in 1772. Others of this race were living with the colonists, either in charge of herds of cattle or as domestic servants. As many as were needed joined the burghers on expeditions against the common enemy, and were provided with firearms and ammunition. Van Jaarsveld’s 1776 removal did not empty that northern paper. It moved one man who had grown up inside it, from the Sneeuwberg to Bruintjes Hoogte, and left Opperman’s border still a commando border. [3]
East of that height the Fish already sat Stellenbosch’s paper. Willem Prinsloo and others still sat the Little Fish, the Boschberg, the high lands that 1770 had forbidden and that July 1775 had taken inside a district so that a landdrost could collect the £5. The sons of the vine and fruit planters of the western districts had become the frontier graziers of the eastern, who had extended the limits until a governor could fix them on the banks of the Fish, and northward almost to the Orange. The Tulbagh kloof formed the gateway. As the expansion northward and eastward had progressed, great herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were kept in the highland plateau districts. The San who inhabited the great mountain ranges of the interior had not made peace with that expansion. Van Jaarsveld’s resolution not to move again sat inside that fact: Bruintjes Hoogte as a place a man would hold, after a Sneeuwberg he would not. [3] [4]
The advanced clans of the Xhosa still sat east of that Fish paper as neighbours, not yet as the war that 1779 would open. Compared with the San they might be called settled stockkeepers, but they were almost as expert stocklifters. Calendar 1776 did not yet send Joubert and Ferreira into the field. It sent Van Jaarsveld from one mountain to another, inside a district line already drawn to collect rents, on a northern border that five hundred and three had not closed. [3] [4]
Sparrman, Cook’s Last Outward Call, and the Ceres — 1776
While Van Plettenberg was governor, the colony was visited by distinguished travellers of various nationalities, who left impressions of what they saw in several volumes. First among these ranked the Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman. Dr. Thunberg, also a Swede, Captain Stavorinus, a Zeelander, Lieutenant Paterson, an Englishman, and M. Le Vaillant, a Frenchman, gave accounts of the country of greater or less value. Sparrman had arrived in April 1772. In November of the same year he had left the Cape in the Resolution, having engaged to accompany the English exploring expedition as a naturalist, and had sailed with Captain Cook round the world. In March 1775 the Resolution had reached the Cape again, and Sparrman had at once set out upon a tour through the colony, which occupied him until April 1776. Calendar 1776 therefore sat the last months of that tour: a Swedish naturalist still in the country until April, on a roadstead that January had already used as a beach, and that October would use again as an English outward berth. [3]
The English explorer Captain James Cook touched at Table Bay with the Resolution and Adventure on his outward passage in November 1772, and when returning homeward in March 1775. He was here again when outward bound on his last voyage with the Resolution and Discovery in October 1776. March 1775 had seated a homeward pair. October 1776 seated an outward pair on a last voyage, two English ships in Table Bay in the fifth year of the shipping jump, on a roadstead that during the nine years 1772–1780 would average fifty-two Dutch ships and sixty-five under various other flags at the two ports. Cook’s last outward call did not change that arithmetic. It sat inside it, as the homeward call had sat inside it, as every foreigner on that roadstead sat it: fresh provisions, a contractor charging foreigners twopence more than the Company’s meat, a fiscal whose leave was needed before a muid of grain went over a stranger’s rail. [3] [9]
On the 15th of October of the same year the French ship Ceres, homeward-bound from Pondicherry, in a gale from the north-west parted her cables and went ashore near the mouth of Salt River. The ship broke up quickly, and very little cargo was saved; but no lives were lost. October therefore sat both Cook’s last outward English pair in the bay and a French homeward hull on the Salt River beach: one voyage beginning, one voyage ending, on the same roadstead, in the same month, under the same installed baron whose February despatch had already named him councillor extraordinary. The battery near the mouth of Salt River had been constructed in the civic works of the acting years. The Ceres went ashore near that mouth. No lives were lost. Little cargo was saved. The wreck broke up quickly. January’s Nieuw Rhoon had been beached by the jetty to save a cargo. October’s Ceres did not save hers. [3]
Under the year 1776 there also appeared, on page 43 of the fourteenth volume of the abridged Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, an account of three journeys from Cape Town into the southern parts of Africa, undertaken for the discovery of new plants towards the improvement of the royal botanical gardens at Kew, by Francis Masson, one of His Majesty’s gardeners. The abridgement noted many new plants and, respecting the country and inhabitants, nothing thought worthy of notice there. The paper itself ran to fifty-one pages in the original Transactions. Calendar 1776 therefore sat not only Sparrman’s last touring months and Cook’s last outward call, but a London botanical paper under that year’s heading, written from journeys already made from the town strangers had begun to call Cape Town. [3]
March 1775 had filled a Table Bay berth that November 1772 had emptied. October 1776 filled it again, and emptied it toward the Pacific. Sparrman had come home on that March ship and had walked the colony until April. Cook came back without him, with the Discovery instead of the Adventure, on a last outward tack. The second full installed year therefore sat its travellers as a Swedish tour ending in April and an English voyage beginning in October, with a French wreck on the 15th of October between the battery and the shore, and a January Company wreck already on the jetty beach. The tavern of the seas still sat it: Dutch, French, English, Scandinavian and even Austrian hulls wanting meal, meat and wine. [3] [9]
Produce, Wine Export Refused, Church, and Drostdies — 1776
The increase of exports above those of previous years did not cause increased prosperity to the colonists. The prices paid by the Company were ruinously low. For the wheat sent to India the farmers received only 8s. 9¾d. and for that sent to Europe only 5s. 11½d. a muid, after the government dues were deducted. The butter was bought at 6d. to 8d., and the tallow at about 2d. a pound. At the same time there was a constant demand for all kinds of farm produce at more than double the prices which the Company was giving. In the year 1772 there had been a sudden and great increase in the foreign shipping that put into South African ports, and the number of vessels did not fall off again. During the nine years 1772–1780 there put into Table Bay 418 Dutch ships, 159 English, 192 French, 41 Danish, 7 Swedish, 16 Spanish, 9 Portuguese, and 3 Austrian; and into Simon’s Bay 47 Dutch, 85 English, 46 French, 17 Danish, 1 Austrian, and 6 Swedish ships; or, on an average, 52 Dutch ships and 65 under various other flags touched yearly at the two ports. Calendar 1776 sat inside those averages as the fifth produce year and the fifth year of the shipping jump, with Cook’s Resolution and Discovery among the English of Table Bay in October, and the Ceres among the French wrecks of the same month. [3] [9]
All of the foreign ships needed fresh provisions. Some of the French vessels were sent from Mauritius expressly to obtain cargoes of grain, meat, and wine; and occasionally an English vessel arrived from St. Helena for the same purpose. The directors admitted that they should be encouraged to call, as they brought ready money into the country and increased the revenue. Owing to them, the contract for the supply of meat to the Company could now be taken at less than 4d. a pound, for the contractor had the privilege of charging foreigners 2d. more. The farmer of the duty of £1 a legger on wine and spirits sold to foreigners for exportation could now afford to pay nearly £1,000 a year for it. The licensed retail dealer in wines and spirits could afford to bid £1,000 a year more for his monopoly. The average production of wine was 8,244 leggers, and the Company needed only 945. The directors were therefore only too glad to know that the surplus could be sold at high rates at the Cape. They protected their own trade, however, for in 1776 when some burghers requested to be allowed to export wine to Holland, they declined to give permission. With grain it was different. As much of this as could be produced could be sold at a profit, and it therefore became a matter for calculation to get as large a quantity as possible without driving foreigners away. The fiscal took control of the trade, and permitted nothing to be sold to strangers without his leave. The burghers protested against this infringement of their rights, but to no purpose. From December 1774 that fiscal was Boers. Calendar 1776 was his second full year over the grain leave, and the year the Seventeen refused a burgher wine cargo to Holland. [3]
From 1772 until the commencement of the war with England, a quantity of Cape produce was yearly sent to the Netherlands. The average exportation to Europe during these nine years, 1772–1780, was 15 leggers Constantia wine, 98 leggers ordinary wines, 10,714 muids of wheat, 28,800 pounds of tallow, and 8,614 pounds of aloes. Small quantities of brandy, rye, barley, vegetable wax, oxhides, sheepskins, coarse wool, skins of wild animals, and leather were also sent to Europe. During these nine years the average export to India was 14,419 muids of wheat, 180 of rye, 66 of barley, 87 of beans, 100 of peas, 296 leggers of wine, 18,618 pounds of butter, 11,555 pounds of tallow, and 1,183 pounds of ivory. Some dried and preserved fruits, mustard seed, peltries, and leather, though not to any great value, were also exported to India. The twenty-one years 1751–1771 had averaged 11,791 muids of wheat, 202 of rye, 68 of barley, 202 of peas, 174 of beans, and 346 leggers of common wine to India, with butter from 1754 averaging 22,322 pounds a year. Calendar 1776 sat inside the new averages as the fifth year of the produce cargoes, a hospital still rising on Dutch materials, a wine surplus the directors would not let burghers ship to Holland, and a packet paper already proved by the Zon. [3] [9]
In 1774, when Fiscal Boers commenced his Cape career, discontent accelerated. The sophisticated lawyer, being used to moving in the best circles at the Hague, felt like a fish out of water in the colony, and behaved as such. His contempt for the freeburghers was so great and outspoken that he became their prosecutor even in the literal sense of the word. He was still thinking of the terms on which Commissioner Ryklof van Goens had permitted Jan van Riebeeck to create the first freeburghers in 1657. He saw them as people released from the Company’s employ by the grace of a benevolent government, and bound morally in their newly acquired freedom to sweat exclusively for their former masters, at the cost price of their products. Time had not stood still. The gardens of 1652 had become a paying roadstead of foreigners; the first freeburghers’ heirs sat cattle runs of five or six thousand acres as far as the Fish. The fiscal who had come ashore in December 1774 still sat a 1657 paper over a 1776 colony. Governor and fiscal spoke the same language. They could even share the same jokes, whether these were told in Dutch, French or Latin. An additional disadvantage for the colonists was that Boers’s chin was much firmer than the Baron van Plettenberg’s. Calendar 1776 was the second full year of that pair over grain leave, wine surplus, a refused Holland cargo, and a district line already drawn to collect rents. [3] [9]
The church in Cape Town continued to be ministered to by three clergymen. Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau still sat that pulpit three deep, as the directors had ordered in 1761. At Stellenbosch the death of Appeldoorn in September 1772 still left the congregation without other ministrations than those of a consulent. The post remained vacant through the whole of 1776. The church at Zwartland sat Goldbach, appointed in April 1774. Waveren, left without a clergyman in June 1774 by the failure of Harders’ health and his retirement on a pension, still sat empty. Two country pulpits without residents; one country pulpit filled in April 1774; the Cape three still three. Combined consistories had ceased in 1759. The inner chairs had filled in 1774. The outer pulpits had not. [3] [8]
The church at Drakenstein was still an arena of strife. The election in January 1772 of Thomas Arnoldus Theron as an elder had been objected to by a considerable section of the congregation, on the ground that he was not properly qualified, and the controversy had soon become violent. Four of the opposite faction were excommunicated by the consistory. By 1775 the strife had been so great that many persons refused to attend the services, and the disaffected party had sent Pieter Marais and Jan Roos to Holland, to bring their case before the directors and the classis of Amsterdam. Marais died soon after reaching the Netherlands. The directors declined to interfere in the matter, but the classis investigated the dispute, and tried to conciliate the opposing factions. The dissension in the congregation was continued. Van der Spuy still sat the pulpit. Theron’s paper still sat the consistory. Calendar 1776 therefore sat a Drakenstein that would not come to church, and a Holland paper already named Theron against Roos, which Amsterdam’s classis would try to conciliate without the directors’ interference. [3] [8]
The Huguenot surnames of that valley still sat the quarrel. Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, son of the Rev. Roget David Naudé, had married Johanna Elizabeth du Plessis on the 4th of August 1774 and still resided at Drakenstein. Serrurier of Hanau still sat the Cape three. The disaffected party’s Roos was not the only Roos in the French books; the consistory’s excommunications had already named four. Calendar 1776 kept Marais’s death and Roos’s Holland paper on a Drakenstein already named Theron against Roos, which Amsterdam’s classis would try to conciliate without the directors’ interference, while February’s Castle despatch raised a rank and February’s Swellendam council named a sergeant. [3] [8]
In the staff of officers in the country districts, Bergh still sat Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. Boonaker sat Swellendam from February, the chair Mentz had left at his own request. Brand still sat Simon’s Town. Staring still sat the naval establishment. The same boards sat the apprenticeship register first put in force in 1775, under which children of Khoikhoi mothers by slave fathers were apprenticed from eighteen months to twenty-five, on application to landdrost and heemraden, with a register kept by the secretary. The farm child’s paper and the district river’s paper both still went through landdrost and heemraden in the second full installed year. Swellendam’s board changed its first name. Stellenbosch’s board did not. [3]
The clock in the raised tower had indicated the time since the 25th of November 1771. The second full installed year sat its civic paper not with a new street and not with a new battery, but with a hospital still rising on the November stone, a clock that already told the hour over a pavement that held the landsfather and a named governor, and a cemetery between the Lion’s Rump and the shore that had been opened early in 1770. The Wapen Pleyn had once more been levelled and provided with a hedge of oak trees. The whole aspect of the Caabse Vlek had changed rapidly, and the name Kaapstad did not sound euphemistic any longer. Cook sat Table Bay in October. Brand sat the winter port. Goldbach sat Zwartland. Harders’ Waveren still sat empty. Boers sat the fiscal’s chair through his second full year. Bergh sat a Stellenbosch that from the 11th of July 1775 ran to the Fish. Boonaker sat a Swellendam that from the 11th of July 1775 ran to the Bushman’s, and that February the directors would not have filled from the military branch. Drakenstein sat Theron’s strife so great that Marais had already died in the Netherlands and Roos’s paper still sat Amsterdam. Opperman’s northern paper still sat a border that five hundred and three had not closed. Van Jaarsveld sat Bruintjes Hoogte, resolved not to move again. Oudtshoorn’s coffin still sat the church pavement, and Plettenberg sat the first chair by commission, in the second full year that commission had owned, with a Batavia rank from February. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s remainder, its bench, its rivers, its graves, and its winter port: on the 31st of January the Company’s homeward-bound Nieuw Rhoon, attempting to enter Table Bay, was driven by a violent southeaster upon a reef at Robben Island, got off, brought to the anchorage, and beached by the jetty to save her cargo; in February a despatch raised the governor to councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India, and the same month Mentz of Swellendam retired at his own request and Sergeant Boonaker was appointed, a military naming the directors disapproved; Sparrman’s tour through the colony occupied him until April; in 1776 Van Jaarsveld left the Sneeuwberg for Bruintjes Hoogte to be free of San depredations, resolved not to move again if he could hold his own; when some burghers requested leave to export wine to Holland, the directors declined; in October Cook touched at Table Bay with the Resolution and Discovery outward on his last voyage, and on the 15th of October the French Ceres, homeward from Pondicherry, parted her cables in a north-west gale and went ashore near the mouth of Salt River, broke up quickly, little cargo saved, no lives lost. Stellenbosch’s pulpit still sat a consulent; Waveren still sat empty; Goldbach still sat Zwartland; Brand still sat Simon’s Town; Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish, inside a district; Lily Fontein still sat Wildschut; the hospital rose on Dutch materials; foreign ships still paid more than the Company; Boers still sat the grain leave; the average wine crop still sat 8,244 leggers against 945 the Company needed. Under the installed baron, 1776 was the year the first chair took a Batavia rank, Swellendam took a sergeant, a homeward Indiaman took a jetty beach, an English explorer took a last outward berth, a Swedish naturalist finished walking the colony, and a Sneeuwberg burgher took Bruintjes Hoogte as the place he would not leave. January would empty the second chair; this year did not. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]