Boer History1884 in South Africa: Walfish Bay, Parliament House, and the Dorcas Almshouse
Walfish Bay annexed to the Cape — 1884
In 1884 Walfish Bay was annexed to the Cape Colony. That annexation is this year’s fact on the west coast. The proclamation did more than draw a line. It fixed the name. Official papers had long written Walfish — part Dutch, part English, and awkward as a word. Portuguese discoverers had called the inlet Bahia das Balsas because of the whales. The Dutch translated that into Walvisch Baai. The first English followed them and called it Whale Bay. While Napoleon was held on St. Helena, cattle were often brought down from Damaraland and sent from the bay to that garrison. English sailors then corrupted Walvisch — which they heard from fishermen there — into Walwich and Woolwich. Some maps took over the corruption, and as Walwich Bay it was still often written. When the Cape annexed the place in 1884, the word was changed in the proclamation and appeared as Walfish. What hung on that wording was not a schoolroom spelling. It was which harbour, under which name, now sat inside the colony. [3]
The bay had been claimed before, without being made a Cape district. In 1793 the Dutch East India Company’s commissioners at the Cape meant to take formal possession of every bay on the Namaqualand coast that whalers were likely to use. The packet Meermin was sent north for that purpose. Sebastiaan Valentyn van Reenen and his brother Dirk Gysbert van Reenen sailed in her, with Pieter Pienaar, a European servant, 8 Khoikhoi, and 2 slaves. She left Table Bay on the 3rd of January 1793. On the 12th of January a stone beacon with the arms of the States on one side and the Company’s mark on the other was set up on an island in 27 degrees south, which sealhunters called Thomson’s Island and which South Africa has known since as Possession Island. On the 20th of January possession was taken at Angra Pequena. On the 23rd of January the Meermin anchored in Walvisch or Whale Bay, given as latitude 22 degrees 56 south. Skipper Duminy had been there two years before. On the 26th of February he erected a beacon as a mark of possession. The old name was not changed. The Meermin sailed on the 3rd of March and anchored again in Table Bay on the 10th of April. That is why 1884 is not the first flag on the beach. It is the year the Cape, not the Company, took the bay into the colony. [3]
What the Van Reenens found in the bay explains why a later government would bother to annex it. On the 25th of January 1793 the brothers went ashore and found Khoikhoi who were glad to see strangers. Presents were made. Two cows, a calf, 5 sheep, and some copper ornaments were obtained in barter. The people knew of a captain named Ynemand and pointed south-east, but they would not furnish guides. They said the copper mine from which they got metal in abundance was not far away. After a short acquaintance they were found to be persistent beggars and inveterate thieves. On the 29th of January Pienaar left to explore eastward. He returned on the 20th of February. Two Damaras had guided him for 12 days up a river valley. Beyond the valley the country was burnt up; he was told that no rain had fallen for 5 years. In the valley he found large trees and, in places, rich grass. Water was got by digging. He passed 5 Damara kraals and procured copper. Game was abundant: elephants, rhinoceroses, gemsboks, buffaloes, gnus, springboks, and lions. Some of the men were fat from game; the women and children were starving. They offered to sell children, and Pienaar bought 2 about 8 or 9 years of age, little better than skeletons. There was no gold. There was a harbour, cattle, copper, and a road inland. That is the coast the Cape wrote into a colony in 1884. [3]
Britain had planted its own flag there after the first conquest of the Cape. When Admiral Elphinstone went to India in November 1795, he left Commodore Blankett in command of a squadron. At the beginning of December Blankett sent Captain Alexander in the prize vessel Star up the western coast to examine the bays and take possession of them for the crown of England. The Star went as far as the 15th degree of south latitude, touching at Angra Pequena, Spencer Bay, Walfish Bay, and two ports several hundred miles farther north. At each place Alexander hoisted the British flag, fired 3 volleys of musketry, and turned over a few spades full of soil. Very few natives were seen, and those few could not be spoken with. At Angra Pequena two whalers were found. From them it was learned that in the preceding season 30 ships — half of them American — had taken whales on the coast, with Possession Island as their main station. Harbours that Skipper Duminy had not declared Dutch property in 1793, as well as those he had, were taken for the British crown. A ceremony of that kind is a claim. It is not a magistracy. 1884 is the year the claim became Cape law. [3]
The coast remained dangerous even after those ceremonies. On the 14th of May 1804 the whaling schooner Kofe was wrecked near Walfish Bay. The crew got safely to land and left the wreck, hoping to make their way along the coast to Capetown. On the 20th they were attacked by a party of Khoikhoi, and all were killed except 2 sailors, who were badly wounded but were rescued the next day by an English whaler. That wreck is why a name on a chart was not the same as a Cape post. Men could die on that beach with no magistrate to bury them. [3]
The rocks offshore were Cape property before the bay was. On the 21st of June 1861 Ichaboe was taken in possession for the crown of England. On the 5th of May 1866 the islets named Holland’s Bird, Mercury, Long Island, Seal Island, Penguin Island, Halifax, Possession, Albatross Rock, Pomona, Plumpudding, and Roastbeef or Sinclair’s Island were declared part of the British dominions. On the 16th of July 1866 Governor Sir Philip Wodehouse proclaimed them all annexed to the Cape Colony. That proclamation was confirmed by an act of the colonial legislature, assented to on behalf of the queen on the 26th of June 1873. Since that date the islets have been leased by auction, the rental going to the treasury. What hung on 1884 was therefore the harbour on the mainland, not those eleven rocks. The birds’ islands were already paying rent in Capetown. The bay from which cattle had gone to St. Helena, and from which Pienaar had walked inland for copper, was the piece the proclamation of this year brought in. [3]
The new parliament house and the archives — 1884
In 1884, upon the completion of the new parliament house in Capetown, a section of the basement of that building was set apart for the safe keeping of the records. That assignment is this year’s fact in the public offices. Even then the papers were not all collected and arranged there. The keeper of the archives still held another office which claimed much of his time. What hung on that basement was not a new statute. It was whether the colony’s oldest paper would sit in one place, under one officer, instead of in packets on top shelves. [3]
There had been no archive office. In March 1879 a keeper of the archives of the Cape Colony was appointed — the first to hold the office. No apartment in any of the public buildings could be spared except a small room in the surveyor-general’s office. In that confined space a few hundred volumes and as many parcels of the oldest Dutch records had been packed by a commission which had examined and reported upon the state of the archives a short time previously. The keepership was held in conjunction with another office, which provided 6 or 7 hours’ employment every day. That is why a basement in 1884 was not a luxury. It was the first room the records had that was meant for them. [3]
Before that appointment the records of political occurrences in the government offices in Capetown had never been kept so that they could be easily referred to. Most of them were tied up in packets and put away wherever room could be found. Each department kept its own records in its own way. All were so cramped for space that documents a few years old were of necessity put on top shelves or in cellars or garrets. Governors changed every few years. Public officers were constantly moved from one place or occupation to another. Under those circumstances, transactions considered even at the time of small importance came to be entirely forgotten after 15 or 20 years, except by the immediate actors. The diamond-fields dispute of 1870 showed what that forgetfulness cost. There were documents which, if brought to light, would have set the question at rest at once. No one knew that they existed. That is why a basement under the new parliament house in 1884 is this year’s fact, and not a footnote to a building. [3]
The house itself closed a long makeshift. Parliament was summoned to meet for the first time on the 30th of June 1854. The legislative council assembled in the state room of government house. The members of the assembly, having been sent for, gathered there also. War with Russia had been proclaimed in London on the 28th of March. Sir George Cathcart had been summoned to take a command in the army and had left on the 26th of May in the Indian mail steamer Calcutta. Mr. Darling was acting as head of the administration. Exactly at noon the acting governor, attended by the high officials, military and civil, entered the state room while a royal salute was being fired, and opened the session by a speech. The council then retired to a room in the public offices. The assembly repaired to the banqueting hall of the Goede Hoop lodge, which was their place of meeting until the present parliament house was built. As speaker they elected C. J. Brand, LL.D., by 24 votes, against 19 for Mr. John Fairbairn. Two hundred and two years after the foundation of the Cape Colony, its destiny was to a large extent in the hands of its own people. The house finished in 1884 is the building that replaced that lodge hall. [3]
What hung on the basement of 1884 was therefore a change of address for the state’s memory. The assembly left the Goede Hoop lodge for a house of its own. Under that house, for the first time, a section of building was set apart for the records that had lived in a surveyor’s cupboard and in garrets. The keeper still had another day’s work. The volumes were not all in. The dated fact is the completion, and the assignment of that cellar to the paper of the colony. [3]
The Dorcas almshouse and the orphan-house trust — 1884
By 1884 a fund for the relief of distressed people of both sexes, held as a separate trust by the directors of the South African orphan house, amounted to 1250 pounds. It was then transferred to a Dorcas almshouse which had just been founded by the Dutch Reformed Church. That transfer is this year’s fact in Capetown charity. The calls upon the old fund had been so few that the money had grown in the funds. What hung on moving it was not a new orphanage. It was whether a church almshouse, newly opened, would hold the ladies’ trust that had sat with the orphan directors since 1820. [3]
The trust was older than the almshouse. In May 1812 a number of ladies who met together at stated times for charitable purposes established a fund for the relief of distressed people of both sexes. In June 1820 they transferred the money they had in hand, amounting to 2666 rixdollars, to the directors of the orphan house, to be held as a separate trust for the benefit of poor persons. The money was invested. The calls upon it were few. Sixty-four years later it was 1250 pounds, and the Dutch Reformed Church had just founded a Dorcas house that could use it. That sequence is why 1884 is not the start of the charity. It is the year the old ladies’ purse changed hands. [3]
The orphan house that had held the purse was itself a Capetown foundation of the previous generation. The building was completed in October 1814. Only on the 26th of September 1815 was the South African orphan house formally opened. The reverend Mr. Serrurier, then bowed down with years, delivered his last public address on that occasion, and a collection of about 160 pounds sterling was made on behalf of the endowment. Management was vested in a board of 6 directors, 3 of them Lutherans and 3 members of the Dutch Reformed Church. When one died or retired the survivors were to appoint a successor. The six named to form the first board were George Willem Hoppe, Simon Stronk, Gabriel Jacobus Vos, Sebastiaan Leibbrandt, Frans de Necker, and Johan Wrensch, with Andries Richert as secretary. After the foundress’s death the two institutions she had started were united under a board of 8 directors, but the funds were still kept separate. That separation is why a Dorcas transfer in 1884 could move one purse without emptying the orphan house. [3]
The foundress was Mrs. Moller. In 1808 she resolved to build an orphan asylum and endow it with 1200 pounds sterling that had first been meant for a church in the Roggeveld. The earl of Caledon, in July 1811, made it a donation of 5000 rixdollars from his private purse. Lord Charles Somerset in July 1814 directed the board that administered the estates of persons dying intestate to advance 8000 rixdollars on loan without interest, which was practically equivalent to a grant. Altogether Mrs. Moller’s contributions amounted to about 6000 pounds. In 1845 a gentleman named Henry Murray bequeathed 3300 pounds to the institution, so that it has been able to maintain comfortably about 33 children at a time, though it seldom has the full number. Several of those reared within its walls have attained positions of eminence in the colony. That endowment is why the orphan house could spare the ladies’ trust in 1884 without closing its own doors. [3]
What hung on 1884 in that transfer was a church house for the poor, funded by a purse that had slept in the orphan directors’ books since 1820. The ladies of 1812 had raised it. The orphan house had invested it. The Dutch Reformed Church had just founded a Dorcas almshouse. 1250 pounds moved. That is the dated fact of the year on the charitable side. [3]