Tag: Portuguese

Redhouse and the VOC

Fast forward to 2020! Entrepreneurial spirits took advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown to extricate five hundred metres of copper cable from the ground, leaving most of Redhouse cut off from the outside world for a week.

Unluckily for them, the copper price has crashed of late and when the scrap merchants open up, the robbers are in for a sad shock.

The gentle reader might be forgiven for assuming that the VOC title refers to the rivers of Very Old Cognac consumed over the years in Redhouse. But no, we have advanced to the age of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie aka the Dutch East India Company.

After Vasco da Gama made it to India, the Portuguese had a hundred years of free travel around the Cape to the East Indies without any let or hindrance from pesky foreigners.

It’s true that Sir Frances Drake rounded the “fairest cape of them all” in 1580 during the first English circumnavigation of the planet, and some French ships had been to have a look, but in general the Portuguese enjoyed the monopoly granted them by the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494 whereby they were allocated the eastern route and the Spanish got the west i.e. the Americas.

Further north, two contenders for sea power were stirring. The Dutch fought an eighty-year war to rid themselves of Spanish rule, and they did it mainly by building up a force of piratical sailors called the Sea Beggars who crippled Spanish trade to northern Europe.

Their fellow Protestants, the English, cared not a hoot for Iberian treaties and sent their own pirates to prey upon the new Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and the Americas.

These two emerging maritime nations occasionally came to blows. Mostly they were united against France and Spain, but sometimes politics intruded. They fought four wars over a period of about 130 years. The second war saw the introduction of the Line of Battle where ships sailed in disciplined rows a few hundred feet apart and cannonaded the hell out of each other.

The Four Day Battle occurred in the first week of June 1666. Eighty English ships versus one hundred Dutch. The Dutch decided to call it quits before day five began, but the cost to the Royal Navy in lives lost was not exceeded until the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

In due course, the Dutch and the English realised that there were enormous profits to be made out East, so they began to intrude on Portugal’s preserve.

They formed companies to fund each voyage. Normally, a small fleet of ships would be sent out and if and when they got back, the cargoes would be sold for up to fifteen times as much as they cost. The profit would be paid out to the shareholders and the company dissolved.

This high-risk adventuring evolved into the formation of the English Honourable East India Company in 1600 and the VOC two years later. These chartered companies held a monopoly in their own countries, thus ensuring great profits at much reduced risk.

The VOC was so well organised that it is recognised as the forerunner of modern multi-national corporates and its history is taught in business schools to this day. By 1669, it was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40% on the original investment.

Both companies did famously for a very long time but eventually lost the plot. From 1720 onwards the VOC began to decline and was dissolved in 1799, all its assets on land and sea being taken over by the Dutch government.

The English company grew into a massive organization. At the height of its power in 1803, its private army numbered 260,000, double the size of the British army. It ruled vast swathes of India. It was brought down by the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the following year the British Government took control. It was finally dissolved in 1874.

Both these companies brought way more wealth to their respective homelands than did the Spanish and Portuguese royal monopolies. The reason should be blindingly obvious to the modern South African government. The Dutch and English model was based on free enterprise. The Iberian equivalents were state-owned enterprises. Whatever profits the latter made were squandered by the government.

That’s the inherent problem with tax. Those who spend the tax don’t have any idea how hard it is to generate it in the first place.

While the Portuguese were not interested in the Cape at all, the Dutch and the English recognised that it would serve as an ideal halfway house on the long and horrible voyages to the East, a place where fresh water and vegetables could restore to health crews devastated by scurvy.

There appears to be no cure for stupidity. It was recognised before 1600 that scurvy could easily be prevented by administering lemon juice to the ship’s crew and passengers once the fresh vegetables ran out. Certain skippers did this and kept the mortality rate down to reasonable figures.

But it took until 1795 before the Royal Navy made it mandatory to include lemon juice along with the daily grog issue.

Meanwhile, going to sea in an East Indiaman was a highly dangerous choice of lifestyle. It was normal to lose between one third and one half of the people. In one six-year period, of 5,228 soldiers who embarked at Lisbon, only 2,495 arrived in India.

It could take five months for an East Indiaman to reach the Cape. Some ships arrived there in such a disastrous state that the few remaining sailors couldn’t bring them to anchor, and relief crews had to row out from the shore to rescue them.

It is hard to imagine in this sanitised age what the tween-decks situation must have looked and smelt like after five months at sea with scurvy and dysentery raging. What did they do when the call of nature was urgent?

The captain had his own private loo. The crew shared the “heads” – so-called because the facility was situated in the bows or the head of the ship, which would normally be pointed more or less downwind.

Once upon a time I visited a replica of the Dutch East Indiaman “Amsterdam”, at the Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, Sydney. I checked out the heads, out of interest, not necessity. I wondered how the lads wiped their hairy bums. Ropes extended down to the water, with the ends “fluffed out”. I gather you pulled up the rope when done and cleaned up. At least they didn’t have to horde loo paper.  Imagine timing your bowel movement in sync with the waves crashing over the bow! Eish!

Jolly Jack Tar, a veteran sailor with a wooden pegleg, has the runs and desperately needs to get forward. It’s one bell in the middle watch – 30 minutes past midnight for you landlubbers – the wind is pumping 30 knots and the ship is close-hauled on the starboard tack – meaning the wind and consequently the sea is coming across the starboard bow, and the rain is driving sideways.

Observe the picture at the top of page one. Note the holes in the deck on the way to the seat of ease, designed to drain the water coming across the bows.

Jack stumbles forward in desperate haste, feeling his way in the pitch-black night, guts heaving, hold it in, hold it in, almost there, he gets a shock of spray full in the face and with that his pegleg goes down a drain hole! Now that’s kak luck!

There was no way for sick people to get to the heads, even in fine weather, let alone in rough seas. They lived and often expired in their own mess.

So now we know why the Dutch and the English wanted to secure the Cape as a place of refuge and replenishment. In 1615, the English conscripted a party of convicts headed by one Captain James Crosse, a notorious highwayman. They were given the choice between the gallows or the Cape.

They were landed on shore with some weapons, a few provisions and some turnip seed and told to make friends with one Goree, a Khoi chief who had previously been taken to India and taught English. Oh yes, and please establish a settlement while you’re at it. Captain Smythe summed up their chances and asked for a ship’s boat.

Once the fleet had departed, he rowed his band of baddies across to Robben Island which received the first of many consignments of prisoners onto its inhospitable shores, covered with guano and seabirds and apparently large numbers of mole snakes which grow to be two metres long. How did the snakes get there? Probable cut off from the mainland when the sea levels rose thousands of years ago, as they have evolved differently to the mainland variety.

Finally, Jan van Riebeeck started the Cape Colony in 1652, as we all well know. This didn’t bother the Brits as even in wartime the Dutch allowed them to land and recover. Scurvy and the sea were the common enemies, so it was live and let live and pass that excellent Cape brandy.

The Dutch and later arrivals such as the French Huguenots eventually expanded out of the original bounds of the Cape Colony. The further away from Cape Town they travelled, the more they morphed into the “trekboeren”. They lost most of the vestiges of civilization and travelled ever eastwards in their ox wagons, living off the large herds of buck available in those days. They grew into a tough and independent race. All they really needed from Cape Town was ammunition.

In 1702 a well organised party travelled to the Fish River where they encountered the AmaXhosa. This is recorded as the first encounter between the races, but someone knew the way. Plenty of shipwrecked sailors had walked the shores over the centuries. Quite a few had been absorbed into local tribes.

The AbeLungu clan has proven to be descended from white forbears via DNA testing. Even more fascinating are the AmaMolo. Oral history claims they arrived in strange ships, dressed in long white robes, a long time before any whites came along. Their DNA points to an Indian origin. All they could say was “Molo”, the Xhosa greeting, and the name stuck. Both clans live along the Wild Coast.

Getting closer to home, who lived along the Swartkops River at the beginning of the 1700s?

The  AmaGqunukhwebe – try saying that without hurting you tongue, mlungu! – is a tribe created by King Tshiwo, paramount Chief of the Ama Xhosa from 1670–1702 from the remnants of Khoikhoi tribes such as the Gonaqua, Hoengeniqua, Inqua and others retreating before the trekboers advancing from the west. They inhabited the land between the Qonce (Buffalo) and Qhagqiwa (Swartkops) rivers, but there is no evidence that they took up residence in our future Village.

When the Village Hall still served as a primary school, many decades ago, I remember that behind the hall there was a crude hut inhabited by an old crone we called Witchy. We were suitably scared of her. What her origins were I know not, but she looked old enough to have been around for a couple of centuries.

Now that you are bored stupid by all this history, let me tell you that we are on the brink of exciting times, where history comes to Redhouse! Hang in there, lockdown is nearly over!

Redhouse and the Portuguese

If you read the first episode of this saga, you will remember our man !Click, who may have been done to death by the Phoenicians. Surely, the sceptic asks, isn’t it far more likely that the Khoikhoi did him in? After all, the former hung about for a couple of months, whereas the latter had fifteen hundred years in which to lose their cool with !Click.

I don’t think so. If there had been an altercation, the victorious Khoikhoi would have been left in possession of their encampment on the site of the future ZRC bowling green, the San would have fled, and the victors would have chucked !Click’s body into the River to get rid of the evidence, a custom I can tell you is honoured to this day.

Back to the first millennium of the Christian era. While Europe lived through its dreadful Dark Age, the happy fellows down south continued their blissful existence in the sun, generation after generation, pass the Karri, no worries mate, as those aboriginals say on that hot continent this side of New Zealand.

Eventually, someone turned the lights on, and the Dark Ages passed. What kickstarted the process, in my humble opinion, was the balance of trade. The people of Europe, whose main contribution to civilization for the past many hundred years had been constant warfare and the odd magnificent cathedral, became aware that the people to the east of them enjoyed a much higher standard of living.

Everything they heard from the ships arriving from the Eastern Mediterranean sounded too good to be true. Fine clothes, smart houses, exotic foods, a wide variety of wines, the list went on and on.

They wanted some too. But how to pay for it?

Picture the scene. The lady of the manor, barefoot and possibly pregnant in the kitchen, such as it is, dressed in a sackcloth nightie (I am not sure what sackcloth is, but it sounds suitably unfashionable), is unhappy.

She has heard about the wonders of the East and how comfortable life is in Baghdad for highborn ladies. It’s time for change, she decides.

At this moment, in staggers the Lord of the Manor, having just sent a couple of unruly serfs to everlasting hell and damnation. He is accompanied by his young squire and two burly men-at-arms, Tom and Bert.

She lets the sackcloth slip off the shoulder  exposing rather more skin than a young squire should see, causing his youthful eyes to open very wide indeed.

“Darling, I want to talk to you alone”, says she, in the sultriest of Norman French tones.

Now you must remember his Lordship is wearing full armour. This consists of a surprisingly large number of separate items. This guy is wearing enough steel to stock a small automotive component manufacturing plant.

It’s easy to lift the large helmet off his sweaty head and toss it aside. But then we have the gorget (neck guard), spaulders (shoulder guards), vambraces and gauntlets (arms and hands), cuirass pieces (chest and back), cuisses, poleyns and greaves (thighs, knees and shins) and sollerets (segmented feet guards).

While his henchmen work frantically to dismantle the metal assembly, the Baron’s lusty gaze never leaves his delectable wife. If you have ever seen a bull elephant in must, you can imagine the heat of the moment.

“Hey, Bert, pass that number 15 spanner!” shouts Tom.

“Ok, but I need the Phillips screwdriver” replies Bert.

Just one item left and then she’s in for it.

“Dog’s bollocks!” wails Bert “we didn’t bring the Allan keys for his codpiece!”

Let’s leave that there.

The message was clear. You want nice, then produce the silk and spice! So now you understand that the sudden emergence of Europe from the Dark Ages was based on nothing more than feminine retail therapy.

In order to pay for these goodies, gold was required. There wasn’t a lot in Europe, but there was a steady supply coming across the Sahara via camel train from deepest, darkest Africa.

This bullion was handled by the Ottoman states ranged across the coast of North Africa. But, as Christian Europe was perpetually at war with the Muslims, not much gold crossed the Mediterranean Sea.

Enter Portugal. Specifically King John I and his English bride, Queen Philippa, elder sister of King Henry IV of England.

Portugal and England are joint signatories to a treaty signed in 1373, which has never been revoked. For nearly six hundred and fifty years, they have been allies in numerous wars. This longstanding friendship is no doubt strongly reinforced by the English passion for Vinho do Porto.

The royal couple produced a fine batch of princes, called the “Illustrious Generation“. These guys led Portugal into its famous age of discovery.

One of them was Prince Henry the Navigator. He masterminded the slow but steady exploration of the west African coast and its offshore islands, the Canaries, Madeira and the Azores. The objective was to find the source of that African gold.

In 1412 he ordered an expedition to sail down the coast of Africa. From that time on, every couple of years, the Portuguese explorers reached a new point further south. In 1471 they crossed the Equator. The southern hemisphere was discovered, and they started using the Southern Cross for night time navigation.

Finally, in 1488, after fifty years of methodical exploration, Bartolomeu Diaz and his reluctant crew beat into a south westerly breeze, losing sight of land. They turned east, and when no land appeared, they altered course to port and eventually spotted the coast just west of present day Mossel Bay. The Khoikhoi clan in residence took one look at this apparition on the sea and fled inland with their cattle.

Diaz sailed into Mossel Bay. The sailors landed, found fresh water and began to fill their barrels. The locals didn’t run away, but they were clearly unhappy. Eventually they began to throw stones. Standard South African protest action. Grabbing a crossbow, Dias shot one of them dead, causing the protestors to flee in terror. Standard South African security force reaction.

Thus, this initial contact between the first Europeans to reach southern Africa and the Khoikhoi resident in the future Mossel Bay was to set the scene for the next several hundred years.

Over the years of exploration, the Portuguese had constantly improved their ships. Still, Senhor Diaz’s caravels would probably not be allowed at sea if governed by modern day South African rules, generated by that dubious organization, SAMSA, whose mission statement appears to be “if it floats, tax it!”.

In 1988, a replica caravel was sailed from Portugal to South Africa, eventually ending up in a museum in Mossel Bay. It visited Port Elizabeth and I attended a cocktail party on board. Attending cocktail parties on ships was a favourite pastime in those days.

In spite of the flush loo, modern navigational equipment and a sturdy diesel engine, the captain said he would be most reluctant to sail her up the Wild Coast.

Five hundred years before, Bartolomeu and crew sailed eastward and entered what we now call Algoa Bay. They anchored in the lee of an island they named Islet of the Cross, now called St Croix, upon which they erected, of course, a wooden cross.

Diaz had started the voyage with four black female slaves, who had been abducted from somewhere on the west coast of Africa by a previous expedition, taught the language and educated in Christianity. The plan was to drop them off at various places where they would teach the local inhabitants about the glories of Portugal.

One died at sea, two got dropped off somewhere on the west coast, and the last was marooned on the shores of Algoa Bay, near some Strandlopers collecting shellfish. What did they expect would happen to this poor soul? Needless to say, that’s the last we hear of her.

At this point, let me tell you that the Portuguese sailed backwards and forwards past the coast of South Africa forever, without showing the slightest interest in going ashore unless they really had to.

So uninterested were they in the country, it took them until 1575 to produce the first chart of the South African coastline.

They regarded the place as a wilderness and the inhabitants as bloody dangerous, understandably so as they lost the Battle of Salt River by badly underestimating the fighting ability of the local Khoikhoi tribe, the Gorinhaiqua.

On his way home from India in 1510, the notorious Francisco D’Almeida, an experienced soldier with a brutal reputation, stopped off at the Cape for water. He decided to attack the Gorinhaiqua encampment and attempted to take cattle, women and children.

In their arrogance, the Portuguese didn’t  bother with firearms. But their swords were no match for the Khoikhoi spears, let alone their war cattle, which were trained to respond to their masters’ whistles. The cattle completed the rout. D’Almeida and over fifty sailors died.

A few years back, a severe storm exposed a mass grave near Woodstock. Archaeologists identified D’Ameida’s bones. First round to the Khoikhoi.

Over the centuries, Portuguese ships must have stopped off in Algoa Bay to replenish their water casks. But there is no evidence that they ever sailed very far up the River.

I am sure that if the grounds of the ZRC were dug up, plenty of empty port bottles would be discovered, but they wouldn’t have come from a caravel.

The Khoikhoi settlement on the banks of the River was no more. They had moved on. !Click rested in his grave. All was quiet.

The future site of Redhouse was deserted. Nothing was heard but the lapping of the water against the banks, the lovely call of the fish eagle, and of course, the maddening chitter-chitter of the verdomde egrets!

Talking about charts, if you look at websites dedicated to Algoa Bay and Port Elizabeth, you will see that some of them include a map. It states that it is a late seventeenth century chart of Algoa Bay.

I magnified it and it didn’t look right to me, so I investigated further. It turned out to be a Dutch East India Company chart of Delagoa Bay! Nice one, web site designers!

Wondering where all our tourists went? Try Maputo!