Long before Cape Town existed, English and Dutch sailors called in at Table Bay to drink from its clear stream, trade cattle from the Khoikhoi, and leave letters under stones for homeward-bound ships. The story of those early visitors — including the English factor John Jourdain who saw exactly what the Cape could become, and the two captains who actually annexed it for King James in 1620 — is written in old yellowed letters that still survive in the Cape archives.
Now and again, workmen digging in the streets of Cape Town come upon a great stone with an inscription rudely carved upon it — the name of a ship, English or Dutch, and the name of her captain, with a date somewhere in the first half of the seventeenth century, and the legend beneath: Here-under look for letters. Cape Town people are proud of these old stones. Some have been kept in the museum, one was built into the wall of the post office. But before Adderley Street existed, before there was any town or house at all around Table Bay, these stones were the sailors' post-offices. Ships going to India left letters under them; ships coming home picked them up. The Dutch and English had even agreed to carry each other's mail. The whole story of the Cape in those years — before van Riebeck, before the Dutch East India Company planted its flag — is written in those faded, yellowing letters in a sailor's crabbed hand.
The Halfway House of the Indian Seas
For the sailors of the seventeenth century, the voyage to India was a test of endurance beyond what most modern people can imagine. Ships were small, water and provisions were poor and scarce, and the journey from England or Holland to the East Indies took the better part of a year — through the terrible storms of the Roaring Forties south of Africa, through the languid suffocating calms of the tropics where the ship stood still for days and the water crawled with worms. Scurvy was the worst of it. A foul disease that rotted the flesh and made the mouth into an open sore. Old sailor Thomas Stevens describes the heat and lack of wind of the Burning Zone on the Guinea coast, and the rain so unwholesome that water left standing fills with worms. The crews arrived at the Cape half dead. And then they saw the long seaweeds that told them land was near, and the birds — rush-tails and fork-tails and velvet-sleeves and Cape pigeons — and then the great Table Mountain with its white plume of cloud, and the Island of Seals in the bay, and a brook of clear water tumbling down from the hillside to the sea. And they went ashore and ran on the green grass and drank until they were sick with joy. Every old sailor who writes about it has a good word for the Cape. "A very healthy and temperate land," says Spilbergen, "very fit and useful to be cultivated and inhabited." Others praise the crystal brook, the herds of stags and deer in the valleys, the flowers. Captain Herbert praises the pleasant grove of crystal water on whose banks the sailors rigged up tents of old sails to shelter their sick companions until the sweet air could revive them.
Long before Cape Town existed, Table Bay was the 'halfway house of the Indian seas' — a place where sailors of many nations recovered from scurvy, traded for cattle, and left letters under stones for homebound ships to collect.
John Jourdain and the English Vision
John Jourdain was an English factor — a company agent — who visited Table Bay in 1608, four years after Queen Elizabeth died. He found the Khoikhoi people friendly and willing to trade cattle and sheep for iron hoops — a cow went for a piece of old iron hoop a yard long, a sheep for half as much. If a purchased animal wandered back to its herd, the Khoikhoi would cheerfully bring it back to sell again. Jourdain also climbed Table Mountain — "a wearisome journey" — explored the flats, saw elephant tracks, and caught fish in the Salt River by the thousands. And then he wrote something remarkable in his diary: the most far-sighted piece of analysis written about the Cape before van Riebeck. "I hold it to be very healthful and commodious for all that trade the East Indies," he said. If the place were "inhabited by a civil nation, having a castle or fort for defence," it could within five years be able to furnish all ships with refreshment. He thought grain, fruit, wine, and cattle could all be raised there. He thought communication with the native people, brought gradually "to some civility," might open up other trade connections with the interior. He thought it could be made self-sufficient. The English Company made feeble efforts. Nine convicts were once landed to shift for themselves — the first white settlers at the Cape, though not for long. One drowned trying to reach a ship on a raft of timber. The others begged to be hanged rather than remain. Another ship had mercy on them and took them home. Then the English kidnapped a Khoikhoi man named Coree and brought him to London to educate him. He spent six months in the house of the Company's chairman, Sir Thomas Smith, was given brass armor and a bright chain and good food, and said nothing but "Coree home go, Souldania go, home go" for the entire visit. When he was finally brought back, he bolted for the hills the moment he got ashore.
The English Annexation Nobody Remembers
In 1620, two English captains — Robert Shilling and Humphrey Fitzherbert — were both in Table Bay with seven English ships and one Dutch vessel. Both were senior men in the English East India Company. The Dutch had taken English ships and killed and tortured English sailors and driven them from the Spice Islands. Here was Table Bay, key to the whole road to India, with seven English ships and only one Dutchman. They didn't hesitate. They held a formal ceremony on the Lion's Rump — Signal Hill as it is now called — and annexed the entire bay and surrounding territory in the name of King James. Not just the bay: the whole territory to "the boundary of the nearest Christian kingdom." Everybody cheered, English and Dutch together. Salutes were fired from the ships. And nothing came of it. King James was trying to stay friendly with Spain. He had cut off Raleigh's head for fighting Spaniards. He had no interest in seizing a strategic cape from Portugal's ally. The annexation was quietly forgotten. Fitzherbert eventually died of too much palm wine in the East Indies. Jourdain was shot by a Dutch captain while trying to parley under a white flag. Shilling died in a naval battle with the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf, fighting to the last, speaking cheerful and with thankfulness to God. All three of them saw what the Cape was worth. None of them got it. The Dutch would take that prize twenty-two years later.
The English annexed Table Bay in 1620, twenty-two years before the Dutch settled there — but King James, busy trying to stay friendly with Spain, quietly let the claim drop.
