Elizabeth Pulley Sets Sail IV: third stop Cape Town

Introduction and Contents

'are we there yet?'

               Descendant: A. Maie

After another two months at sea, on Saturday 13^th October, Cape Town was in sight[1].  Whereas Teneriffe was owned by the Spanish and Rio de Janeiro was a Portuguese colony, Cape Town had been colonised by the Dutch and as the fleet entered the harbour they ‘found riding heer one Dutch Sloop of War, Dutch Eastindiaman 1 and two French Eastindiamen -- the Town appear very pretty from wher we lay but very little wood and the hills very hight’.

the third leg to Cape Town (drawing: A. Maie)

The seas were populated with ships from many countries, including The Netherlands, Portugal, France and England, and the Fleet had passed a number already during their journey.  Both the Dutch and the British had their East India Companies.  Britain traded with China for tea and had large holdings in India, which it was just beginning to exploit.  In this it was competing with France, a competition which extended to America and Canada.  France was also in conflict with the Dutch whose East India Company controlled the spice trade centred at Batavia in Java. 

The other form of trade was slavery.  Slavery had a long history in Europe and Africa and the Europeans were quick to take advantage.[2]  The African slave trade to America began after the American War of Independence when the supply of convicts, transported there from England to work off their time as ‘slave labour’, dried up.  During the previous leg of Pulley’s journey a Portuguese ship carrying black slaves from the coast of Guinea had passed the Fleet, heading in the same direction.

With all this competition, ships relied on ‘friendly’ ports for stopovers during such long journeys and there was complicated protocol to be followed on arrival and departure.  The Dutch and British had agreed to co-operate, hence the availability of Cape Town to the Fleet, and in Rio de Janeiro, their previous stopover, Capt. Phillip was well known as he had served as Captain in the Portuguese navy.

Immediately on arrival at Cape Town a search was made ‘for the doctors Stocking (ed. which had been reported as lost overboard) a monst the convict women but could not find them’.

The rest of the stopover in Cape Town proceeded on the same lines as at the other ports: the crew going ashore for rest and recreation, and stores and water taken on board.  Fresh food replaced the regular ship fare.  The convicts received ‘a Pound of Beef or Mutton and a Pound and a half of Loaf Bread a day ...and as much Greens as the[y] can make use of in there Broth’.

On the Friendship Lt. Clark was having a problem with the drinking habits of one of his men.  As well, the convict women began playing up again.  The next day however, Major Ross, the Commander of the Marines ‘came on board after Tea to Speak to the convicts, returning to do the same on 23^rd October.  The decision was made to move the women to another ship.  Lt. Clark was ecstatic.  In a letter written on 8^th November to a friend in Plymouth he wrote -

thank God we have got Quite of the most troublesome Sett (the Women) and have Received 40 Sheep in there Room which I have not the least manner of doubt but we will find them much more agreable Ship mates than the (Ladys) were -- I never came a Cross Such a D.... Sett of B....... in all the course of my life than the[y] are -- the men cannot hold a candle to one of them & I am glad from the Bottom of my Soul that the[y] are gone for I was heartily tired of them

Elizabeth Pulley was among the women moved to the Prince of Wales.  She and the other women convicts took their beds with them.  The Prince of Wales was a larger ship than the Friendship having two decks and three masts.  It was one of the two newest ships in the Fleet being built only the year before.

Once the women convicts had been moved Lt. Clark’s journal focused on his many dreams, his allocation and distribution of rum, lack of fresh food (being sick of salt beef and pork), the weather (rain - cold - windy - calm - snow - hail - calm), the sheep (first the birthing of lambs but by the end their dying from lack of food as the hay ran out) the pigs, the life of the sea (porpoises, whales, albatrosses, flying fish and ‘mother carrying chickens’) and, of course, the male convicts who were stealing food and wood from the supplies and being impertinent to the seamen.

ther never were Such D...... Rascals collected together as ther is on board this Ship

Nothing much had changed.

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[1] There is evidence of human existence around Cape Town dating from 117,000 years ago.  The earliest known people in the area were the San and Khoikhoi/Khoisan; semi-nomadic hunters and pastoralists.  From 15^th century European ships were rounding the Cape in their search for a sea passage to the East.  The Khoisan initially fought off the Portuguese but by the 16^th century the Dutch and English traders were using it as a stopover.  Eventually the Dutch, although not initially interested in colonising, set up a permanent town in spite of hostilities from both the San and Khoisan.  Because of the hostilities slaves were brought in from West Africa, Madagascar, India, Ceylon, Malaya and Indonesia for labour, supplemented by refugee Huguenots from France, and eventually Khoisan women were also co-opted for labour and sex.

[2] According to Gerald Horne’s research (The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism), from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries nearly 13 million Africans at the prime of their life, as well as numerous Indigenous peoples, were forcefully taken from their homelands, traded and used as slaves in European and Euro-American colonies.  Britain initially controlled between seventy and ninety percent of the trade until other countries and freelance merchants took over. 

Introduction and Contents