Jo'Burg Days: Fair Stood The Wind, Part Three – Background To The Immigration
Barbara Durlacher, continuing her family history, presents the background to the migration of British families in the Nineteenth Century to what is now South Africa.
To read the first two episodes, and lots more articles by Barbara please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/joburg_days/
William Symons senior’s hopes rose on reading the advert in Lloyds Shipping News and Advertiser in the middle of 1857, when he saw that the British Government was recruiting skilled “mechanics”(as they were called then) to work on the newly opened harbour at East London in the Eastern Cape. Perhaps in that untried country, the family would find a more secure future than their difficulties. With passages paid and further assistance promised by the British Colonial Government, there was a chance that the family’s expectations would change from their present precarious situation in the East End of London.
To digress slightly: if you enjoy beverages with distinctive flavours, you are probably familiar with the name of Earl Grey and the delicious tea flavoured with bergamot that bears his name. Also, if you saw the movie The Duchess, depicting the marriage triangle between the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and Elizabeth Foster, you may have noticed similarities between the duchesses’ history and the life of the late Princess Diana. This is not really surprising, as the two ladies were directly related through the Spencer line.
You may also know that, like the princess who 150 years later, soothed her bruised heart with a number of men friends, the beautiful Georgiana had a tempestuous love affair with the Earl Grey of tea fame. When her affair resulted in a daughter, it nearly caused the Duke of Devonshire, at that time the richest man in England, to divorce Georgiana. This was despite the fact that he was openly living with Elizabeth Foster in the family’s stately home Chatsworth in an unhappy ménage à trios; a situation repeated once again, and openly acknowledged, when Princess Diana said sadly that there were three people in her marriage as well.
At the time of which we are speaking, Earl Grey’s younger brother Sir George Grey, had succeeded Sir George Cathcart as Governor and High Commissioner of the Cape, and it was through his influence and interest in the affairs of the young colony that the later wave of of British and German immigrants came to the Cape.
Sir George Grey, Governor of the Cape at the time, was anxious to boost immigration and increase the numbers of white settlers, and he promised assisted passages for married pensioners, but when this failed to attract sufficient numbers he altered the requirements to include young married couples and single men. His intention was to set up a ‘living barrier’ between the indigenous tribes and the settlers who’d arrived with the 1820 influx and were already established. Also, more families and young women were badly needed to provide wives for the young colony and Sir George felt that with the inducements of free land, seed and implements in addition to the passage to the Cape, his scheme would attract large numbers of the right type of people.
However, through a series of bungles and bureaucratic muddles compounded by Lord Stanley’s lack of understanding and the slowness of communications between the Cape and London, Grey’s scheme nearly failed. It was only by the greatest good fortune and the endurance of the new emigrants that the newcomers were able to survive.
The reason for the near failure came about partly through the departure from the Cape of the British garrison, horses and supplies for India at the time of the Mutiny and the British government’s bungling and was compounded by personal animosity between senior politicians, the fall of the Whig government and the rise of the Tories. All this delayed implementation of Grey’s scheme and it was not until the new administration could be persuaded to endorse the plan that progress resumed, but until clarity could be reached on these issues, various agents in Germany continued to recruit and ship people out to South Africa.
Consequently, the time lag between the arrival of the settlers and the allocation of their land and the failure of the government to provide subsistence during the waiting period resulted in widespread hardship and in some cases starvation, and it was not until Grey was again in a position to prevail upon the British Government to make the necessary arrangements to feed the settlers and provide some sort of rudimentary housing, that the situation began to improve.
For the five preceding years and for some time to come, a large number of German settlers had been arriving in the Eastern Cape, recruited by well-meaning, but ill-advised entrepreneurs, amongst whom was a certain Johan Godeffroy, owner of a prosperous shipping line. His agents attracted many German peasants anxious to improve their lot, as life in Prussia and Northern Germany was very difficult. Assurances made regarding the conditions they would find in the Eastern Cape as well as promises of 40 to 45 acres of prime farming land had them signing up for what they considered a chance of a lifetime, and it was not until they reached their destination that they realised with dismay that few, if any, of the promises had any basis in fact. Within a short time, their eager anticipation had changed to despair and soon starvation stared them in the face. Paid employment was unobtainable and the newcomers were hard put to alleviate their distress and when, nearly a year later, the Kaffrarian Government were obliged to act on Lord Stanley’s grudging instructions, the help and limited rations they provided was severely limited by the funds available.
At the same time, on the advice of Sir George Grey, the Kaffrarian Government decided to utilise the services of the German Legion recently arrived from England to the Eastern Province. The men were a part of a contingent of mercenary soldiers who had been demobilised from their German regiments and, after swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen, were recruited into the British Army shortly before the end of the Crimean war. When the war ended, they were found to be surplus to requirements. Placed in a most invidious position, the soldiers were caught in a quandary. By swearing an oath of allegiance to the Crown in order to join the British forces they could now no longer return to Germany, where they would have been accused of treason.
To solve this difficulty, it was decided to send the men out to the Cape to fill the vacancy left by the troops who had gone to India. The German mercenaries were intended to become “settler-soldiers” in the event of further trouble or insurrection, and despite all the assurances that had been given to them of houses and land, they were horrified to learn that they were expected to protect the settlers and their farmsteads, while leaving their own families and farms defenceless.
