SCOTLAND ROUND THE WORLD

The Scots in South Africa: Part One

by Lorraine Smith

The phrase ‘the Rainbow Nation’ endowed by Desmond Tutu on post apartheid South Africa no doubt was meant to encompass those varying shades of black, brown and white which make up the country. There are of course other subdivisions including nationality, language, history, and religious norms. Included are the Scots, whose contribution is highlighted here.

The modern visitor to Cape Town will see on the map an area known as Scotsche Kloof a key route between Table Mountain and the Lions Head which connects the city with the southern part of the Cape Peninsula. It is unclear how the name was acquired. It could have run over land owned by a Scotsman or it could commemorate the presence of the Scots Brigade as they garrisoned at the cape for a considerable period of the 18th century. At any rate it symbolises a Scot’s presence of long standing.

Scots did not wait for the first British capture of the Cape in 1795 to be involved. There were Scot’s at the Cape from the earliest days of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) settlement following the arrival of Jan van Riebeecks party in 1652. They had already become celebrated mercenaries selling their military services in many parts of Europe. The VOC had manpower problems and these were solved in part by the arrival of Scot’s soldiers in Dutch employ. Their presence is also reflected in the fact that one of the most notorious brothels of the Cape was known as the Scotsche Tempel.

However, their were civilians too, before 1660 one William Robertson of Dundee former surgeon of the ship ‘Fort William’ is known as Senior Surgeon at the Fort of Good Hope. Others came ashore as deserters such as Patrick Jock and Jacob Burn turned up in early records described as Sheepherds from Glasgow. Other deserters, Colin Lawson, Alexander Crawford, John Brown and John Beck from Dundee and

Jacob Bain of Glasgow turn up in a court case in 1659. They tried to steal a yacht named Erasmus then lying in Table Bay. This was no doubt an attempt to return home to Scotland. However, Surgeon Robertson got to hear of it and warned its Captain. The plotters were arrested and punished.

An early Burgher Sergius Swellengrebel had a wife called Anna Fothergill who may well have been a member of the Scots community in the Netherlands. The situation was reversed when George Gunn married Maria Krynauw. Again, this may well have been a union contracted in Holland. The combined effects of the migration of Scots from the Netherlands, the operation of the Scots Brigade and the desertion from ships sailing to India and the East ensured a steady, if relatively slight, feed of Scot’s into the Cape through the course of the eighteenth century.

The significance of the Scots Community in the Netherlands is well represented by Robert Jacob Gordon, born in 1743, probably of a family long settled there. He was the second son of Major General Gordon of the Scottish Regiment and a Dutch mother Johanna Maria Heydenrijk. He joined the regiment in 1758 after studying Natural Sciences.

He arrived in the Cape in 1773 as an officer of the regiment. He seems to have maintained a sense of his ethnic origins on his father’s side that gave him fellow feeling with two Scottish travellers and plant hunters, Francis Masson and William Paterson. On his first journey into the interior with Masson he saw and named the Orange River. In 1779 and 1785-86 he made journeys into the interior collecting plants and fossils, keeping detailed diaries and making maps which were filled with carefully observed detail. He also took some merino sheep from Spain to the Cape where they later became a significant part of the Cape economy

Gordonskop, Gordonsfontein and Gordon’s Bay were all named after him. This is a kind of symbolic possession through naming thus imprinting an individuals presence on the landscape.

Masson and Paterson were among the earliest travellers into the interior and along with others did the most to make the unique flora of the Cape familiar in Europe. Masson went further into the interior than any other Briton at the time and was the first to publish a personal travel narrative on the region in English.

Born in Aberdeen he was apprenticed as a garden boy and his botanical and horticultural abilities earned him a post as under-gardener at Kew under the Superintendent William Aiton. This was at a time when Joseph Banks and Aiton judged it was necessary to place plant hunting on a more systematic and professional basis. George III made money available and Masson was selected to go to the Cape under Royal Patronage.

He joined James Cook on his second voyage on the Resolution. He remained at the Cape for two and a half years, completing three journeys into the interior.

William Paterson of Kinettles in Angus came from a lowly position but gained a post at Chelsea physic Garden. In 1777 he was sent to the Cape under the patronage of the Countess of Strathmore. He spent almost three years at the Cape and travelled further into the interior than Masson.

There is some evidence that botanical travellers were acting as ‘spies’ or reconnaissance agents for European imperial ambitions in the last decades of the 18th and early 19th centuries. This is not something Masson and Paterson seemed aware of. However, they were followed by huge numbers of their countrymen after the first capture of the Cape in 1975. This was a Scottish exploit as the Secretary of State Henry Dundas was keen to take the Cape from the Dutch. He may well have used plant hunting botanical ‘spies’.

Lorraine is a keen student of history and writes about Dundee during WW1 and WW2. Her main interest is WW1 and comes from family research and family lore told to her when she was a child. Research has uncovered the interesting stories behind each family member’s path to war, and also the stories of those who stayed behind. These now form the basis of a novel using the stories of her grandparents.