went ashore. As he was rowed towards the fort, he was concerned that he was going to have difficulty in communicating with the Portuguese officers who had been responsible for the attack. To his surprise, though, he found that the officer in command of the fort was an Irishman.
With a laugh, the Irish commandant made some kind of an apology. It wasn’t his fault, he assured Howard – his men had acted in good faith. He explained that the cause of the trouble was a schooner that had entered the bay before the Ocean. When challenged, it had refused to hoist its national colours or give any information. Three weeks before, a similar vessel carrying eighteen guns had discharged a cannonballs into the town, put out to sea to recharge and returned to repeat the attack. The governor had therefore ordered the military to be on their guard, and if they saw the schooner, to make a show of force. That night the sentinels had seen a well-manned ship approaching and had directed one of the guns to fire a warning shot. They had misdirected the shot, and it had hit the Ocean. It was a simple error, the Irishman explained to Howard. The other vessel was a smuggler ship: it had got the message and disappeared, so it had ended well, he concluded.
The journey was not all bad weather and misery, however. As the fleet sailed away from the violent North Atlantic Ocean and the rough equatorial seas, and voyaged further south towards the Cape of Good Hope, the conditions became generally better, sometimes even to the point of allowing the voyage to be pleasurable. For example, on 5 March William Shaw made the following entry in his diary: ‘The fineness of the day, calmness of the sea, the advantage of the awning spread over our heads which screened us from the burning rays of the sun, the harmony of the voices in singing the praises of God, the comforting promises of God’s word, and the still more consoling influences of His Spirit, all combined to produce an effect upon the congregation which can be better conceived than described.’
At those times, the settlers were able to regenerate both body and soul. They promenaded on the decks, mingled with people from all areas of the ship, and the children ran about, climbed, and helped the sailors fetch and carry, clean and repair, and paint and swab the decks. The fearless young Tom Stubbs was one of the children who relished those times, in all weather: ‘I and my brother John were always among the sailors,’ he remembered.
The voyage held a mixture of joy and unforgettable terror for the youngest passengers. One of South Africa’s best-known settlers was William Guybon Atherstone – doctor, naturalist and geologist. (Later he would identify a crystal found near Hopetown as a diamond, which led to the establishment of South Africa’s diamond industry.) Guybon Atherstone was a five-year-old when he travelled on the Ocean. He captured those moments in his unpublished memoirs: ‘All was new and strange to us – the porpoises so huge and ugly were wonderful and played “leapfrog” round our ship – flying fish came splashing and fluttering on to the decks with such loud bangs like guns firing, giving us children lots of fun trying to catch their slippery bodies to throw them back into the sea. Then suddenly we saw some huge fish with horrid mouths which came quite close to the side of the ship. The sailors told us they were called sharks and that they were very bad things and would eat anyone who fell overboard. One of the sailors called some of the mothers and told them to keep us away from the rails for fear any of us might fall overboard when the horrid sharks would catch and eat us before anyone could do anything to help us. That frightened even our parents who kept us well away from the rails as long as those horrid sharks continued to swim beside the ship. We were frightened too and kept close to our mother until the soldiers told us those ugly monsters had gone.’
With the better weather further south, there was more opportunity for communal activities and religious services, which were well attended. The passengers were able to dry out their waterlogged belongings and some of those who were particularly susceptible to seasickness had some respite from that terrible condition.
Sometimes, even when a gale was buffeting the ship, the settlers managed to derive some pleasure from their association with each other. Thomas Philipps wrote: ‘Monday 31 January: This evening we had our clarinet as usual, about 7 the moon rose majestically whilst we were walking on the deck, we could not resist the opportunity for a dance and in spite of the unsteadiness of the vessel we managed to dance 6 couples for a couple of hours, between 9 and 10 o’clock we went below.’
In fair weather and in foul, human intercourse took its familiar turns. There were quarrels and fights but there was far more comradeship than bad blood. The passengers were ordinary people thrust together in temporary confinement and they did what people have always done in those cases. Something that evolved on all the ships were self-help groups that cared for the sick and protected themselves against theft and threats to their persons. Single young women were always in danger from crew members and other passengers, and they were offered protection by such groups. Some passenger behaviour was not only a nuisance, but downright dangerous and this prompted a firm reaction. For example, the gentlemen on the Northampton formed a committee to deal with the almost daily outrages perpetrated by Mahoney and his Irish party, namely drinking and fighting.
Jeremiah Goldswain was one of the fortunate beneficiaries of this corporate attitude. While the Zoroaster was still on the Thames at Blackwall, he unthinkingly put on a damp shirt and this led to pneumonia. He slipped in and out of consciousness, and was unaware of anything until they arrived at the Canary Islands. After that, he became so ill that he had made it onto the deck only once until they were three weeks away from Simon’s Bay. At one point the ship’s doctor told Goldswain’s party leader, William Wait, and his wife that they should be prepared to part with Jeremiah, as the doctor thought that nothing would save him. All through that time his berth mates cared for him, feeding him, changing his clothes and carrying him around. When they were anchored for two or three days at Madeira, ‘some of the men went ashore and brought me a little soft bread,’ wrote Goldswain.
When the Zoroaster’s passengers were transferred to the Albury at Simonstown for the voyage to Algoa Bay, the ship was overcrowded. Goldswain described the cramped conditions: ‘Most of us had to sleep on the hard boards. For my part I did not know what to do for where my bones had pushed through my skin while I had been ill had not by this time healed up. I was sitting in front of the berth of Mr Thomas Hartley, whose family had two or three berths. His eldest daughter, seeing me sitting there, asked me where I was going to sleep that night. I informed her that I must take the deck for it as there was no other place. She said that it was not a fit place for one who was so ill … “Here is a spare ship bed and a blanket, and you can have them if you will.” I told her that I should be much obliged to her for them.’
Such acts of kindness and humanity compensated to some extent for the hardships. Jeremiah went on to have a lifelong association with the Hartleys and they were close neighbours during the time the Goldswain family spent in Bathurst. The Hartleys built the Bathurst Inn – later to become the famous Pig and Whistle – and Jeremiah bought it from them in 1853. He enjoyed a friendship with the oldest Hartley son, William, which lasted throughout their lives.
The settler project occurred in a century when girls were deemed ready for marriage from their early teens. The colourful Sir Harry Smith, who was appointed governor of the Cape in 1847, was most famous for two things: his horseback ride from Cape Town to Grahamstown, which took just six days, and his beautiful young Spanish wife.
At the age of thirty-five, he had served under General Arthur Wellesley at the Siege of Badajoz in Spain. The day after the Anglo-Portuguese army forced the surrender of the French garrison, a well-born Spanish lady, who had lost everything in the destruction that had taken place, came to the British camp seeking protection. She was accompanied by her fourteen-year-old daughter, Juana Maria de Los Dolores de Leon. Less than a week later, Juana Maria became Mrs Harry Smith.
When Jeremiah Goldswain married Eliza Debenham, aged nineteen, in 1821, she was already quite old for marriage, it seems. Her sister, Anne, had been married the previous month: she was just thirteen.
At the time of the settler
