Ships and Mariners: 19th c Cape and Natal 8 Bell

There had been a groundswell of opinion, in both Cape and Natal circles, that Captain William Bell was deserving of reward for his actions in June 1842. A letter to the Cape Frontier Times, written from Port Elizabeth on 13 November 1843 and signed Justitia, left nobody in any doubt that the Government so far had been remiss in failing to acknowledge Bell’s gallantry under fire ‘by something more substantial than praise’.

Captain Smith's camp, Port Natal, 1842

We remember the sympathy felt here for the almost helpless situation of parts of the 27^th Reg. confined there within their entrenchment … Captain Bell going with the relief was considered as going to almost certain death. Yet, in defiance of all the promptings of prudence he proceeds … he enters the narrow channel, where more than ordinary caution is requisite, in the coolest frame of mind; a double range of guns from sheltered enemies stare him in the face … Captain Bell … without personal interest, save in the company of kindred brave hearts, without arms, but his hands placed on the helm, takes his measures as coolly, shapes his course as steadily, exposed to the hottest fire of the secreted enemy … [and] endangered his little all.

 We have heard that Captain Bell has been nominated as Port Captain of Natal. He well deserves such a situation to look after the well-being of a place which he so mainly contributed to preserve. 

This letter was republished in the Carlisle Patriot of 26 July 1844, under the headline ‘Captain Bell of the Conch’, as ‘of some local interest, Captain Bell being a native of Glasson, in the parish of Bowness, in this county.’*

It’s interesting to note that despite this clarity Bell’s birthplace continued to be stated (even by members of his family) as Dumfries, Scotland, an error perpetuated in the comparatively recent reprint edition of his Narrative of the Conch.

Sir George Napier KCB

Perhaps in response to such public promptings, on 16 December 1844, Sir George Napier offered Bell the position of Harbour Master at Port Natal at a salary of 200 pounds per annum. There was a proviso that Bell would also act as Pilot for ships entering the port and that he would have to furnish a Boat and a Crew out of his own salary. The offer was gratifying and Bell accepted the conditions, undoubtedly recognizing the benefits of a regular income and a settled home as well as an end to the hazards of coastal voyaging.

In March 1845 the family duly arrived at Natal on the schooner Pilot but the new post wasn’t to be all plain sailing. There were difficulties in obtaining a crew for the Port Boat and Bell’s remuneration wasn’t enough to meet the expenses involved, the Boat Crew alone costing 136 pounds a year.

It was then proposed that the Government should provide the Crew as well as the Boat but that Bell’s salary would be reduced to 125 pounds. His appointment as Harbour Master would be terminated and he would be employed as Port Captain and Pilot. The tortuous workings of colonial bureaucracy thus undermined the spirit of the original offer and Bell declined the post. He was asked to reconsider, but stuck to his guns. In April 1847 the Government appointed a temporary Port Captain at Natal in his place while Bell returned to the Cape at his own expense.

He would continue sailing in coastal waters though not with Conch, which had been taken over in June 1845 by Captain W Moses. On 18 December 1847 the back page of the Grahamstown Journal carried the following report:

We regret to hear that the Conch was wrecked on the 7^th ult. on the Bar of the St Johns or Umzimvoobu River. But we are glad to be able to add that no lives have been lost. The greater part of the cargo has been landed, chiefly in a damaged state. 

Port St John's: the mouth of the Umzimvubu River

*Glasson, Bowness-on-Solway, Cumberland

Ships and Mariners: 19th c Cape and Natal 6 Bell

After the action at Port Natal, Bell’s ‘peaceable old Conch’ was on her way back to Algoa Bay by mid-July 1842, bearing a letter from Colonel Cloete (commanding the 25^th Regiment) giving details of what had occurred in the previous weeks. The beleaguered garrison at Natal had been relieved and the trekker forces had withdrawn on Pietermaritzburg.

The British flag run up so hastily (and initially, in error, upside down) at Port Natal on 26 June 1842 was there to stay and within three years Natal would be annexed formally as a British Crown Colony. 

It’s doubtful whether Captain Bell realized the full import of what had happened or even of his part in the conflict. He had simply been in the right place at the right time and, taking a characteristically spontaneous decision, volunteered to do what he perceived to be his duty. 

News of events at Port Natal spread like wildfire through the Cape Colony and Britain, the Governor, Sir George Napier, writing to the Secretary of State, Lord Stanley, to call His Lordship’s attention ‘to the spirited conduct of Mr. Bell the master of the schooner Conch of which Colonel Cloete speaks in much praise’. Virtually overnight, Bell had sprung from obscure mariner to local hero: he was, in today’s parlance, a celebrity. 

H.M.S. Southampton off the Entrance, Port Natal
 covering landing of troops by Conch at the Point,
 June 1842; engraving Thomas Bowler

Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 3 cont

CFS ANNUAL REPORTS

The Cape committee submitted annual reports to the CFS in London, and in 1836 and 1837 the feedback was good: the scheme appeared to be working satisfactorily. During the period 1833-1839, about 800 children were sent to the Colony. However, a combination of the factors mentioned above was undermining the scheme and would eventually threaten the very existence of the Society. The catalyst was as unexpected as it was disastrous.

TRUBSHAW INCIDENT

On 2 April 1839, The Times reported an incident in London concerning ‘a shabbily dressed boy, about twelve years of age’ who was brought before the Marylebone magistrate ‘on a charge of having stolen a purse containing some halfpence belonging to a poor woman who keeps an apple-stall in the New Road’. The boy gave a false name: his real name was discovered to be Edward Trubshaw. He proceeded to tell the court that he had been sent out to the Cape of Good Hope, by the ‘Juvenile Society’ (the CFS). He stated: ‘I was half-starved and knocked about shameful. They sold me, and a good many more’. The magistrate exclaimed, ‘Sold you! What do you mean? Apprenticed you, I suppose?’ ‘No Sir’ said the boy, not apprenticed, they sold me … to a Dutchman who came and looked at a lot of us … he bought me for 10 guineas.’ Trubshaw had later run away from his master and had worked his way back to England by ship.

The press pounced on the suggestion that children ‘were being disposed of like so many sheep at Smithfield’. Reports of the case created a major sensation, and complaints against the CFS with accusations of slave-dealing and cruelty, flooded in. The Society tried valiantly to defend itself, but the power of the press was all too apparent. People known to be patrons of the CFS were attacked in the street and stones were thrown at members of the London committee.

Captain Brenton, aghast, saw the impending ruin of all his efforts. As the storm raged around him, he became seriously ill and died on 6 April 1839. It was rumoured that he’d taken poison, but an inquest returned a verdict of death by natural causes related to a heart condition. On the day of his funeral, a woman among the crowd shouted that ‘under the pretence of benevolence he had been dealing in slaves’: the unkindest cut of all.

INQUIRY

                 

The CFS South African scheme was doomed. A Government inquiry was set up to investigate the condition and treatment of the children sent to the Cape Colony. Though largely vindicated by the report which followed the Society lost public support in England and there was a reluctance in the Cape to receive further indentured children.

Sir George Napier, Governor of the Cape

The Governor of the Cape, Sir George Napier, remarked in February 1840, that ‘although deeply regretting that an institution which promised well has been overthrown, as regards the Cape of Good Hope, by the evident disposition … on the part of many persons in England to pay implicit belief to every foolish report or misrepresentation to its discredit, I cannot but hope that the colony will be spared the pain of encountering any further inquiry through the continued operation of the Children’s Friend Society’.

The motives of the CFS in sending the child emigrants to the Cape were sincere, but the Society lacked awareness of colonial conditions. Moreover, they assumed that employers in the Colony would share the CFS ideal of moral upliftment of the children. Most employers regarded their apprentices simply as useful labour in a time of shortage of that commodity.

The 1840 Report revealed few genuine cases of corporal punishment by masters, and the majority of the children interviewed made no complaint of ill-treatment. Most of those who stated their wish to return to England felt that they weren’t learning a proper trade in the Colony. The artisan apprentices working for carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, wagonmakers etc had better prospects than the indentured farm labourers.

FUTURE SCHEMES

Although the Cape scheme ground to a halt, largely due to prejudice and the emotive topic of slavery, the child emigrants were given an opportunity to change their circumstances, and some chose to remain in the Colony after their apprenticeship was over. Among 69 apprentices whose indentures had expired by 1840, 41 boys and 12 girls were still living in the Colony and were self-supporting; some of the girls had married. 

Despite the failure of the CFS at the Cape of Good Hope, the concept was later adapted for other successful child emigrant schemes. In 1858 about 50 children were sent to Algoa Bay from Rotterdam. By that time, influenced by the CFS experience, the laws governing indentured labour at the Cape had been modified.

As for the boy Edward Trubshaw, whose allegations had precipitated the crisis which brought the CFS to its knees in 1839, he continued his inglorious career and was later sentenced to transportation from England for theft.

To be continued