The Way We Were

Road safety has become a big issue in our country and special vigilance is needed during the holiday periods – we all want to arrive and return safely and not bring sorrow to our friends and families. In the 1730s, travel by land and sea was equally risky but news of death and disaster took much longer to reach home.

Men who joined the VOC as ordinary soldiers and sailors generally had nothing but youth and optimism on their side. The journey to the Cape took from three to five months in the tiny wooden sailing ships of the day, and a complete voyage to Batavia might last 12 months, depending on the weather and the time it took to effect repairs at the Cape.

Few Dutchmen were prepared to soldier for five years for a pittance, so the void was filled by impoverished northern Europeans (mainly Germans) and a few better-off adventurers. One of these, Otto Friedrich Mentzel (1709-1801), joined the Company as a humble adelborst earning 10 guilders a month and left two valuable books describing life at the Cape in the 1730s.

He and his companions were delighted when their ship reached the mouth of the Texel River, for their pay would start when they entered the North Sea. However, about a third of the complement were greenhorns who were unable to stomach the ship’s rolling and they soon succumbed to seasickness.

Novices vomited frequently and were laughed at and ridiculed by others. Eating the hard, coarse, salty and indigestible ship’s fare when hungry delayed recovery, and Mentzel recommended “careful dieting or abstention from food” for three days to overcome the malady.

Breakfast consisted of barley with a treat of rice and prunes on Sundays. The monotonous everyday diet of yellow or grey peas or white beans was varied with the addition of salted or smoked meat and mugs of wine three times a week.

Nautical rhythms were marked by the ringing of the ship’s bell. There were special times for prayers, breakfast and the distribution of limited rations of water and grog. Two hours were allowed for recreation in calm weather, starting at 6pm.

The four-hourly watches were alien to most of the new recruits, who were unprepared for the abrupt break in their daily habits and modes of life. The crew and soldiers were squeezed together in low, cramped accommodation which lacked fresh air.

Mentzel wrote: “The wind caused by indigestible food putrefying in the guts of the closely packed men and the bad water and moist sea air soon cause diseases, which attack newly-enlisted men first, and which may develop into scurvy.”

The sufferers were treated by Company surgeons using remedies from the ship’s medicine chest, but sick men would not survive the long voyage to Batavia without a break for recuperation at the Cape. They often looked more dead than alive when they landed, but soon recovered thanks to pure air and fresh, wholesome food.

This aside, healthy men found shipboard life “quite pleasant” once everything was in order and the officers had the time and patience to instruct the new recruits.

Mentzel noted that although the Dutch officers used the rope’s end to exact obedience, it was to their credit that they were well disposed to any man “who distinguished himself from the common herd by good behaviour, docility and eagerness to learn”. Within a week of his arrival on board he began to help the gunner with his work “and from that time I experienced no hardships whilst on board”.

Sail-changing and hauling on the ship’s rigging were dangerous and labour-intensive occupations, and ocean-going ships needed large crews to ensure there were sufficient hands to stand in for sick, injured or dead comrades.

Mentzel carefully listed the naval hierarchy of the day, starting with the captain, who earned 50 to 80 guilders a month, and descending though mates, boatswains, carpenters, helmsmen, doctors, gunners, sailmakers, coopers and cooks to experienced sailors, who earned 11 guilders a month.

There were several grades of seamen, including hooplopers(adolescents) earning seven to eight guilders a month, cabin boys with ambitions to become officers, and “common” scrubbing boys – children who signed on for seven years and earned five guilders a month.

The ship’s complement included a bookkeeper, sick-comforter, steward, trumpeter, blacksmith, provost and about 60 soldiers. The third surgeon was a barber who cut the men’s hair every two weeks, presumably to control vermin.

Travellers were inured to long and uncomfortable voyages in the 18th century, but they must have yearned for the sight of land after being cooped up in fetid conditions for more than 100 days.

l More next week.