In 1654, Jan van Riebeeck, commander of the mud-walled fort at the Cape, suggested digging a canal between Table Bay and False Bay to demarcate the VOC’s sphere of interest and discourage incursions by bands of Khoikhoi who had previously used the area for seasonal grazing.
He soon realised that the project was impractical and asked permission to build some strategic fortifications instead. However, the notion of turning the Cape Peninsula into an island had taken root in the mind of His Honour Rijckloff van Goens Sr (1619-1682), an influential VOC commissioner who far outranked Van Riebeeck, and he ordered the route to be surveyed and beaconed during one of his periodic visits.
Van Goens conferred with Sergeant Jan van Harwaerden (an experienced excavator) and drew up specifications. Today, we know that the shortest distance between the two bays is about 24km. Van Goens estimated this at two-and-a-half Dutch miles and calculated that 70 workmen would be able to cut a canal 12 feet (3.6m) wide and 6 feet (1.8m) deep in three months. He did, however, concede that both ends might silt up during windy periods.
The commissioner declared that this would be cheaper than building fortifications over the same distance, which would require longer and deeper trenches, 15 redoubts (small forts), more than 100 ravelins (detached outworks) and 14 watch-houses.
This was a far more ambitious defence system than Van Riebeeck and the Lords 17 had envisaged, but Van Goens was a former military general who clearly didn’t believe in half-measures.
Towards evening on April 16,1657 Van Goens supervised a trial dig in difficult ground near one of his beacons.
The work was found to be “fairly manageable” and more experiments were made the next day. In the words of the official journal keeper: “We trust that if the work is tackled with zeal, the task will be accomplished.”
His Honour departed for Batavia two days later, no doubt to the relief of Van Riebeeck and his men, who turned their attention to other pressing matters, leaving the future of the canal to the discretion of their masters in the Netherlands.
Two months later, heavy winter rain inundated grain fields and vegetable gardens along the Liesbeek River, and the wagon road to the forest was under water, which sometimes reached the oxen’s bellies.
Van Riebeeck inspected the flats where Van Goens planned to route his canal and found the area had become a lake flooded by water flowing from the mountain. He wrote immediately to the 17, warning them “not to resolve too lightly to have this costly project carriedout”. And that was the end of the canal story until it was briefly revived by the commissioner’s son in 1671 - once again without success.
* Jackie Loos' "The Way We Were" column is published in the Cape Argus every week.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.