In 1939 hundreds of people on the beach in False Bay swore that they saw an old-fashioned sailing ship heading towards Muizenberg. It was puzzling, for there was no wind. Just as it seemed that the ship would run into the breakers at Strandfontein, it vanished. Many that day were convinced that they, too, had sighted the Flying Dutchman.
Watch carefully when you visit the Cape! Who knows what ship you might spy?
The Flying Dutchman in Literature
A Ghostly ship,
with a ghostly crew,
In tempests she appears.
The poet, Longfellow, who wrote these words was fascinated by the legend of this ghostly ship. Sir Walter Scott’s poem ‘Rokeby’ tells of a Flying Dutchman cursed by murder, piracy and plague. The most famous version is Wagner’s opera Der Fliegende Holländer, in which the ill-fated captain is at least allowed to come ashore every seventh year to woo for a wife in vain.
The legend of the lost Kruger millions
The eastern Transvaal is often unbearably hot. On this late summer day in 1901, the bushveld was blinding in the sun. The black-bearded commandant of a party of Boers hiding from the ever-increasing British forces mopped the sweat from his broad forehead. He needed food for his men and there was little game to be found. He urged his horse on through the scrub and then reined to a halt. Something strange was lying there, half hidden by the blown sand.
He dismounted, looked, looked again, and then started scrabbling feverishly. What he uncovered was the grisly remains of a human body and some rotting leather saddlebags. Inside them … Philippus Swartz rubbed his eyes … lay gold coins, gold bars and diamonds. Was this a trusted Boer messenger who got lost? Or a thief shot and fatally wounded as he escaped with his loot? There was nothing to suggest how the man had died. But the treasure was real enough. Swartz looked around. Nobody was in sight. If he took the loot back to camp, some senior officer would claim it. No – better to hide it. He took the shovel from his saddle-pack and dug deep in a place he was sure he would recognise again.
But a few days later, Swartz and his commando were captured by the British. He was wounded, sent to Durban and then to a prison camp far off in Ceylon. There, from talking with the other Boer prisoners, he learned more about what was actually happening in the eastern Transvaal.
He knew the first part of the story already. The Volksraad of the Transvaal Republic had been quite determined that President Kruger should never be captured by the British. So he had been put aboard a special train on the line to Delagoa Bay. The train had taken Kruger across the flat highveld, over the escarpment at Waterval Boven, to live in temporary safety in a simple house at Machadodorp. From there he later travelled down the line to Laurenço Marques and taken by ship for exile in Europe.
Now Swartz started hearing rumours about how £500 000, from the Transvaal Republic funds, had been taken through to Machadodorp by train to support the Boer army in the field – gold bars, packed in boxes like blocks of soap. He was told how armed guards protected the railway trucks, and that at night, cases were taken away and buried in the bushveld to hide the contents from the British. General Louis Botha had assured everyone that these contained ammunition. Swartz and his fellow prisoners doubted it.
This was followed by an even larger sum. A clerk at the treasury in Pretoria, Ernst Meyer, had pedalled off on his bicycle to General Smuts himself to tell him that a large amount of money was still sitting in the treasury. The British forces seemed about to capture the city, he said. Surely something should be done? Smuts had swiftly arranged for a train made up of an engine, one passenger coach and a covered truck which left only just in advance of the attacking British forces. The special train was shot at, and frequently had to move other abandoned trains out of the way, but the treasure, in bars and coins and gold shavings, got through safely to Machadodorp. What happened to it all there, no-one knew. Only one thing was certain: the Boer prisoners knew that their leaders would have done anything to prevent the gold from falling into the hands of the British. Perhaps some of it was hidden. Perhaps it had been spilt up into smaller amounts to be moved more easily. Men were already calling it ‘the missing Kruger millions’. Swartz was convinced he had found some of it.
It was two years before he got back to South Africa. Swartz lost no time in organising an expedition to dig up what he had buried. But plenty of others were searching eagerly for Kruger’s lost millions as well. So many, in fact, that treasure hunters were supposed to apply for a special permit, and have a policeman accompany them, and keep only a third of what they found.
Swartz didn’t bother with any of that. He teamed up with a companion named Van Niekerk, hired Andries (a Khoi tracker) and another worker, and set off from Leydsdorp towards Selati River. After two years, the countryside did not look the same. Trees had changed shape. Sand had blown around. Swartz thought he knew where to dig but he wasn’t going to share his secret with anyone. Leaving Andries and the others to pitch camp, he and Van Niekerk set off, pretending they were going to look for water. Some while later, Andries heard gun shots. As the sun was setting, Swartz returned alone, saying that Van Niekerk had wandered off alone somewhere and must have got lost. Swartz was too big and strong to quarrel with. Andries looked at his companion and said nothing. He didn’t feel safe, so he ran away during the night.
Swartz visited Van Niekerk’s wife on her farm. He told her some wild story about her husband insisting on going to explore by himself. She didn’t believe him, especially as she knew from her husband that Swartz had been looking for the treasure. So she decided to report her suspicions to the police. Meanwhile, in July 1903, Swartz set off on another expedition, still searching for the treasure he knew was there – somewhere.
His luck ran out. The police took Andries to help them and were soon on Swartz’s trail. One night the old tracker heard jackals digging away at something and next morning they discovered a human skull and some whitened bones, as well as a ring marked C v N. They caught up with Swartz, who by then was sick with malaria, and took him to the Pietersburg jail. ‘The money is ours,’ he muttered sourly to his British captors, ‘and no damned British government shall ever have it’. But he still refused to tell anyone where the gold was hidden.
Curiously, the lawyer who appeared for Swartz in his trial was paid in gold coins which looked as if they had been buried for a long time. And Swartz himself complained bitterly while he was in prison that a friend, sent to recover some of the treasure, had robbed him of most of it.
Sir James Rose-Innes, Chief Justice of the Transvaal, had no hesitation whatever in condemning Philippus Swartz to death for the murder of Van Niekerk. The mystery of a death seemed to have been solved, but not the mystery of a missing treasure in gold and diamonds.
Greed has kept alive the legend of the missing Kruger millions. Dr Leyds, the State Secretary who went into exile with President Kruger, stated that no government gold was ever buried. But many amounts have gone missing – some of which have been found but most of which have not. There is a mystery – and perhaps a golden reward.
The Eastern Transvaal Bushveld
Halfway between the urban sprawl of Johannesburg and the Mozambican border, the landscape plunges over the escarpment into the lush lowveld. This is, for many, the real Africa. Haunt of elephant and mosquito, gold diggings and paper mills, it is the land immortalised in such books as Jock of the Bushveld and King Solomon’s Mines. Here, too, is the Kruger National Park, nearly two million hectares in size (larger than the country of Israel) and the first wildlife sanctuary in Africa. Over 20 rest camps can cater for some 3 000 people each day.
The ghosts of the Castle
Young Emily Daniel was lying in bed, peeping out from under the bed-clothes. It was not a large room, but she was proud to live actually inside the castle. None of the other girls at school could boast that, apart from her own sister! Her father was Brigade Major of the British troops stationed at the Castle. The blue-painted door of her room was open and she could
vaguely see down the long shadowy corridor outside. Out of the half-darkness came a figure wearing a long grey cloak. Emily thought it must be her mother and wondered why she was covering her face with her hands.
‘What is the matter, Mummy?’ Emily cried out, hoping to cheer her up.
The grey figure came to the very end of her bed – and then it vanished away into nothing. Emily realised in cold fright that she had just seen a ghost.
The ‘Lady in Grey,’ as she has been called, has also appeared in Government House – the fine building beside the Company’s garden and next door to Parliament in Cape Town.
When Sir Bartle Frere was Governor of the Cape, just over a hundred years ago, his wife was in her private sitting-room when a messenger arrived. He knocked on the door, looked in, apologised and went away. A while later he returned and said, ‘I’m so sorry I interrupted you earlier, your Ladyship. I didn’t realise you had someone with you’.
‘I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘I was alone.’
The messenger stammered, ‘But I saw your visitor. A lady dressed in grey was standing right next to you.’
Lady Frere gasped with shock. ‘That must have been our friendly ghost,’ she exclaimed. ‘I didn’t know she was visiting me.’
The Lady in Grey has been seen on gala occasions at Government House, and walking sadly along the corridors of the Castle. Some people say there was once an underground passage linking the two buildings. Fairly recently the skeleton of a woman was discovered near the old Castle gateway (now walled up) which faced Table Bay. Perhaps those sad bones were what the ghost was looking for, as her grey shadowy figure has not been seen again.
The old walls and buildings of the Castle of Good Hope have been carefully restored during recent years. Quite possibly the workmen did disturb a few of the old ghosts. Even tough military policemen have been convinced that they saw ghosts on the battlements some nights. The rebuilders made one interesting discovery. The dark lower room thought for so long to be the dreaded Donker Gat in which prisoners were locked was only a gunpowder store. The real ‘dark hole’ was under a further corner of the Castle, and alongside what is thought to be a ‘torture room’. A stout iron ring is still fixed to the rounded, brick-lined ceiling, and the bare stone-walled prison chamber has only one slit high in the wall to let in a single shaft of daylight.
Stroll in under Van der Stel’s gateway, between the pointed walls named Leerdam and Buren, and you will be walking back into some of Cape Town’s earliest history. Guards in their traditional costume of blue jackets with orange cuffs, red-striped white trousers and plumed hats parade with silver-bladed halberds. You probably will not see any ghosts in the sunshine amongst the newly-painted cream walls and dark green window-frames. But who knows who might be watching you from beyond those small, dark panes of glass?
It might be a woman in black, last seen in 1952. It might be a headless figure in a long white coat, which frightened two visitors in 1954. Or it might well be the angry spirit of Governor Noodt.
Pieter Gysbert Noodt was a hard man with a viciously fierce temper. He kept harsh discipline over all who lived inside the Castle. When soldiers were caught trying to run away in 1729, four of them fought to escape. They were arrested and brought back to the Castle where they were sentenced first to be flogged and sent to Batavia, and then this was changed and they were sentenced to death. Legend and history tell different stories whether the death sentence was delivered by the Council of Justice or by Governor Noodt himself.
To the soldiers of the Castle, this punishment on the four who had been their own comrades seemed cruel indeed. They sympathised with the four in the Dark Hole. The prisoners asked for a minister of their own Lutheran faith to visit them. They spent the night singing and praying, paying little attention to the fine meal – a customary privilege of those condemned to death which had been provided from the Governor’s own kitchen.
At nine o’clock the next morning, the entire garrison of the Castle was present on the parade ground, with the full Council of Justice, watching as Governor Noodt read the sentence from the ornate pillared Kat Balcony. He then retired to his own quarters while the condemned men were led inside a large tent where the gallows had been prepared. Here, the onlookers were moved to tears by the way the four prayed and said goodbye to each other. As the last man was being led towards the waiting rope, he turned and yelled towards the Governor’s quarters, ‘You, Governor Noodt, must take responsibility for this! I summon you to appear with me before the Judgement Seat of God’. Then, the drums rolled and he too, was hanged.
When the Council of Justice returned to the Governor’s residence to tell him that his orders had been carried out, they found him sitting in his carved wooden chair. There was a horrid expression of mixed rage and terror on his face. He was dead. The doctor, summoned in haste, said that the Governor had died of a heart attack – but what had caused it? No-one dared suggest the reason.
The cry, in Dutch, ‘Noodt is dood!’ grew from a frightened whisper to a resounding shout. ‘Noodt is dead!’ was good news to most of the soldiers. A cruel governor had met with a suitable end. So, perhaps it is hardly surprising that they say his ghost still prowls the stone-cold, empty rooms. Guards patrolling at night wonder if the footsteps they hear coming along the slate-paved battlements or the cursing voice from some upstairs room might belong to Governor Noodt paying the Castle one more ghostly visit.
The Castle of Good Hope
This fort, built by Jan van Riebeeck, was found to be too weak and too small. So in 1665 work started on a new stone castle with a five-pointed design. It was completed in 1679. In those days, the sea rolled close to the castle wall. Simon van der Stel had the sea-facing gate blocked up and replaced with the present entrance. Though bristling with guns, the Castle never had to fight off any attack. When Prime Minister Cecil John Rhodes suggested a small part be removed, Maria Koopmans-de Wet retorted that his nose was only ‘a small part’ of his face. He should try cutting that off and then look in the mirror! The Castle was left undisturbed.
The wreck of the Grosvenor
Ahead of them, not far from the Zwartkops River mouth, was the welcoming farmhouse of Christian Ferreira. But 14-year-old Robbie Price couldn’t make it. His legs were swollen with scurvy, for he had eaten shellfish from the rocks and hardly anything else during 92 days of walking along the African coast. His legs collapsed under him, and the seamen, Francisco and Barney, half carried him to the house.
Robbie was too ill to move for quite a long while. So his two friends left him at the farm while they hurried on in order to send a message to Governor Van Plettenberg asking for a relief expedition. 123 people had actually managed to reach the shore as the Grosvenor was sinking. Who knew what had happened to all the others?
Gradually, Robbie told the kind Ferreira family what he could remember. He had been the cabin boy aboard the grand East India Company ship Grosvenor. She had loaded up with merchandise and taken on 18 wealthy passengers in Ceylon and was heading home to England. Off the shore of Pondoland, she had been wrecked. Robbie Price shuddered as he remembered that terrifying night.
A sailor friend of his, Tom Lewis, was one of those up aloft shortening sail because of the freshening wind. There were lights on the horizon which Robbie guessed could be fires on a distant shore. The second mate ordered a change of course to take them away from shore, but the captain, John Coxon, came up on deck and told them all firmly that they were wrong. The nearest land was some 500 kilometres away. He put the Grosvenor back on a course heading towards the west.
In the first light before dawn, Tom was aloft again. As he clung to the wildly pitching lines near the masthead, he saw a dark line on the horizon which could only be land. He reported this, but the officer on watch told him he was seeing things. It must be a bank of cloud. He refused even to cross the deck and see for himself. By 4.30 a.m. Robbie had joined Tom and several others on deck. From the bows of the ship they could see the land clearly.
> ‘I daren’t say anything more,’ Tommy muttered. ‘I’ll get flogged if I tell an officer he’s wrong.’
‘Well, I’ll risk it,’ said Robbie, and with his heart thumping he ran below to wake the captain.
It was too late. Captain Coxon took one look and ordered the ship to change course at once. As she did, her bows struck the rocks with a crash that shuddered through the ship. Passengers hurried on deck, officers shouted. Robbie remembered how they had tried to float the Grosvenor off the rocks, but water poured in through the hole in her bows and at once she started to sink.
Sunrise showed Robbie that they were only about 500 metres off shore, but the sea between them and the land was cruel. A boat was lowered only to be swept away and battered to pieces on the rocks. Eventually five seamen offered to swim ashore with a light guide rope. Four of them made it, though one drowned in the crashing waves. A stronger, heavier rope was attached to the line, hauled to shore and made fast. During the morning, Robbie and a few others used this rope to help them reach the beach. He was glad he had learned to swim strongly when he was a boy. Some weaker swimmers were lost in the heavy sea.
African Myths and Legends Page 9