Cape Good Hope 1652-1702

70 Father Guy Tachard

(See also items 55, 59, 64.) Translated from his ‘Second Voyage ...’, Paris 1689: it is also translated in Strangman, with valuable background material. He sailed homeward with de Vaudricourt in Gaillard on January 3, 1688, with Loire and Dromadaire only, L'Oiseau having left for the Coromandel coast two months before, and Normande being kept in the Indies for the trade of the French Company: for her see item 71. Bantam. Lost sight of Dromadaire, which reached the Cape on April 19 (DR). Agulhas: ‘the sight of which caused Occum Chamnan, one of the mandarins whom I brought with me, to recall the wreck he had suffered some years before in a Portuguese ship’ - Nossa Senhora dos Milagros in 1686: the story inserted at length.

On the 20th of April we recognised the Cape of Good Hope. The wind, it is true, was in our favour, but we were prevented from taking advantage of it by the hazy weather and the approach of night, so that it was only on the following day that we were able to enter the bay. This we did not without difficulty and danger, since even when we were in the channel a mist came up every fifteen minutes between us and the land, so dense that we could see neither the shore at half a musket*-shot distance, nor our companion which was following close in our wake. For this reason we fired shots from our muskets at

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intervals in fear of a collision, and beat the drum, so that the others, hearing these signals to which they replied in the same way, might be able to maintain a sufficient distance. Since, however, we had a captain who was experienced and skilful, and pilots with a good knowledge of the coast and the roadstead, we nevertheless managed to reach the anchorage and come to anchor at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon of April the 21st [dr].

Next day Monsieur de Vaudricour sent one of his officers to the fortress to present his compliments to the Commander of the Cape, from whom he received the same politeness as on our former voyages. When this officer returned to the ship we fired a salute of seven guns, and the fortress replied with gun for gun.

Monsieur d'Andenne, captain of Le Dromadaire which had arrived three days before us, came on board, and told us that L'Oyseau commanded by Monsieur Duquesne had left the roads two days previously [dr] for France. [She had sailed from Pondicheri in January, with Forbin on board, and reached Brest on July 17(Strangman.)] We found about fifteen large Dutch ships anchored at the Cape, besides Le Dromadaire already mentioned, and the ship Les-Jeux of the French West-Indies Company, homeward bound from Surat and richly laden. Since this last had already watered and taken on the necessary provisions, she left two days after our arrival, so as to lose no time [dr]. The Dutch fleet of eleven ships bound for Europe followed this ship of the Company a few days later [dr 30/4], taking the same course: the other four Dutch ships were joined somewhat later by six others coming from Europe [dr 19/4, etc.]. In most of these last were many French of the so-called Reformed Religion [see Huguenots*], who, having crossed into Holland, were sent by the States General to the Indies, there to cultivate the lands which the Dutch Company occupies there. Among these newly-disembarked people there was not one who was not greatly dissatisfied during the short time they had been there, not finding in these distant lands what they had been led to expect. Many among them whom I met at the Cape and at Batavia, grieved at the error they had committed in abandoning their fatherland in misguided hopes, even wished to repair it, if all means of returning to the lands they had left were not closed to them there.

All our supplies being taken aboard, we sailed from the Cape at about ten in the morning of May 1 [dr], after a stay of ten days, leaving there ten Dutch ships which were to refresh there for a considerable time before continuing their voyage to Batavia.

Equator ‘April 29’ (sic). Azores sighted June 5. Brest June 27. With the Siamese Ambassadors to Rome for a Papal audience. He went out again in 1690 with them, in Duquesne-Guiton's fleet (item 73), landing them in Bengal and himself reaching Pondicheri in January 1691. (Strangman).