ECHO OF HISTORY

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19458, 24 December 1934, Page 4

ECHO OF HISTORY

WRECK OF GROSVENOR. SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS. ■Great interest has been aroused in Riversdale, Soutli Africa, of the discovery in the old Kruis River Valley of the old homestead of Jacob van Reenen, who led the expedition to search for survivors of the East Indiaman, the Grosvenor, which was wreoked off the Pondoland coast in 1782 when returning with 350 souls and an enormous rich cargo from the East, states the 'Cape Times. Van Reenen, accompanied by Jan Andries Holtzhausen, Hilgert 'Mulder, Lodewyk August Prins, and others with four wagons and a contingent of armed Hottentots, left in August, 1790, from a rendezvous near the Kaflrkruils River. A previous expedition headed by Captain H, Mulder had to return owing to the persistent hostility of the natives. Van Reenen’s trip was especially prompted by the report which reached .'Cornelius van de Graaff, then Governor at the Cape, that three white women were being held captive by a native chief living in the vicinity of the wreck. The intrepid Dutchman, who was away for four months, made the most exhaustive inquiries at the scene of the wreck but could find no survivors. Found Whit© Women. At the native village near the wreck he came upon three aged white women, sisters, who could not speak their own language whatever it had been, and could only say that they had been wrecked on that coast when children and had grown up among the natives. They displayed great alarm at seeing people of their own colour, and, although entreated by van Reenen to accompany him back to the ,Cape, they would not leave their children. They had, of course, become the wives of kafflr chiefs, but were in no way connected with the Grosvenor wreck, and knew of no other white women in the vicinity. Van Reenen reported the case of these women to the Governor, but history does not indicate that any steps' were, taken to remove them from the village. Malay Slave’s Story. While at the wreck, van Reenen was informed by a Malay slave, who had deserted from, the Cape,' that a year or two previously the cook of the 'Grosvenor, who had been living with the natives had died from smallpox. Of van Reenen’s party Holtzhausen fell into a game pit and was Injured by the upstanding points placed at the bottom of the pit by .bushmen pr native hunters to trap game. 'He contracted blood poisoning and died on the return journey. lie was buried under a tree, upon which all the members of the party cut their names. Mr M. •Holtzhausen. the Riversdale postmaster, is distantly but directly related to Andries Holtzhausen, who was a noted hunter. Prins, one of the other members of the party, was mauled to death by an elephant.

Only Eighteen Reached Capo. Van Reenen seems to have set at rest the reports that . white, women survivors of the wreck were in the hands of natives. These people had been persistently referred to $s “the Campbells,” but. in the ship’s register no Campbells appeared. Of the whole of the ship’s passengers and crew only about eighteen (the majority aboard were Lascars) reached the Gape. The others either perished of hunger and exposure or were murdered by natives. The first expedition,'with forty wagons a hundred men, came upoii several c * eac * bodies. ~~ ' . Le 'Valiant, the traveller, was m Kaffraria six weeks after the wreck, and declared that, with the exception of few who did escape, all the men of. the . ship., including several French, officers, prisoners of war who were .being, taken to Europe, were killed.by natives, but the women were reserved -La . undergo, still greater hardships. . -