Battle of Muizenberg

I first met Lady Anne Barnard (1750- 1825) when she was in her mid forties. It was a brief encounter, in fact only a passage in the text of “The Table Mountain Book” by Jose Burman, that master storyteller of early South African travel. Lady Anne was reported to be the first European woman to climb to the top of Table Mountain (in July 1797) and I was resolved to find out more about her life and why a high born lady was living in Cape Town (Kaapsche Stad) at the end of the eighteenth century, during what became the first British Occupation (1795-1802).

Miniature portrait of Lady Anne Barnard nee Lindsay circa 1780 (Defiance - The Life and Choices of Lady Anne Barnard)

Lady Anne, at the age of 46, would accompany her husband Andrew Barnard (twelve years her junior) on a three month sea voyage to the Cape of Good Hope where he was sent as the Colonial Secretary, serving the first British Governor, Lord Macartney, arriving there in May 1797. Britain had deposed the “Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie”...

In 2014 Derek Stuart-Findlay of the Kalk Bay Historical Society gave a cannonball to the Muizenberg Historical Conservation Society, knowing that the Battle of Muizenberg is a special focus of ours. The ball was dug up in his garden by Naseegh Jaffer of Ley Road, St James, and it tells a story.

Because we have excellent detail on the actions and participants of the Battle of Muizenberg we can work out a great deal of information on the cannonball. It was found between Ley Road St James and Boyes Drive, quite high above sea level.

It is a 24-pound cast-iron ball, cannons being classed by the weight of the shot they threw. The only time cannonballs have ever been fired on this coast was the Battle of Muizenberg, 8th August 1795. Four ships of the Royal Navy took part in the Battle of Muizenberg on that date. The ships were HMS America (3rd rate, 64 guns), HMS Stately (3rd rate, 64), HMS Echo (sloop, 16) and HMS Rattlesnake (sloop, 16). The sloops were small and light, and only carried little guns, probably no more than 6-pounders, so the ball could only have come from one of the 64’s.

We have it on record from the log of HMS America that she fired at the Dutch picquet at Kalk Bay. The entry reads “at half past 11 weighed anchor... sail in company with Stately Echo and Rattlesnake and 3 gunboats 10 minutes past 12 fired at a three gun battery which the Enemy...