They sailed in to save Fort Natal
A merchant ship saved starving British soldiers in Durban from a Boer onslaught 175 years ago, writes Udo Averweg
SATURDAY, June 24 marked the 175th anniversary of the arrival of the schooner Conch to the Bay of Natal (Durban harbour).
The ship’s arrival from Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth) in 1842 was instrumental in raising the month-long siege of the British garrison at Fort Port Natal (The Old Fort, Durban).
In 1824 a settlement north of the Bay of Natal was under the leadership of British Lieutenant F G Farewell (1784-1829).
Farewell had established Port Natal as a place for ships travelling to India to stop and to trade with the Zulu for ivory.
When the Voortrekkers (Boers, mainly of Dutch descent) arrived from the Cape Colony, they sought to set up the Natalia Republiek with an independent port of entry free of British control.
At the Battle of Congella on May 23-24, 1842, the insurgent Boers conquered the Port Natal trading settlement.
However, the governor of the Cape Colony wanted to take military repossession of Port Natal and prevent the Afrikaners establishing an independent republic on the coast and with a harbour through which access to the interior could easily be gained.
After the Battle of Congella, the besieged British force of “Redcoats”, as the Boers termed the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot, under the command of Captain Thomas Charlton Smith (1794-1883) at Fort Port Natal, was in a perilous state: their food was running out and they were subsisting on biscuit crumbs and a little rice.
At the nearby Congella (Kongela in Afrikaans) settlement, Commandant-General Andries W J Pretorius (17981853) of the Boer force had 400 men.
The Boers had been firing relentlessly on the besieged British garrison and it was a constant target for musketry and six-pound shot, of which as many as 124 were fired in one day. During the siege, 651 round shot of all sizes was “pumped” into the British fort. But it was the dwindling food supply that was the greatest threat to the garrison.
At midday on June 24, the Boers saw the schooner Conch, under Captain William Douglas Bell (1807-1869), approach the Bay of Natal (large ships could not enter as there was a sandbar across the entrance, but Bell was well acquainted with this difficult entrance and maintained the Conch “was the only vessel fit to cross the bar”).
With the Conch’s approach, the Boers identified the schooner as a trading vessel, but they did not let down their guard. Pretorius had stationed a number of burghers at Fort Victoria (at the Point) and the Bluff headland and had positioned a four-pounder cannon in each.
But the Boers were not aware that the schooner carried a secret cargo – a contingent of grenadiers from the 27th under the command of Captain G A Durnford. Most of the soldiers were hidden below the deck but with the hatches off to give them as much fresh air as possible.
The officers wore plain clothes and remained on deck. Interestingly, also on board the Conch was passenger Richard “Dick” King who, after the Battle of Congella, had made his famous horseback ride from Port Natal to Grahamstown to summon British reinforcements for the besieged Fort Port Natal.
The port captain, Edmund Morewood, and the Boers’ military secretary duly rowed out to the Conch to inspect the schooner’s cargo.
After stepping on to the deck, they received an unexpected surprise – the cargo of Redcoats. Since Morewood was a friend of the British, Durnford instructed him to deliver a note to Pretorius requesting he be permitted to send a doctor from the schooner to Smith’s camp, which Pretorius refused.
That evening, Durnford fired a rocket into the sky to signal to Smith that reinforcements had arrived at Port Natal.
The next day, on June 25, a British frigate, the HMS Southampton, under the command of Captain Josias Ogle, anchored outside the sandbar at the entrance to the bay.
It drew too much water to cross the sandbar but had 50 cannon on board and five companies of the 25th Regiment of Foot (King’s Own Borderers) under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Abraham Josias Cloete. Together with the Conch’s contingent, the relieving British force numbered nearly 700 men.
On Sunday, June 26, the British began their naval assault. With a favourable south-easterly wind, the HMS Southampton moved closer to shore. The HMS Southampton then opened fire with a broadside – the force of 350 Boers with their two four-pounders being a total mismatch.
The Boers fired at the Conch with their canon as she sailed across the sandbar into the Bay of Natal, but were unable to inflict sufficient damage to stop it from entering the bay.
The Boers then directed a hail of lead at the Conch and the ship’s trailing long-boats. On board the Conch were 135 men under Cloete. An additional 85 men from the HMS Southampton were in four naval long-boats.
Also sitting in the long-boats were some sailors to man the oars for the final shore landing. This little flotilla was attached by tow-ropes astern to the Conch. The stage had been set for the impending assault by the Conch.
The Boers were unable to stop the boats landing on the shore and thus realised they were powerless to stop the British troops landing, so they hastily retreated to Congella, where they and others gathered their belongings before abandoning the settlement.
Meanwhile, Pretorius and the 400 Boers under him had made their way to Steilhoogte (Cowies Hill), where they had set up camp.
When all the British soldiers were ashore, they formed up in three divisions under Durnford, Cloete and Major W J d’Urban (the son of Sir Benjamin, the governor of the Cape Colony after whom Durban is named) and marched to Smith’s camp at Fort Port Natal.
The detachments met no opposition en route to relieve the besieged post.
The detachments of the 25th and 27th Regiments of Foot “relieved the post in gallant style between three and four o’clock in the afternoon”. In his dispatch, Smith reported that nothing “could exceed the patience and cheerfulness evinced by the troops under the privations they suffered.”
During the siege of Fort Port Natal, which had lasted for 34 days, the British had lost 30 men and the Boers five. Thus, on June 26 the siege was finally raised and Port Natal again occupied by British forces.
In present-day Old Fort, Durban, is a faded memorial plaque with an inscription to the “illustrious garrison of this fort” who through their fortitude and courage “preserved this Colony of Natal for their Queen and Country during the period from May 24 to June 26, 1842. On July 15, 1842, the Natalia Republiek formally submitted to British rule.
Five years later, in December 1847, the Conch, then under the command of Captain W Moses, was wrecked on the bar at the Umzimvubu River (Port St Johns). The Conch had sadly succumbed to an ignominious end on Transkei’s treacherous coast.
Nonetheless, on this dodransbicentennial (175th) anniversary of its arrival in Durban, the Conch will be remembered for entering the Bay of Natal with its billowing sails to bring much-needed relief and raise the siege of Fort Port Natal. Udo Richard Averweg served as a commissioned offi- cer with the Congella Regiment. He is a member of the South African Military History Society (KwaZulu-Natal branch). This article was penned in his personal capacity.