William Cock

In 1849, Cape Town lived up to its reputation for giving visiting vessels a rousing reception. But this was a reception with a difference; it was in fact a boycott. The colonists were not going to allow the Cape to be used as a penal settlement, and so strong was the agitation that the Irish convict settlers “on board the Neptune were not allowed to land. The authorities tried to secure meat and vegetables for the vessel, but merchants refused to co-operate either from principle or fear. As the protest against the Government’s intention all unofficial members of the Legislative Council resigned, except one.

The lonely voice praying that Christians should not starve their fellow men was that of William Cock. Everything possible was done to make him resign. A schooner belonging to him, The British Settler, requiring supplies was even refused water. A cargo his agents purchased for his account, the seller refused to deliver when he found it was for Cock. A sail maker, who supplied the ship with a keg of paint, was threatened with his mortgage being called up and every conceivable hindrance was resorted to. Nonetheless, Cock held to his principles, secured supplies somehow and rowed out to his vessel with them. Once on board The British Settler, he hoisted a leg of mutton to the masthead in defiance of the agitators.

At the age of 27, William Cock led a party of 91 British settlers who landed from the Weymouth at Algoa Bay on 30 May 1820. With his party, he travelled by ox-wagon to their location on the Rufane River, a few miles, east of the Kowie River in the Eastern Cape, where  he erected a temporary home for his wife and children and enclosed a piece of land for cultivation. However, blighted crops, floods and local depredations finished his resources and he was forced to leave his location and look for some other means of supporting his family.

All he could get were some untrained oxen. With the help of two Hottentots, William Cock succeeded in breaking in a span. Travelling around the country with articles for trade, William Cock was successful in purchasing stock which he sold in Grahamstown. Other successful trips followed, and he was soon supplying meat and provisions to dealers in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. He also secured a long-term contract from the government for supplying troops in the Eastern Cape.

The 'British Settler', oil by Benjamin Franklin Source: Africana Notes and News, September, 1960 Vol 15, No 3, Africana Society

 In 1826, William Cock visited Cape Town, and he was surprised to learn of the high prices for provisions in St Helena, a British possession in the South Atlantic Ocean. As he was quick to expand his sphere of trade, he purchased a vessel of 135 tons and sailed back to Algoa Bay for cargo, where he loaded salted beef, butter and other commodities including 200 sheep and 18 oxen. When William Cock arrived at St. Helena, he sold the oxen at £33 each, which cost him 30 shillings, and the sheep at 40 shillings each, which cost him 4 shillings and 6 pence.

William Cock kept on following his commercial instinct, and continued to trade eastward with Port Natal and Mauritius. He then travelled to Port Louis, Mauritius, where he secured a three-year contract for supplying the entire island with provisions. His business at the Cape prospered. In 1835, when the Sixth Frontier War broke out, William Cock rendered considerable service to the Government by securing provisions for the troops in the Eastern Cape.

In1836, William Cock decided to retire to England. He dissolved his Cape Town partnership. Before sailing, he went to the Kowie River to spend a short holiday with his family at the Pavilion. One of his former partners, Mr Hodgskin, paid him a visit there.

William Cock then returned to England in April 1836. He settled in Cornwall, but he did not spend much time there as his former partners’ associates in London induced him to join them.  In December 1836, he sailed back to Cape Town.

William Cock’s return to South Africa was a busy period of financial activity, first in Cape Town and afterwards in Grahamstown. As the member of a commission, he refused infront of strong opposition to tolerate certain extra charges which the directors of a Cape Town bank wished to impose on clients when opening a new branch in Grahamstown. The scheme collapsed and he later assisted in establishing a bank with far more equitable charges than those at first proposed. It prospered greatly and the original shares of £16 13s. 4d. were selling at £42 before he left.  In 1838, Mr. Hodgskin, while on a visit to Grahamstown, surprised William Cock by proposing that they should open the Kowie River to trade. With many doubts, William Cock agreed and was surprised when the London partners sent out full powers of attorney to proceed with the scheme. However, he was soon interested in the undertaking, so that when the London partners and Mr. Hodgskin withdrew, he took over the entire expenditure and continued with the work.Cock was invited by the Governor, Sir Henry Young, to become a member of the Legislative Council, and he was drawn into the service of the Colony at the highest level. He then had too much work to do such as supervising the work on the proposed harbour, Port Frances, as it was then called, conduct his financial affairs in Grahamstown and be available on legislative business in Cape Town.

In 1819, Cock succeeded in getting a Private Bill passed for “the Opening and Improvement of the River Kowie” in the Legislative Council.  High seas, floods and a lack of engineering experience wrecked his first two attempts at cutting a new exit for the river through the sand hills on the west bank. In February 1841, the course of the river was changed and the new mouth on the west opened, giving a navigable stretch of about three- quarters of a mile inland from the sea. Cock had, in the meantime, commissioned his friends in London to purchase a steamer suitable for the coastal trade. This was the Sir John St. Aubyn, a forty horse-power paddle-wheeled steamer of” 175 tons burden, 90 ft long and 26 ft. in beam, able to carry 30 tons of cargo and had accommodation for 16 passengers in two berth cabins.”  Boarding it at Cape Town,  he made a record voyage of three and a half days round the coast and, docking at the new harbour, was able to deliver goods in Grahamstown only five days after leaving Cape Town.

The 'Sir John St. Aubyn'Source: Africana Notes and News, September, 1960 Vol 15, No 3, Africana Society

But in spite of this performance, William Cock later said that the vessel was not fit for the purpose required. The vessel was lost in an attempt against the ebb tide, contrary to his instructions, and was sunk in the river. A brief official record of this incident appeared in the Cape of Good Hope Almanac on 31 January 1843.  

Despite a long continued and at times even malicious campaign to develop the harbours of East London and Port Elizabeth in preference to the Kowie, William Cock established the Kowie Navigation Company to trade with the Cape and Mauritius. The arrival of The British Settler and the Chanticleer, flying his house flag, put William Cock far ahead of his competitors, particularly as a violent gale in Algoa Bay on 2 August 1843 drove three vessels on to the jetty and were completely broken.

For some years The British Settler did good service in the coastal trade. On 2 March 1850, The Grahamstown Journal reported:

‘We understand that it is intended to despatch this iron Schooner, now moored in the Kowie River direct to London with a cargo of colonial produce, chiefly wool. This will be the first direct exportation from that Port to the Parent country, and may encourage the founders of Albany to look forward to the period when a market will be found for the surplus produce at their own doors, and when the ocean, which now seems to shut them in to seawards, will be used as their direct channel of intercourse with the Fatherland.  .. She now goes home for repairs and with a view to some improvements to her hull, which may more effectually guard her against injury in crossing the bars or entering the shallows which obstruct most of the rivers on his coast”.

This vessel sailed from the Kowie River on 23 April 1850 under the command of Captain W. A. Train who had his wife and small son on board. After spending some time in Cape Town, the schooner left on 29 May 1850 for London, and ran into violent north westerly gales that swept the Cape and its south-eastern seaboard on 1 and 2 June 1850. The first news to arrive in Cape Town was in a letter to the Civil Commissioner written on 12 June 1850 by Field Cornet J. Laubscher from Patrysberg, St. Helena Bay:

“. . . on the 9th instant it was reported to me that part of a wreck of a vessel had washed up at Jacob’s Bay. The following morning I repaired to the spot and found 2 masts with sails and rigging, 17 water casks and several broken cases. The only bodies that have as yet washed up are those of a woman and a child, and which I have caused to be buried. It appears to me that the cargo of the vessel consists chiefly of wool, as the rocks and beach were covered with that article.” Little else was recovered except a torn Almanac of the Eastern Cape, a parcel of seeds and a Register Ticket bearing the name Robert Hammond, a seaman who had shipped in The British Settler at Cape Town, and so there was no doubt about the identity of the vessel.”

In spite of these personal misfortunes, it seemed that Cock’s faith in Port Frances, later to be known as Port Alfred, was justified. For over 40 years, Port Alfred was possibly the busiest harbour on the south-east coast. With expert advice, the harbour works were strengthened and extended, workshops erected and lighters built. Dredgers worked continuously to keep the bar at the mouth under control. With twenty feet of water over the bar at a high tide, ships of up to 700 tons could enter safely and there was wharfage for at least ten vessels at a time. Three tugs, the Albany, Buffalo and Samuel Cawood, were kept busy piloting vessels in and out of the harbour. Ships with sugar from Mauritius took back cargoes of beef, butter and grain. Wool, hides and bone dust were also exported. Trade with Cape Town and England was brisk. As agents, storekeepers and millers established their premises, the population of the port increased, and far Inland the inhabitants felt the benefit of its trade.

When he started to develop the harbour, Cock built his family a home, Richmond House, on the heights of the west bank, commanding a wonderful view of the river and its activities. The house was designed by his eldest son, William Frederick, not only as a residence but also to withstand siege by the locals. Its flat -roof, specially strengthened to mount small cannon, battlements and underground water supply were some of the features incorporated in its design for this purpose. It soon came to be known the Castle and is still a landmark for all who visit the Kowie.  

In 1854, with the change to Representative Government, Cock was elected to the Legislative Assembly and also became a member of the new Legislative Council.  Subsequently, private company was formed for the further development  of the harbour and at last, with many difficulties and concessions, government co-operation was secured, and work was put on the construction of a breakwater on the west bank.

After his retirement at the age of 75, Cock saw many vessels, including the mail ships, making regular calls at his port. He died at Grahamstown in 1876 and was buried at the Port Alfred. In his long battle for its development, he was at least spared the sudden, and to the public inexplicable, decision of the Spring Government to stop all work and to withdraw all harbour facilities. It was said of him that “he pioneered not merely the opening of harbours and coasting trade, but inaugurated the real economic exploitation of Transorangia and the Transvaal, for which harbours were vital.”