Gold Money at the Cape in the days of the Dutch East India Company
by A.S. Rogers
This article was originally published in 1944 in what was called Notes from Our Scrapbook, a once-off publication by the South African Numismatic Society (founded in 1941). The pictures were added by the WCNS.
How thoroughly in the old days the church at Cape Town carried out the Christian injunction of giving to the poor was emphasised by O. F. Mentzel in one of his interesting books of reminiscences of life at the Cape in the mid-eighteenth century. In the course of his remarks he mentioned that at the communion services, at which collections for the cause of charity were made, “the more wealthy burghers quietly slipped whole piles of ducats under the napkins that covered the vessels.”
This reference to ducats is an interesting indication of the prominent place once occupied in the highly mixed currency of the Cape by the coin which originated in the age of chivalry, the coin which Chaucer and Shakespeare have enshrined in literature by their allusions to it—the gold ducat. Ducats and double ducats were issued by several European countries, including the Netherlands. Of so high a reputation was their quality that the term “ducat gold” was used for generations to express superior worth.
A gold Ducat from Utrecht dated 1674. Source: Numista
Mentzel has other allusions to ducats in his writings. One of them is tragic. It is contained in his account of the wreck of the ship “De Vis” near Cape Town one night in 1740. The vessel was wedged between rocks, and it was impossible to reach her in a boat, but a stout cable having been successfully adjusted between ship and shore, crew and passengers were hauled to safety, two at a time, travelling in a great copper cauldron. Between 100 and 150 men had been rescued in this manner when, wrote Mentzel, an accident occurred. The steward of “De Vis,” accompanied by his assistant and a boy, climbed into the cauldron.
The steward had a lot of money on board and had filled his pockets with ducats, thereby very materially increasing his weight. The combined load was too heavy. One of the iron rings of the cauldron broke, and the occupants were precipitated into the sea. The rope was at once slackened to enable them to seize it and support themselves. This, the assistant and the boy did and were saved, but “the steward, weighed down by the gold in his pockets, sank like a stone and was drowned.” A contemporary painting of the wreck is in the South African Public Library at Cape Town.
Evidence of the popularity of the ducat among travellers, owing to its universal acceptance and its convenient size and value, is found in the vivid description by the famous French traveller Le Vaillant of the blowing up of the merchantman “Middelburg” in Saldanha Bay in 1781 to save her from falling into the hands of the British, with whom the Netherlands were then at war. Practically all Le Vaillant’s worldly goods and possessions were on board the “Middelburg,” as well as a collection he had assiduously gathered together as a naturalist. He saw the explosion from the shore and was in despair. “What was to become of me,” he wrote, “having no other resources but my fusee, ten ducats in my purse and the thin dress I wore?” Fortunately, he soon found a generous friend who rescued him from his predicament.
Picture left: Scene from the Battle of Saldana Bay (1781). Picture right: François Levaillant (Source: Wikipedia).
The Dutch ducat was the size of a modern shilling, but thinner. Its value at the Cape varied from time to time. At the close of the seventeenth century, it was 8s. 4d., in Mentzel’s days, 8s. 9d., and under the English regime in 1800 and again in 1806, it was officially fixed at 9s. 6d.
It was a coin of pleasing appearance with its familiar figure —for the same type prevailed throughout two centuries or more— of an armour-clad knight, sword in one hand and a bundle of arrows in the other, and its Latin motto signifying “Little things grow through concord.” The double ducat was a facsimile on a larger scale. Nearly all the ducats which circulated at the Cape were probably of this variety, though there must have been a few also of the rare Java ducats which were specially struck for the Dutch East India Company in the middle of the eighteenth century. These were very Oriental in appearance, the inscriptions being in Arabic.
Another gold coin, which for very many years had a worldwide currency and a high reputation for quality, was the Venetian sequin, which ranked at the Cape at exactly the same value as the ducat.
The Venetian sequin was also a coin good to look upon, and the figure of Christ within a pointed oval, which always appeared on one side appealed widely to religious sentiment. On the other side was a representation of the Doge of Venice receiving a standard at the hands of St. Mark, the patron saint of the city.
Source: Numista
Apropos Venetian sequins, an interesting South African episode may be recalled. Away back in the sixties of the last century, several European families living in East Pondoland went down to an attractive spot on the coast, previously chosen, for a camping-out holiday. One of the girls of the party, while exploring near the water's edge, chanced to find a golden coin. The discovery caused excitement in the camp, and the next morning everyone was down on the beach hunting for treasure trove. Several hundred coins were found altogether, many of them gold, and they were shared among the picnickers. The find was made at the spot on the Pondoland coast close to which lie the remains of the “Grosvenor” East Indiaman wrecked in 1782.
Two old paintings of the sinking of the Grosvenor on the Pondoland coast.
(Sources: Wikimedia and the Heritage Portal).
The coins then picked up are probably for the most part now widely dispersed, but the writer was once shown eight of them, which had been handed down to a descendant of one of the picnickers. Of the eight, two were Venetian sequins.
An impressive gold coin, as heavy as a small handful of sequins and suggesting opulence and magnificence, was the Spanish doubloon which circulated at the Cape until a century or so ago. Like the piece-of-eight, also Spanish, it was a coin of the widest repute. It was in some respects the gold counterpart of that famous silver piece, their weights being identical and their designs during a long period being somewhat similar, including the Spanish king’s head and the lions and castles of Leon and Castile. The doubloon, however, was more ornate, having the distinction of its heraldic shield of arms being girt around by a representation of the insignia of the famous knightly Order of the Golden Fleece.
Gold Doubloon of 1798 (Source: Wikipedia)
The Cape currency also included the quarter, the eighth and the sixteenth of the doubloon, all charming coins in appearance. Very dainty-looking was the sixteenth, known as the coronilla, or “little crown”, which was worth 5s. at the Cape.
A favourite design on European gold coinages which persisted from the Middle Ages for centuries onwards was that of an armed and mounted knight, adapted probably from the coins of ancient Rome, on which the Emperor was often represented on horseback overcoming his enemies or triumphantly entering a captured city. In France this type of coin was called the “cavalier”; in Scotland it was known as the “rider,” and similarly in the Low Countries as the “ryder.” Naturally Netherlands “ryders” were used at the Cape. They were beautiful coins nearly as large as modern florins, though not so thick. Officially they were known as fourteen gulden pieces and their value was £1 3s. 4d. Here is a description of one in perfect state, which lies before the writer:
Covering the greater part of the field of the coin is a charging horseman, helmeted and armour-clad, with sash flying in the wind and sword raised aloft to strike. An inscription in abbreviated Latin around the horseman indicates that the piece is “golden money of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.”
On the other side of the coin is a crowned shield on which appears the Lion of the Netherlands carrying the sword and the bundle of arrows which are wielded by the knight on the Dutch ducat. Above the crown is the date “1751”; on the sides of the shield the denomination “14 Gl” is noted and around is the inscription in Latin “Little things grow through concord,” which characterises the ducat.
Source: Numista
There were also half “ryders” or seven gulden pieces, exactly like the larger coins, except in size and denominational indications.
Picture left: VOC ships in Table Bay (Source Wikimedia Commons): Picture right: Gold Half Ryder (7 Gulden) of Zeeland of 1760 (Source: bullionbypost.co.uk)
An adaptation of the old song “I'd rather have a guinea than a one-pound note” would doubtless have been popular in Cape Town - had it been known - in the days of the Napoleonic wars, when guineas were actually jingled beneath the shadow of Table Mountain and paper money - in rix-dollars - was not in the best of odour. The imaginary guinea of today, as everyone knows, stands for 21s., but at the Cape in 1800 the value of the actual coin was officially fixed at £1 2s. At an early stage of its century and a half of history the guinea in England was worth as much as 30s. The last guineas were coined in 1813, after which sovereigns took their place.
Picture left: Gold Guinea of King George III of 1777 (Source: NGC). Picture right: Imitation Guinea brass pieces used for gambling counters in Victorian times (Source: Etsy).
There are numbers of guineas still to be found in South Africa, many of them pierced and worn smooth through long years of dangling on waistcoat fronts; but there are many more of the brass imitation guineas with which after the real coins had become obsolete as currency, England was flooded from the factories of Birmingham and elsewhere. Quantities of them have in the course of years found their way to this country. These imitations were used as card counters, There were many varieties - in regard to minor details - and some of them, especially when gilded, bore a close resemblance to genuine guineas.
The French Louis d’or also, a gold piece with a wide currency, including South Africa, had a history presenting some interesting parallels to that of the guinea. It was an aristocratic coin and first came into existence in 1640 when the French currency was reformed under Louis XIII, after whom the coin was named. It endured like the guinea for about 150 years and was followed by the democratic twenty-franc piece, as the guinea was by the pound - the plebeian term for the sovereign.
The Louis d'or were handsome coins and readily distinguishable from other foreign gold, even to the illiterate, by three heraldic lilies of France within an oval.
Picture left: King Louis XVI of France (Source: Wikipedia). Picture right: Gold Louis d'or of 1786 (Source: Heritage Auctions).
“Occasionally,” wrote Mentzel in 1783, referring to his South African experiences many years before, “one sees at the Cape a gold coin which in the East Indies equals ten rix-dollars (then 40s.) if stamped, and eight rix-dollars (then 32s.) if unstamped. On account of its elongated shape it is not very popular.” This mysterious coin was the Japanese “koban,” a thin piece of gold, three inches long, an inch and a half wide, and of oval form. It bore Japanese inscriptions and symbols, and when counterstamped with a lion, the typical emblem of the Netherlands, was officially admitted to the currency of the Dutch East India Company’s possessions.
Picture left: Japanese gold Koban (Source: Wikipedia).
Picture right: VOC cut and counter-marked Japan gold Koban of 1773 (Source: Heritage Auctions).
There is no record, however, of the popularity of a certain other gold coin which once adorned the currency of the Cape ever having been questioned. That coin was the fascinating Johanna of Portugal. It was the size of a modern half-crown, but nothing like so thick. “Joes,” as they were fondly termed in most of the British Colonies, represented, in Portugal, where they belonged to the “dobra” series, 6,400 reis each, or about 36s., but they were sometimes assessed higher than that elsewhere. In Ireland, in 1765, they were ordered by proclamation to pass current for 40s., that was their worth in Canada later, and the same value was adjudged to them at the Cape by Sir David Baird in 1809. Previously, however, in 1782, the Dutch authorities had considered &: rix-dollars (34s.) was sufficient, and in St. Helena at one time they came down to £1 13s. 3d.
Gold 6400 Reis struck in Brazil in 1764 and graded by NGC.
Although the writer has found no trace of the official recognition in South Africa of another Portuguese coin - the moidore (money of gold) - it was so extensively current in Western Europe and in the New World that numbers of them must have reached the Cape. It was rated in English money at 27s.
The Cape being in such close touch with India and the East generally, it was natural that numbers of Oriental coins should find their way to this country, apart from those officially struck for the Dutch East India Company, of which the Java ducats have already been mentioned. The official coinages also included gold Java rupees, and their divisions issued at different periods between 1766 and 1798. These gold rupees, which were struck from the same dies as the silver rupees, had only one Occidental characteristic and that was the date. But the gold coins of Native Indian princes, including mohurs, also came to the Cape in considerable numbers and were accepted as currency.
Indian gold coins (e.g. mohurs, pagodas and fanams) recovered from the Fame, a British East Indiaman that was shipwrecked near Cape Town on June 14th 1822. (Source: WCNS).
Some of these were crude in design and irregular in shape; others were highly finished coins with milled edges. The writer has before him a mohur of 1786 of the type of which the value at the Cape was officially fixed at £1 17s. 6d. Its grandiloquent legend, which is in Persian characters, reads: “Defender of the Mohammedan Faith, Reflection of Divine Excellence, the Emperor Shah Aulum, has struck this coin to be current throughout the Seven Climes. Struck at Moorshedabad in the year 19 of his fortunate reign.”
It was mentioned above that the writer had seen a number of coins, relics of the “Grosvenor” East Indiaman. Three of them were queer little objects resembling gold buttons rather than pieces of money. They had been converted into shirt studs, after being picked up on the Pondoland coast. These tiny coins belonged to the famous Indian numismatic family, the pagodas, which originated centuries ago. Each of the shirt studs bore a representation of the god Swami on one side, and on the other there was a five-pointed star which gave this type of money the name of ‘star pagodas.”
No doubt star pagodas were familiar enough at the Cape, but the coin which was officially recognised in this country and the value of which was fixed at 7s. in 1782 and at 8s, in 1806 was the pagoda, a piece of gold not quite so large as a half-sovereign. It had a representation of a pagoda on one side and of the god Swami on the other.
When the writer considers the extraordinary variety of the gold pieces which were current at the Cape from the time of the advent of Van Riebeeck until the British sovereign was installed, he is irresistibly reminded of the diversity of Old Flint’s collection described in Robert Louis Stevenson’s great buccaneering romance ‘“Treasure Island.” Readers may turn to the last chapter to refresh their memories. There is it written:
“I (the boy hero of the story) was kept busy all day in the cave, packing the minted money into bread-bags.
“It was a strange collection . . . English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges and Louises, doubloon and double guineas, moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces, stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider’s web ... nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection; and for number I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out.”
Source: Reddit.com
Well practically all the varieties of gold pieces in that famous hoard of fiction were once current at the Cape.