Of all the early inhabitants of the nascent Port Elizabeth, Frederick Korsten, probably more than anyone else, deserves to be recognised and remembered. Yet there is no real tribute to him. The most fitting monument would have been the preservation of his former magnificent home, Cradock Place. But even that now lies in ruins. 

A comprehensive biography would have sufficed. But that also failed to materialise. John Centlivres Chase did make an attempt in 1868, yet in length it is little more than a eulogy. What he fails to mention or even allude to is that Frederick Korsten was his father-in-law. Nor does he provide any insights into what exactly made Korsten tick. 

Such disdain for history reflects poorly on the denizens of Algoa Bay.

Main picture: Frederick Korsten

A Life at Sea
Like many of the dramatis personae of early Port Elizabeth, Frederick Korsten was neither of Afrikaner nor of English extraction, but rather he was Dutch. Frederick Korsten was born on the 17^th August 1773, at Zierikzee, the capital of the Island of Schouwen, in Zealand, at the mouth of the Scheldt. Korsten was sent to the ancient city of Breda to be educated and thereafter, like most of the sons of respectable Dutch families, he was destined for a commercial life. To this end, at an early age, he was placed in the counting house of one of the principal merchants in Breda.

All that said, the young Korsten was bored. What stirred him was the idea of adventure to foreign lands. Imbued with Shakespeare’s maxim, “House-keeping youths have ever homely wits”, in 1795 he sought public service in one of the colonies of Holland, expressing a preference for Demerara, a historical region in the Guianas on the northern coast of South America which is now part of the country of Guyana. It was a Dutch colony until 1815 and a county of British Guiana from 1838 to 1966. Korsten even obtained an influential testimonial or recommendation “as an intelligent, active young man” and also “een aller beste patriot”, being a very good patriot. But it was not to be as there was no immediate opportunity for foreign employment. Instead, he entered the employ of Burgomeester Kornelis van der Boddaart of Middelburg, Zeeland. However his ardent desire for foreign adventure was finally fulfilled as on the 5^th October of that same year 1795, he received a commission as a cadet on the frigate, Castor, a ship of forty guns. Korsten was handed the document signed and sealed by the Secretary of the Navy by Captain de Kantor. This document was headed by the slogan “Gelykheid, Vryheid, Briederskap” – Equality, Liberty, Fraternity, as befitted the age and the times.

The Castor was one of the ships comprising the fleet assembled by Admiral De Winter at Texel, a municipality and an island  in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands. It is the largest and most populated island of the West Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea. The objective of this fleet was the recapture of the Cape of Good Hope, which had fallen to the British during the previous month. This fleet, comprising two 64s, two 54s, seven frigates and sloops together with some of the best land troops, set sail for the Cape on the 23^rd February 1796. The journey to the Cape was recorded in a journal by Korsten. The fleet adopted a circuitous route in order to evade the blockading British fleet. Instead of taking the shorter southern route through the English Channel, the Dutch fleet headed north around the Faroe Islands, which it sighted, as well as the Hebrides, only reaching the Azores a month later on 22^nd March 1796. It then made Madeira, Palma and afterwards Tenerife on the 4^th April 1796. Here it revictualed and refitted, staying forty-three days. Refreshed and revitalised, on the 17^th May the fleet headed eastwards across the Atlantic towards Fernando Noronha, Cape Augustine on the Brazilian littoral. From there, it sailed diagonally across the Atlantic to Saldanha Bay north of Cape Town, which they reached on 31^st July 1796 after a voyage of 159 days.

Wary of the British, some vessels entered the bay with caution. Finding the “coast clear”, the Dutch squadron entered and anchored at Hoetjies Bay after which the sick were landed on Schappen Island. Several of the officers landed in order to make a reconnaissance of the area and discovered that the farms had been vacated and all the cattle removed. Meeting an inhabitant, they were informed that there was a division of opinion amongst the residents of Cape Town. Some were displeased at the presence of the English whereas others were not. The reason supplied for their lack of antagonism was that they now received good prices for their produce. On the 11^th August 1796, Cadet Overbeek was sent ashore in order to purchase cattle but it was futile as none was available. He might not have been fortunate in his primary mission but he did learn that a British force was en route to Saldanha Bay.

On the 15^th August 1796 the Dutch squadron was aroused by shots from the shore, which continued until the next day. Cadet Overbeek was again charged with the task to reconnoitre the shore where he met a European on horseback. This stranger informed Overbeek that a person from Cape Town was anxious to communicate with Captain Claris, one of the captains of the fleet. Not only that but also this unknown person desired to meet Claris post haste. In the logbooks the name of this mystery person was left blank. Before this rendezvous could eventuate, at nine o’clock the next morning strange vessels were spotted outside the Bay. Furthermore, a body of cavalry, infantry and artillery made their appearance on the hills and beach, set up their guns and commenced firing at the Bellona, which had been stranded.

At 4pm, an English frigate entered the Bay without a flag. In retaliation, the Dutch Rear Admiral fired and the frigate, obviously performing a recce, retired. Then when the Admiral hoisted the Batavian flag, at 5pm two English vessels entered the Bay. For the first time, the Admiral was able to view the full extent of the enemy arrayed against him. It totalled thirteen vessels under the British flag: five ships of the line, seven frigates and a brig. The Dutch exposed their broadsides while the British formed in two lines and anchored at the mouth of the Bay, preventing their escape.

The following day, the 17^th August 1796 should have been one of elation and joy for Cadet Korsten as it was his birthday. Instead as he sat down to complete his log entries, he was in a fit of depression at the prospect of an inglorious result.

Some of the Dutch officers were invited on board one of the British ships. After an interval, at 10am, a signal was sent from the Dutch Admiral informing all his officers to attend a meeting aboard his ship. Almost as a stinging rebuke for the imminent surrender, a mutiny broke out on board the Castor, with the crew demanding wine. Without permission, they seized it, saying that it was better to drink it than give it to the English. In the resultant fracas, they threatened and prepared to hang the steward, who was not very popular amongst the crew. Using profane and offensive expressions to voice their anger, a scene of wild disorder ensued until Captain de Kantor returned at 4pm. As he announced their surrender, he was met with incongruous cries of “Oranje boven.”

On the following morning, the 18^th August 1796, an English officer came on board the Castor and took possession of the ship by hoisting the British Standard over the Batavian. In a state of deep distress, Cadet Korsten admitted to shedding “some natural tears” at the indignity upon his country and his profession as he became a prisoner of war.

In service of the enemy
Notwithstanding this abrupt and humiliating change in his circumstances and prospects and his well-known nationalistic tendencies, Korsten soon reconciled himself to the reality of the situation and appears to have sufficiently ingratiated himself with persons of influence in Cape Town. This culminated in a rapid appointment as temporary clerk in the Court of Justice. Moreover, upon a strong recommendation by members of that body, in April 1798, he was appointed its second sworn clerk by the Governor, Lord McCartney. Not one to let the grass grow under his feet, on the 25^th January 1799, he married the eldest daughter of the late Jan Hoets, a wealthy merchant of Cape Town.

On the restoration of the colony to Holland at the peace of Amiens, the colonial civil servant visited North America and England. On his return in 1803, he entered the service of the Burgher Senate, in which position he remained as Secretary and Town Treasurer until January 1805. At this juncture, Korsten retired at this own request on the grounds that his official duties interfered with his mercantile pursuits, which civil servants were then allowed to follow. Clearly Korsten performed an excellent job as he received flattering testimonials from the President and members of the Senate for “activity and trustworthiness, and that he retired with honour, after repeated applications” for the above reasons. This view was endorsed by the signature of the Governor-General Janssens on the 7^th January 1805.

Into business fulltime
On retirement from the civil service, Korsten devoted himself entirely to his business as a merchant in Cape Town. In 1808 using his own vessel, the Helena of 500 tons, and with his wife and only child in tow, he visited first England and then his country of birth, Holland. At Walcheren, he witnessed the ravages of the fever that destroyed so many of the British troops in that disastrous expedition. At the latter end of the year 1810, once again using his own vessel, Korsten returned to the Cape Colony in order to resume his mercantile affairs.

To a Terra Nova
By 1811, the eastern districts of the colony had largely been cleared of the marauding black tribesmen. This allowed the Cape Government to proclaim its intention “to found extensive settlements from Algoa Bay, the future naval mart of those quarters, to Uitenhage and Graaff-Reinet.” Perhaps it was the bold assertion in 1798 by Barrow, who foretold the possibility of business in the Algoa Bay environs in the salted provisions business that hooked Korsten. This prediction was not based upon caprice but due to sound judgment. A combination of cheap cattle and extensive saltpans in the neighbourhood, made this business viable.

Korsten was not risk averse as is evident by the decisions taken in his life to date. Hence he was amenable to exploring the business opportunity in the Eastern Cape in spite of the area’s isolation from the rest of the Cape Colony and the potential for further incursions by marauding tribes. Therefore, when a tender was advertised on 28^th December 1811 for the supply of salted beef destined for Mauritius and elsewhere, Korsten immediately responded positively. During March 1812, he entered into a contract to supply 3,000 barrels of salted beef with the concession that the contractors and their employees were exempted from commando service. Furthermore, they were at liberty to cut wood for casks in the Government forests.

To facilitate this process, on 1^st January 1812, Korsten purchased the “opstal” on the Loan Place, “Papenkuils Fontein” later that year to be renamed Cradock Town in honour of the governor of the Cape, Sir John Cradock and shortly thereafter it was renamed Cradock Place. This opstal was located about five miles from the landing place in Algoa Bay at the mouth of the Papenkuils River, resplendent in flamingos. It was here that Korsten built a huge estate at great cost. This included accommodation, cattle and slaves. This business venture can rightly be described as the first trading establishment in the Eastern Province and Korsten personally oversaw the operation of this business until 1820.

To provide some measure and idea of the extent and nature of the business, which was in effect a commercial outpost or entrepôt of the Colony, it was not unusual to find twenty wagons bearing produce on the property. Previously they would have had to travel to Cape Town in order to acquire imported and locally manufactured items. Instead of a tedious and expensive annual visit to Cape Town, these local farmers could now exchange their produce for these items at Papenkuils Fontein. The extent of the contractual business can also be gauged from the fact that frequently no fewer than forty oxen were slaughtered daily and salted, chiefly by experienced Europeans that Korsten had employed.

In addition, the military officers and messes on the frontier were supplied with all their importable essentials, as were the civil servants of George, Uitenhage and Graaff-Reinet. In reality, the huge “supermarket” that Korsten had created at Cradock Place enjoyed a complete monopoly in the supply of most non-agricultural products in the Eastern Cape. But this was a natural monopoly in that he enjoyed no exclusive privileges but rather benefitted from the inertia of the local inhabitants in order to engage in such trade.

Whaling and sealing business
In addition to his salting business, Korsten established a tannery, a cooperage for the manufacture of barrels, a windmill for grinding produce and, by 1817, a whale fishery at Gomery near current day, Humewood. As part of the whaling business, Korsten had oil tanks constructed at a cost of £2,400. To construct them, he was forced to employ a Mr Diesel from Cape Town. Besides the whale fishery, which in one year slaughtered twenty whales, Korsten also was in possession of a lease on the Santa Croix and Bird Islands which in one season alone produced 14,000 seal skins. Ultimately, the whaling business became precarious when the American whalers intercepted the whales before they reached Algoa Bay to calf.

The sealing business, like the whaling business, was not without its challenges and challengers. In early 1823, Lt. King of the Salisbury, had first arrived in Algoa Bay. En route to Port Natal, he landed 10 men on Bird Island and then petitioned the Governor of the Cape for sealing rights to the island. This culminated in a protracted legal battle with Korsten who claimed to already hold the exclusive rights. The court upheld Korsten’s rights in this regard.

First resident fleet owner
From1819 onwards Korsten played an ever-larger role in shipping in the Cape Colony. At one time or another, Korsten owned no less than 13 coasting schooners and cutters of various sizes, 12 of which ultimately came to grief. In his book The Age of Sail, Colin Urquhart maintains that during the late 1820s a small boat building industry was developing and that besides the schooner built by Oldham, another small coasting cutter, appropriately named the Elizabeth, was constructed using timbers sourced from the Alexander forest.

Early in the 19th century Korsten is known to have used the Zwartkops River as a safe anchorage for his shallow draft vessels like the Uitenhage Packet, and it was thought that with a little dredging and
work the river could easily be turned into a harbour of sorts.

Among the small fleet of coasters which Korsten had acquired for trade between Algoa Bay and the Cape was the Hope and three others of Korsten’s fleet were wrecked in a gale off the off the mouth of the Baakens in 1819. The figurehead was retrieved and set up in the garden of Cradock Place. The largest vessel that Korsten owned was the 500 ton Helena which Korsten used on a family holiday to Europe.

Diversification outside Port Elizabeth
Korsten did not restrict his business operations to Port Elizabeth, as, in accordance with his entrepreneurial spirit, he periodically established businesses elsewhere. At various settled localities, he recognised a need as only small settlers’ stores attached to military cantonments existed. At Port Elizabeth he opened a business, placing a Mr de la Harpe in charge, at Uitenhage, a Mr Hickman and at Grahamstown, a Mr Arnoldus B. Deitz.

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Arnoldus Dietz and his Patron Frederick Korsten

The original 6,000 acres of grazing land at Cradock Place was insufficient for Korsten’s salting business. As a result, Korsten deemed it necessary to acquire or lease three additional properties, Gomery in Summerstrand, Bushy Park in the south west and Hankey on the Gamtoos River.

The site at Cradock Place became the centre of a trading empire that included farming, salt production, tanning, cooperage, milling, whaling, seal-hunting and retailing. By 1821, with his own fleet of ships and a network of agents, he was marketing butter, soap and leather to Cape Town, manufactured goods and flour to the Zuurveld and salted meat and whale oil internationally

Having nurtured his businesses in Port Elizabeth through their infancy, shortly after the arrival of the settlers in 1820, Korsten sold his business at Cradock Place to Samuel Eusebius Hudson and took up residence at the Fishery for several months. Of interest to me would be the reason for Korsten’s sale of this ostensibly prosperous business. I suspect that a sale at that juncture, when the business was at its zenith with no discernible competitors, would have been at a premium. Possessing a keen business sense, he would surely have been aware of the threat potential competitors posed on his margins. My assumptions regarding Korsten’s logic for the sale are misplaced. Instead an article entitled The Decline and Fall of Frederick Korsten by E. Hudson disabused me of all my perceptions regarding the business acumen of Korsten. In many aspects his business practices are akin to those of a latter-day Donald Trump whose stewardship of various businesses has been delinquent to the extent of making them insolvent.

In 1823, Korsten left Port Elizabeth and retired to Cape Town where he purchased a property at the top of Government Gardens, known as “The Mill.” At the same time, he carried on in the wine and grain trade, supplying frontier homes.

What prompted Korsten to return?
By 1826, it was evident that the new owner of his Port Elizabeth business and the lessees of his Cradock Place property, Samuel Hudson, had failed in his business endeavour. After selling “The Mill” to Colonel Bell, the Colonial Secretary, Korsten returned to Port Elizabeth, directing his chief attention resolve the precarious financial situation at Cradock Place. Most writings imply that the cause of the problems was due to financial mismanagement. For the most part, that is probably correct except that Hudson’s diary makes it more specific as follows: “He has realised on his speculation at Cradock’s Town a Princely Fortune which has has squandered as wildly ass he got it readily”. Compounding and confounding this loss was intra-family ructions relating to Mr Jan Hoets, Frederick Korsten’s father-in-law. Most notably it related to Hoets’s relationship with a Madagascar slave girl with whom she bore him two children. To strew salt on the wounds, Hoets manumitted [granted freedom] to between 11 and 16 slaves. This action would reduce the inheritance of the legal children. w

to the whale fishery. Induced by the example of the Daniels, Whites and Campbells, Korsten went largely into wool farming for which Cradock Place, the estate Chatty and the Deal Party property, which he had purchased some years before, were found to be well adapted to sustain a flock of 4,000 sheep. This business was continued after his death by Scheuble and Chase. Korsten clearly did rise again but exactly how he achieved his “resurrection”, I am unable to ascertain. When he came back he was able to repurchase Cradock place where he died and bequeathed it to John Centlivres Chase who in turn bequeathed it to his daughter Helen and her husband Jan Hoets, grandson of Jan Hoets and  son of Reynier Hoets. 

Port Elizabeth of Yore: Korsten vs Vagrancy and Trespassing in the 1830s

In 1836, Korsten was nominated by the Governor, Sir Benjamin D’Urban to represent the Eastern Province in the Legislative Council in Cape Town. In spite of strong urgings by D’Urban to accept, Korsten was not swayed. Korsten spent the last years of her life tending a flock of 4,000 sheep.

Jan Hoets: Connected to both Chase and Korsten

Early in 1839, Korsten’s health began to fail. Aiding his rapid decline was a bitter disappointment through a breach of faith on the part of a friend resulting in a pecuniary loss for Korsten. Korsten finally died on 16^th June 1839 at the age of 67. He was buried in the family vault at Cradock Place.

Note on the date of the name change from Papenkuils Fontein to Cradock Place:
In the Gazetteer of the Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage Divisions of the old Cape Colony Harradine states that the name change occurred in 1821. The facts do not support that date. The British Governor Cradock only held that post from 6th September 1811 to 6th April 1814 and it was during this period that Governor Cradock visited the farm and not 1821.

Sources
Old Times and Odd Corners: The Founder of Eastern Province Commence and his Frontier Home by John Centlivres Chase
Jonker Fourie – Photos of present day ruins. Port Elizabeth’s prolific photographer of items of historical interest
The Decline and Fall of Frederick Korsten by Edward Hudson
Algoa Bay in the Age of Sail 1488-1917 – A Maritime History by Colin Urquhart (2007, Bluecliff Publishing, Port Elizabeth)
East to the Isles, The Story of the Bird Isles of Algoa Bay by Colin Urquhart and Norbert Klages (1996, Bluecliff Publishing, Port Elizabeth)