Jan van Riebeeck and the Whale, March 1654

On 1 March 1654, Jan van Riebeeck’s diary records that they’ve received word of a beached whale about a mile and a half from the fort. The next day, he writes that they had gone to investigate the beached whale and found it to be relatively rich in blubber and with plenty of whale bone – therefore they went back on the 3rd of March, but on that date they found that none of the whale bone pieces they managed to extract was big enough to put to good use, and they did not have appropriate containers to store the blubber in. The stench became overwhelming, and they had to retreat, after which the local Khoisan tribes moved in, cutting thick pieces of blubber from the whale and burying it in the sand.

Van Riebeeck’s official journal, which records his ten years at the Cape, is a fascinating source of information about daily life – but this is one of the more mundane entries which one is tempted to skim over if you are looking for information about people and events.

However, from a surprising source, the story of the beached whale is confirmed. Johan Nieuhof, a VOC official who briefly stopped at the Cape around this time, writes about the beached whale in his travel memoirs (paraphrased in English):

“The next day we heard that a whale was stranded in the Salt River. I went there with our Skipper and Commandant Van Riebeeck and his wife and a few others to look at it. It was a gigantic creature. We climbed on top of it and then we made the trumpeter play ‘Wilhelmus van Nassouwe’. The local people cut off great chunks, as big as they would have been able to carry, and buried it in the sand to eat later.”

The modern-day Salt River runs into the ocean under a small bridge over the busy Marine Drive. But a plaque at the mouth of Diep River, a few kilometres further down the coast, asserts that this river used to be known as the Salt River.

Whether the modern-day Salt River or the modern-day Diep River, whenever I drive past or visit either of these locations, I can not help but picture in my mind the scene of Jan van Riebeeck in his silks and stockings, with Maria van Riebeeck in her picnic finest, together with an assortment of officials, clambering around on the back of a beached whale while a trumpeter plays the Dutch national anthem.