The VOC Return Fleet Preparing to Leave Batavia, 1648
Twelve Dutch East India Company ships lying off Batavia before sailing for the Netherlands under Wollebrand Geleynsz de Jongh; the fleet reached home on 8 August 1648. Painted around 1650 and now in the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar. Getting fleets like this home alive is the reason the Company wanted a station at the Cape.
The refreshment post at Table Bay was not founded to build a colony. It was founded because the run between the Netherlands and Java killed crews: months without fresh food, scurvy on both legs of the voyage, and cargoes worth a fortune riding on ships that arrived undermanned. A garden halfway along, growing vegetables and holding cattle for barter, was a cheaper answer than losing sailors. What the Company got instead was a settlement with its own hunger, its own farmers and its own quarrels with the Khoikhoi whose grazing it took. See the Dutch East India Company's first years at the Cape.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
