TOPIC:

After the decision was taken that Pretoria would not be defended, ZAR President Kruger was convinced by his Government and the ZAR Military leaders that his capture would be devastating to the already-low morale of the Republican troops. Kruger agreed to move east along the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay railway line to conduct government business from railway carriages at relatively safe Machadodorp (Kruger himself moved to nearby Waterval-Onder for health reasons). Only after the battle at Belfast a decision was taken for Kruger to “temporary travel to Europe to plead the Republics’ case there” The reason for the decision, besides preventing him falling into enemy hands, was in effect that it would have been too cumbersome for a commando during a guerilla-style warfare to move around with a man who was too frail and overweight to ride on horseback.

Kruger and entourage arrived by train in Lourenco Marques (“LM”) on the 11th of September 1900 with the intention of boarding almost immediately the Austrian liner “Styria” for Europe. That this didn’t happen had political grounds. Mozambique was at the time a Portuguese Colony. The Portuguese in Portugal maintained age-old friendly relationships and non-aggression pacts with Britain. The Portuguese authorities in LM, in contrast, were on friendly terms with the Boers, partly stemming from the recently completed railway line between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay. With London putting heavy pressure on Lisbon and Lisbon putting pressure on the Portuguese in LM, the local authorities in Mozambique could not overtly assist the Boers.

The British authorities in London and LM were especially focused on efforts to stop the flow of “contraband” the Boer Republics received from Europe. They did this using every dirty trick in the book including (illegal) searches of foreign ships heading to or from Mozambican harbors, customs inspection of goods that landed in or left the country, the leasing of all transfer barges in Lourenco Marques so that goods destined for the Republics were impossible to unload from large ships, the interception of all Telegraph traffic, employment of a large number of spies and the spreading of disinformation to name but a few. At the center of this effort was the large British consulate in LM. Until the beginning of 1900 the consulate was (badly) run by Carnegie Ross but things changed dramatically when he was replaced in May 1900 by Fritz Hauch Eden Crowe, a former Navy commander (See short bio hereunder). O.J.O. Ferreira in his book “Kruger in Lourenco Marques” argues convincingly that Crowe was the de-facto Gouverneur of Mozambique, able to overrule the local Portuguese authorities. It was Crowe who was personally responsible for Kruger having to stay more than a month under “house arrest” in LM without the ability to see or speak to any of his countrymen. It was Crowe who was behind the Mozambican authorities revoking the accreditation of Gerard Pott, Consul General for the Netherlands, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic and instrumental in the coordination of the transport of goods and information to and from the Boer Republics and it was allegedly Crowe who tried to convince the local authorities to deliver Kruger to the British military authorities. Crowe also tried to stop gold being shipped from the ZAR to Europe, the one task he failed miserably in. (Kruger left on the Gelderland with more than 1100 kg of Gold. On July 29, 1901 questions were asked in the British Parliament why Crowe had failed in stopping “2 million Pound Sterling worth of gold shipped with the Litchfield”, possibly a reference to the cargo of the German flagged Bundesrath, see elsewhere on this site)


In the above context the following item is of interest. If we ignore the Thank You letter Kruger wrote to the Portuguese authorities in LM and the Goodbye telegram to his wife in Pretoria, the last important letter that Kruger wrote on African soil was to an unnamed Boer Commander (Botha or Smuts?) on 18 October 1900, a day before he sailed for Europe. The letter was on embossed Mozambican official letterhead and most likely in the hand of Kruger’s private secretary, Bredell. The letter was subsequently abstracted from the possession of a Boer secret agent who was on route to the unnamed recipient via Durban. The whereabouts of the original letter signed by Kruger are unknown, however, the transcript in Crowe’s own hand survives.

Two excerpts from Crowe’s scrawled transcript.





The typed copy of the complete translated text of Kruger’s letter of 18 October 1900:



Post script: The Boers did not destroy the 211 meter-long tunnel at Waterval-Boven (It is often confused with the tunnel at Laign's Nek which was indeed blown up by the Boers). The Waterval-Boven tunnel formed a critical link in the rail connection between the Transvaal and the coast and was captured intact by the British in August 1900 (thus well before Kruger wrote the letter). Whether the non-destruction was due to efficient protective measures or by the fact that the instruction to destroy by Kruger was intercepted, is unknown to me.





Fritz Hauch Eden Crowe (1849-1904) was a career Royal Navy officer and British Consul-General. He was born in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway on 3 September 1849 as the oldest child of Arthur de Capel Brooke Woodfall Crowe (1825-1895), the British Vice-Consul to Norway, and Frederikke Adame Wilhelmine Hauch (1829-1907). Crowe became a cadet in the Royal Navy in 1863 and served on various ships. He was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant in 1869 and served in Britain, the Mediterranean, Madeira and Bermuda. In March 1872, he was appointed to the H.M.S Duke of Wellington, the flag ship at Portsmouth, and four month later to the H.M.S Victoria and Albert, the royal yacht of Queen Victoria. He was first promoted to Lieutenant, then Flag-Lieutenant in 1881. In 1883 he was appointed Lieutenant and Commander of the H.M.S Coquette and took part in the Anglo-Egyptian War, the Anglo-Sudanese Campaign, the seizure of the Suez Canal and the Suakin expedition for which he was mentioned in dispatches and promoted to Commander. Crowe retired from the Navy in 1896, at the age 47 and given the title of Captain.

In March 1900, Crowe was called back for duty and appointed His Majesty’s Consul-General at Lourenço Marques, an important position in light of the strategic position of Mozambique as the major thoroughfare of goods and information between the Boer Republics and the rest of the world. Crowe served with distinction and was recalled from his post immediately after the war. He returned to England in September 1902. For his role in the Boer War, Crowe was awarded the South Africa Medal and was a made a Civil Companion of the Order of Bath in 1902. Fritz Crowe died 11 August 1904 in Pimlico, Middlesex.

Crowe married twice. In 1887 with Clara Olga Adelaide de Nathomb who died in 1895. In 1899 he married Fahtmah Asther Rechit with who he had one daughter in March 1900.

Superb!
I hope you will approve of me re-posting these two photos: Kruger's last view of Africa from the Gelderland, and on board the ship.