My wife’s
grandmother, a splendid lady who died at almost 100 in the 1980s, gave me a
very graphic eye-witness account of actually seeing the ex-president of the Transvaal,
Paul Kruger. He was then being applauded by a crowd while taking a carriage
ride in Amsterdam around 1902. Kruger had been offered asylum in the
Netherlands as his government collapsed in the Boer War and he was never to
return to Africa. The manner in which this intransigent Boer leader was brought
to Europe is of considerable interest and the ship that carried him, the Gelderland, was itself to have a remarkable career.
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| The Utrecht, a sister of the Gelderland, showing how the latter would have looked in 1900 |
Kruger was
born in 1825 on a farm in the east of what was then the British-ruled Cape Colony.
At the age of 11 he accompanied his family on the “Great Trek”, in which
thousands of Boer families, dissatisfied with British rule, struck eastwards
and north-eastwards into the territories that would later to become the
independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Kruger was to play a significant military and
political role in the development of the Transvaal Republic. He became
president for the first time in 1880, at the time of First Boer War with
Britain. Boer forces were to prove victorious in the only major battle – Majuba
Hill – and the conflict was settled by
an agreement that secured recognition of
Transvaal independence under nominal, and face-saving, British suzerainty.
Kruger was to win successive presidential elections thereafter and gained
considerable prestige during an official tour of Europe in 1884.
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Paul Kruger - a contemporary cartoon that encapsulates his image
His Bible and pipe were his constant companions |
The
independence of the two Boer republics might have continued indefinitely had not the discovery of gold and diamonds attracted large numbers of non-Boers, the
so-called Uitlanders, essentially
foreigners. Their presence represented a significant challenge to Boer culture
and society and was widely resented. Denial of civil rights to Uitlanders were a major cause of the Second
Boer War (1899 to 1902) which again pitted the Boer Republics against Britain.
The conflict can be roughly divided into two phases, the first of relatively
conventional warfare and lasting about a year, during which Boer forces were
initially very successful, but which were thereafter crushed by superior
British forces. The second, and most bitter, phase was to be a guerrilla war in
which small, mobile and brilliantly led Boer columns proved difficult to hunt
down and destroy.
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| A Boer Commando - at the time perhaps the best irregular troops in the world |
There was
widespread sympathy for the Boer cause in Europe, not least in the Netherlands,
since the majority of the Boer population were of Dutch descent. Both France
and Germany were probably less Pro-Boer than Anti-British, as France was still
smarting over its climb-down in the Fashoda confrontation with Britain, while
Germany’s irrational Kaiser Wilhelm II was increasingly resentful of British power
and prestige.
Pretoria, the
Transvaal capital, fell to British forces in June 1900, thereby effectively
ending the first phase of the war. Kruger had left the city shortly before this
but age and infirmity – he was no longer able to ride a horse – precluded him
taking part in the guerrilla campaign now starting. He lay low for almost four
months before crossing the border into Portuguese-ruled Mozambique, heading for
Lourenco Marques, now Maputo. Wilhelmina (1880-1962), the young queen of the Netherlands
was moved by his plight. She resolved to assist Kruger, regardless of the problems
this might imply for British-Dutch relations, and in so doing showed the same
mettle that was to characterise her leadership of the nation four decades later
when Germany invade in 1940.
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The young Queen Wilhelmina
She reigned under her mother's regency from 1890
and alone after coming of age in 1898 |
The new Dutch
protected cruiser Gelderland was
accordingly sent to Lourenco Marques to carry Kruger to exile in Europe. This
unusual assignment was to be the first in what was to be a remarkable career
extending over almost five decades.
Roughly
equivalent to the Royal Navy’s Apollo
Class of Second Class Cruisers, the Gelderland
was one of the six-ship Holland Class
which were primarily designed for service on overseas stations in the Dutch
East Indies and Dutch Antilles. Details were as follow:
Displacement: 4,100
tons Length: 310 ft
Propulsion: Two 3-cycle triple expansion engines, total
10,500 HP
Speed: 19.5 knots
(1914)
Armament: 2× 6” (bow and stern chasers) 6× 4.7” (on the
beam)
20 lighter weapons
The Royal
Navy had been operating a blockade to prevent supplies reaching the Boer forces,
mainly through Mozambique, but no attempt was made to intercept the Gelderland or prevent Kruger’s
embarkation in November 1900. His removal from the scene was indeed probably
seen by the British as desirable in view of his iconic status. He was carried
to Marseilles and travelling on to the Netherlands, where he stayed as an
honoured guest in rented homes in Hilversum and Utrecht. Ill health seems to
have prompted him to move to Switzerland, and thereafter to Menton on the Riviera,
where he died in 1904, an incongruous end for a man so closely identified with Boer
life and culture.
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| A contemporary magazine illustration showing the Gelderland carrying Kruger to Europe |
Kruger was a
highly popular figure in the Netherlands, as attested by several streets and squares
being named after him in various towns. In Amsterdam the Transvaalbuurt (Transvaal Neighbourhood), constructed
as a city extension for 1910 onwards had many of its streets named after Boer
politicians and generals while in The Hague a generally similar Transvaalkwartier
(Transvaal Quarter) had its streets named after Boer victories in the first
year of the war.
In the following
years the Gelderland was to serve in the
Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, surviving a grounding occasioned by
incomplete charts.
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| The Gelderland leaving for the Dutch Antilles |
The Gelderland was to be involved in two
further international incidents. In 1908 a dispute broke out between the
Netherlands and Venezuela regarding harbouring of dissident Venezuelan refugees
in the Dutch-governed island of Curaçao. Venezuela expelled the Dutch
ambassador, prompting a Dutch dispatch of three warships, one of them the Gelderland, with orders to intercept ships
sailing under the Venezuelan flag. In a
bloodless incident, on December 12th 1908, the Gelderland captured a Venezuelan coast guard vessel and thereafter,
with the other Dutch ships, enforced a blockade on Venezuela's ports. Angered
by this, and blaming it on the Venezuelan president, his internal opponents overthrew his regime and the
standoff with the Netherlands was ended.
Four years
later the Gelderland was again involved
in an international incident, this time when she was sent to Istanbul to join
ships sent by other European powers to protect the lives and properties of
foreigners as the First Balkan war neared its climax and the Bulgarian army
threatened the city. The Gelderland contributed
a 100-man landing party to an international force of up to 3000 men. This force
was subsequently withdrawn without action being required.
The Gelderland’s later years in Dutch
service were as a training vessel, and she was out of use by the outbreak of WW2.
The hull appears however to have been in
reasonable condition and in 1941 the Netherlands’ Nazi occupiers saw potential
for employing her. She was therefore converted into an ant-aircraft ship at
Elbing, in what is now Poland, and renamed the Niobe. So named, she entered
service in March 1944, and unlike other German anti-aircraft battery ships had
her own engines and could steam under power.
In this new guise the Gelderland/Niobe carried a very powerful
anti-aircraft armament:
8× 10.5 cm Flak L/45 C/32
4× 40 mm Bofors L/60
4× 20 mm (4×4) Vierlinge C/38 – Four Barrel Pom-Poms
The Niobe operated
off the Finnish city of Kotka during the Russian Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive.
In July 1944 she was subjected to massive air attack – by some 130 enemy
aircraft according to one source – and she was sunk in the harbour, 70 of the crew being killed and five of the attackers shot
down.
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| The wrecked Niobe off Kotla |
This was
still not the end for the tough old cruiser – which indeed had possibly been
the last of this type of vessel ever to see service in any guise – and she was
raised by the Russians and not finally scrapped until 1953.
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| HMS Hereward in the 1930s. Note the twin mounting in B position |
And one final
twist – just as Queen Wilhelmina had rescued a fleeing head of state, so too was
she to be rescued by a foreign warship in May 1940 when the Netherlands was overrun by
Nazi Germany. The Queen was evacuated from Hoek van Holland by the British
destroyer HMS Hereward and was thereafter
the inspirational focus of Dutch resistance overseas to the Nazi invaders. She
returned to a liberated Netherlands in March 1945 and reigned until her
abdication in 1948. This indomitable woman died in 1962.
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Queen Wilhelmina broadcasting from London to the Nazi--occupied Netherlands
Her belief in the ultimate liberation of her nation never faltered |
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