Christian Ignatius Latrobe's Voyage to South Africa 1815 - 1816

In 1815 Christian Ignatius Latrobe, a reverend of the Moravian Church in England, set off for South Africa. He was sent to settle disputes between the colonial authorities and the Moravian Brethren and to search for new locations for a third mission station. He recorded his experiences and explorations in a very interesting travel journal, which was published in 1818. In this journal, he not only describes the state of the freshly english-occupied colony at the South African Cape, but also reports on the coexistence of Boers, indigenous people and the colonialists, provides insights into the way people traveled in the 19th century and adds vivid descriptions of the country, people and nature to his entries. Latrobe stays in South Africa for about a year during which he undertakes numerous small and large excursions. Three of his excursions are shown here, which are intended to provide a deeper understanding of his journey with the help of various forms of visualization.

The following maps display 3 different excursions that each have different degrees of granularity. The first map shows the way the Albion, a brig on which Latrobe traveled to the Cape. The second map zooms in on his stay in Gnadenthal (today known as Genadendal), the first settlement founded by the Moravian Church in South Africa in 1792. The third map shows Latrobe's actual exploration of the former cape colony from Genadendal all the way up to Somerset East (today called KwaNojoli).

1 | Sea Voyage - Travel from Gravesend to Capetown

On 1 October 1815, Latrobe set off for Cape Town with the Albion, a brig under the command of Captain Bishop. He documents the voyage, which lasted a total of 84 days, i.e. almost 3 months, in the first chapter of the report. For the most part, he gives details of the ship's position, describing which mainland or island is passed and in which direction it is situated. Not all waypoints given in the text could be found, but 18 can be shown on a map. In addition, some coordinates given in his book Letters to my Children; written at sea during a Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, in 1815 which was written during the travel were added to the map as well as a probable route of the Albion was generated from the position information given in the text, alongside which the usual route of merchant ships in the 19th century is shown.

The markers for individual waypoints can be set using the time slider below the map. Each marker has a color that indicates how accurate the information in Latrobe's travelogue was, i.e., how certain the waypoint is. Their colors are explained in the legend on the bottom left side of the map.
The size of the markers also indicates whether Latrobe was directly at the location (small marker) or passed nearby (large marker).
Each marker can be clicked to get more information about the individual waypoints.

At first glance, the ships' routes seem illogical. They lead very far west, almost to the coast of South America. However, sailing ships were not able to simply sail along the coast of Africa, as they were driven by the trade winds and ocean currents.

The routes shown here were created thanks to a visualization by Dr. Ben Schmidt, which visualizes the routes of over 280,000 sailing ships in the Atlantic and Pacific between 1750 and 1850. More information can be found on his blog, Sapping Attention.

2 | A pleasant Stay - Time spent at Genadendal

On January 15, 1816, Latrobe arrived in Gnadenthal for the first time. He had previously visited numerous places in the vicinity of Cape Town. On January 13th, he finally set out from Stellenbosch and traveled with an oxen wagon over bumpy roads, through mountains and rivers to Gnadenthal. It took two days for a journey that today can be covered in about 1.5 hours. After these numerous changes of location and arduous journeys, Latrobe stayed in Gnadenthal for an extended period. On the one hand, to better get to know the settlement, the surrounding area, and the missionaries stationed there, and on the other hand, to discuss matters of the Moravian Church and prepare for the planned exploratory trip into the interior of the cape colony.
This map shows the first day of his stay, January 15, 1816, and depicts only the places visited on that very first day, after arriving in Gnadenthal.

The time slider shows the order in which the places were visited. Although much looks different today, there are still plans of the area from the 18th and 19th centuries. Gnadenthal, or Genadendal as it is now called, was much smaller then. The two most important plans of the village centre, the so-called Werf, were used as the basis for the marker positions. One was made by Daniel Schwinn, one of the three missionaries who revived the mission station in 1792, which was then called Baviaanskloof (Baboon Gorge). His plan dates from 1799.

The second plan was drawn up 33 years later by Christian Ludwig Teutsch, who arrived in South Africa in 1826. He began his missionary work in Elim, but came to Gnadental in 1832 and crafted the plan.

Both plans are more schematic representations than historical maps, but they are very helpful in understanding what Genadendal looked like back then. For a better understanding of the region and its surroundings, you can add a satellite view using the map menu in the top right corner of the map.

3 | Exploring South Africa - A Search for a new Mission

Together with the missionaries in Gnadenthal and with the support of the governor, Lord Charles Henry Somerset, Latrobe planned a journey eastwards into the interior of the cape colony to find an unsettled but fertile piece of land for a third mission station of the Moravian Brethren. He put together a travel party, which included the missionaries Johann Heinrich (called John Henry) and Alice Schmitt as well as Johann Jürgen Friedrich Stein (called John Jürgen) and the Surveyor to the Government, John Melville. They were guided and accompanied by the Khoikhoi Marcus Moses, Christian Hector, Jeremias Waly, Lebrecht Aris, Johannes Paerl and his father Leonhard Paerl. Equipped with a large ox wagon for the travelling party, a small ox wagon for the luggage and an additional 3 saddled horses for smaller explorations, this group set off eastwards on March 5th, 1816 through the districts of Zwellendam (Swellendam), George and Uitenhagen (Kariega) and all the way back to Gnadenthal, briefly reaching the border of the former province of "Kaffraria". A journey of more than 600 kilometers, which took the group just over 2 months.

When the Time Slider is started, the waypoints of this trip are marked on the map in three different colors, which are selected based on the certainty of the location of the point. The assignment can be found in the legend in the bottom left corner of the map.

The waypoints are placed on the map depending on the time required and distance traveled between them. The further apart they are and the longer it took to reach them, the larger the marker appears. The closer the slider value moves to the marker, the smaller and more precise it becomes. This animation was chosen because many of the waypoints were very difficult to determine. Some points are several kilometers apart and exact routes can only be assumed. The inserted routes for the outbound and return journeys were created using a least cost path analysis and represent a possible path that Latrobe and his companions could have taken. However, it is no longer possible to say exactly, so the markers should be understood as a radius within which the actual route could have been located.

The animation is not an exact representation but is intended to demonstrate how difficult it can be to identify historical locations if the information about them is not documented and saved in a long-term accessible way. Descriptions of the individual waypoints can be found by clicking on them in the pop-ups.

The historical map attached to Latrobe's travelogue was used primarily to determine the locations. The route colors for the outward and return routes were chosen based on the depiction in this map.

In addition, a historical map by Aaron Arrowsmith from 1815 was used. This map is part of the David Rumsey Map Collection and was compiled from contemporary, mostly Dutch, sources. Neither map can be compared to the accuracy of today's maps, but they are a tremendous help in locating the historical places.

More detailed information on the determination of the individual coordinates and the resources used for this purpose can be found in this document. It is currently written in German but will also be made available in English in the future.