Sunburnt Queen: A True Story

by Hazel Crampton

In the late 1730s, an unknown East Indiaman smashed to pieces on the reefs of Lambasi Bay on South Africa’s Wild Coast. Next morning, the local inhabitants stumbled upon Bessie, a seven-year-old English girl huddled beside a rock on the beach.

She was not the first to be shipwrecked on these treacherous shores. Many before her had starved to death, or been killed or cannibalised; some walked hundreds of miles to trading posts. But these locals chose to take Bessie home and bring her up as one of their own. She grew to be a woman of legendary beauty and wisdom, eventually becoming the Great Wife of a prince. So began the enduring legacy of a dynasty that extends to many of today’s Xhosa royal families.

Using the oral histories of the tribes, and written accounts by early missionaries and traders who met Bessie’s grandchildren, Hazel Crampton traces the story of Bessie and her descendants throughout the turbulent history of the Eastern Cape until the present day.

Hazel Crampton is an artist. She lives in Cape Town, where she is working on her second book.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa, South Africa, Biography, Historical, Royalty

400 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jayne Bauling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone decided the selling point for this book should be Bessie, the imagination-capturing, possibly English or Scottish castaway child who became the Great Wife of an amaMpondo prince.

So she's the hook, but essentially this history is an intriguing look into our South African gene pool. It recalls the many shipwreck survivors washed up on South Africa's treacherous Wild Coast - free men, women and children, servants, slaves and ships' crews. Like Bessie, many made a life among the various local tribes, some attaining great political clout.

In this scrupulously researched book, we also get to meet runaway Cape slaves and noted polygamists such as Coenraad de Buys, Henry Francis Fynn, members of the King family, and the Bassons, all of whom contributed their seed to the wonderful mix.

Additionally, this book serves as a reminder of some of the horrors of our past: the Mfecane and its devastation, the Nongcawuse-prompted Cattle-Killing and subsequent great Disappointments with their appalling consequences, and the harm done to African culture by bigoted, ignorant missionaries and the blindness, brutality and arrogance of both Boer and Brit, including the genocide of the San by the Boers. Too, it's a fascinating and educational exposition on African culture in the 1700/1800s, much of it lost.

It's good for us to remind ourselves of these thing.

[Jrohde · Rating 5 out of 5]

perhaps the best written piece on South African history that i have encountered - fascinating, and a wonderful insight into the character of the Xhosa people and how this shipwrecked girl was taken in an is ancestor to an entire segment of the modern Xhosa tribe. far more readable than the Mostert history which I guess is the definitive one of this subject.

[David Kenvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fascinating story of the first contacts between the Xhosa people living along the Wild Coast in South Africa and Europeans, who were shipwrecked along that coast from the sixteenth century onwards. It is a story of assimilation, followed by conquest as European settlers spread out from Cape Town. I first heard this story when I was living near the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape in 2014, and I have wanted to get my own copy of Hazel Crampton’s book for a long time. Ten years earlier, I walked part of the Wild Coast and I can tell you that the name is not a misnomer. The waves pound into the shoreline. You can see the shipwrecks, or at least some of them. Most, of course, are buried beneath the waves.
Crampton begins her story with high drama. It was in the early C18th that there was a shipwreck at Lambasi Bay, now the location of Port Grosvenor. The locals assembled to see if there were any rich pickings, such as metals, that they could salvage. A child was heard crying. That is how the survivors were found. She said that her name was “Bessie” and the locals guessed that she was six years old. She was white. Two other little girls, probably of Indian or Malay origin, were also found and a few men. The locals took them in. Bessie was given the name Gquma, because she was found on the beach. The locals, the Ganga, assumed that all the castaways were related because this fitted their social structures and beliefs, but there is of course no evidence of this whatsoever.
Gquma was very lucky. She was an attractive child and grew up to be a good-looking young woman. Cimbi, the Nanga chief, had sent to word to his overlord, Matayi, about the discovery of the castaways on the beach and a meeting was held in which it was attempted to find out where Gquma had come from. All she could do was point to the sea and say “Bessie”.
This is where the story becomes complicated. Bessie was given her new name, Gquma, and was adopted into the local nobility. Then of course she grew up, and in due course a husband was selected for her by negotiation, and she married Tshomane, who was the Great Son of Matayi, the aristocrat who had taken her in. The Great Son is not necessarily the oldest son, but he is the heir. In due course, they had children who were married into Xhosa royalty, which how Bessie’s grandchildren came to play leading roles in the anti-colonial wars of the nineteenth century. It is also how, through them, missionaries came to hear Bessie’s tale, and confused the shipwreck with that of “The Grosvenor” also at Lambasi Bay in 1782. This may have been anything up to 50 years after Bessie’s shipwreck. There also developed a story that her surname was Campbell, but I am not sure what evidence there was for this. All that we know for sure is that she told the Ganga that her name was Bessie.
Much of the book is concerned with Bessie’s descendants and the role that they played in opposing British expansion eastwards from Cape Town, until the disaster of the cattle-killing. Very much like the Ghost Dancers of the Plains in the USA, a prophet, Nongqawuse, emerged calling upon the Xhosa to kill their cattle so that the ghosts of their ancestors would drive the British away. It did not happen. It sealed the fate of the Xhosa resistance. That is where the story ends.
If we knew the name of the ship from which Bessie was rescued, we might be able to put more of the story together. We could check the passenger lists. It would help if we knew which port the ship had sailed from, and if it was going east or west. There is so much that we do not know.
What we do know however is beautiful. The Ganga found shipwreck survivors, including three children, and they took them in. It is an enormous testament to their humanity, and it makes the way that they were treated by the colonialists utterly shameful.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I finally decided to put the book down - unfinished. I wanted to like it but I just couldn't. I am not completely sure what the book is about and that is after reading half of the book. It sort of is about "The Sunburnt Queen", but not really. It is sort of about shipwrecks and survivors, but not really. It is sort of about the Wild Coast and those who live there but not really. There are lots of possibilities for many interesting stories that could have been told, but none of them were. Not really.

[Phillipa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! Okay so it is not an easy read, like a fictional book would be. It was quite hard going in some places, and because of our trip, I ended up reading it in two halves.

Still, it is completely fascinating! I'm not sure if it would be for a non-South African tho. But for me, I adored the history. I'd highly recommend it if you're interested. You'll definitely be surprised!

[Skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book and am sad to have finished it. It tells the story of an 18th century castaway, Bessie, against the backdrop of South African political history. Although the structure is at times disjointed and challenging to follow, the research is fascinating and rigorous.

[Heather Sadie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on the history of South Africa and the tribes in the transkei.

[Gordon Wells · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite some eye-rolly progressive shibboleths, a detailed account of castaways on the wild coast and early colonial SA history

[Benji Anstey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hazel Crampton is one hell of a researcher. She's mapped out Xhosa genealogy and connected oral histories and written accounts in a way I think only the very best historians can. Her personal snippets reflect a clear connection to her work. She writes about how a particular place "feels," seeking to move beyond the cold, clinical approach of so many academics. The stories she weaves in this book are diverse, expansive, and a reminder that our history as South Africans is not as black-and-white as it has been made out to be. Crampton brings to life a period of history that many of us do not well understand. She animates a frontier region that was once porous and alive, peaceful one moment, violent the next. The macro shifts in borders and politics are contextualised by dozens of human stories, painting a picture of life on the Wild Coast during the expansion of the Cape Colony and the upheaval caused by the Mfecane.

Whilst I enjoyed this book for the most part, several sections felt heavy. Pages at a time were dedicated to mapping out Xhosa family trees and proving that characters from oral and written histories were, in fact, the same person, despite possible variations in names and dates. Her work is rigorous and doubtless enjoyable to those who understand it, but unfortunately, these sections went over my head. In this regard, The Sunburnt Queen suffers from first-book syndrome, and I think Crampton refines this density in her second book, The Side of the Sun at Noon. Suppose you struggled with the Sunburnt Queen but appreciated the topic, research, and anecdotes. In that case, I highly recommend her second book, which I believe is a masterpiece of non-fiction and would be riveting to readers anywhere in the world. I quite literally could not put that book down. The Side of the Sun at Noon

And thus ultimately, for me, this book only gets 4/5 because of the missing narrative thread that is supposed to unite all that research into a cohesive story. It exists—the story of Bessie is the impetus for the book— but at times is hard to follow.

[Isiah XP · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author too frequently romanticizes native politics whilst simultaneously spurning colonial politics. The book otherwise has many merits, least of all the remembering of some ancient South African stories, and places in time, otherwise long forgotten. On a personal note: I am glad to have briefly known one of the author's sons at Rhodes University.

[Cecilia Belgraver · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring. I could not make progress and abandoned it. I don't like to do that but the book simply did not draw me in. There is just too too much detail.
I so badly wanted to like the book.
The hook hooked me but the hook slipped out and I swam away from the book.

[Andrew Otis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fascinating story but so confusingly written I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

[Devlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fabulous read. So well researched and so well documented, with masterful storytelling this is how we should all learn history. I will read and read again!

Highly recommended.

[Jacquie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book on the history of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It depicts how castaways of all nationalities were absorbed into the local population, with white women being favored as wives of chiefs. The Dutch, who travelled alone liked marrying the local women, so there was much intermarriage and clans do peoples who were light skinned and blue eyed. The advent of the British Settlers led to the start of apartheid in back in the late 1800's! Chaka Zulu had less effect on the history than the fighting between the existing locals of Xhosa and Mponda with the British.

[Pamela Bundy · Rating 2 out of 5]

BORING....sounds interesting when you read the introduction. There is approx 30 pages about the Sunburnt Queen...if you like South African history and shipwrecks..you will enjoy this book!

[Jayna Santine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read more like a thesis ....

[Andrea Hickman Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was interesting and had the potential to be amazing, but the writing style was extremely annoying.

[Gee Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible, in-depth and well researched book. It is a slower read but worth it