Episode 137 -Smuts meets a ragged Louis Botha and a Boer spy loses her mind momentarily

The Anglo-Boer War

First we join General Jan Smuts who has been waiting in Cape Town for the British to lay on a a train to take him inland where he will join the Boer political and military leaders at Vereeniging for a conference starting on May 15th. They gathered in order to discuss the British terms of surrender. Smuts was mostly silent while he waited with his brother in law Krige and Deneys Reitz our narrator. They were placed aboard the warship HMS Monarch in Simonstown. Just to set the record straight, I said last week this was an Orion class battleship but of course it was just a normal warship as her namesake was only launched in 1910. My apologies, but a quick description about both is in order. The Monarch was placed as Guardship in Simonstown port in 1900. This was one of the older vessels in Britain’s navy having been launched in 1868. It was also a symbolic vessel for Smuts, Reitz and Krige to find themselves. The design has been neither modern nor old. Built in the 1860s when sail was giving way to steam, wooden hulls were being replaced by iron, smoothbore artillery firing round-shot had been overtaken by rifled shell-firing cannon, heavy armour was being mounted on the sides. Mounted gun turrets were being mooted by the Navy top brass as well, but others more conservative opposed the upgrade. So she was a compromise and therefore pleased no-one. When it was built the Navy said steam engines were still not reliable enough so HMS Monarch was fitted with both engine, sails and even a forecastle. That prohibited the gun turrets from being able to fire forward – so in all intents and purposes she remained a man-o-war like the old wooden battleships of the 18th Century. After her renaming in 1902 as the HMS Simoon, the Royal Navy launched its new Orion Class dreadnoughts and the more modern HMS Monarch appeared in 1910. AS an aside, Monarch fought in the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and her shells damaged the German Dreadnought, SMS Koenig. Back in Simonstown Deneys Reitz, his general and the General’s brother in law waited for their train. They were hurried through the suburbs of Cape Town in the dead of night so that no-one would catch sight of the famous General Smuts, then switched trains at the main line at Salt River. The next day they awoke in Matjesfontein in the Karoo. It’s also time to rejoin Boer Spy Johanna van Warmelo one more time. She asked and was given permission to visit Irene concentration Camp outside Pretoria. If you remember she had worked there as a nurse months before, when women and children were dying at a rate of up to a dozen a day. At the end of April 1902 Johanna was finally allowed to visit Irene and dreaded what was awaiting her there.