A British Frigate with a French Prize in Table Bay with two Men-of-War in ordinary off Cape Town

The Cape was settled in the seventeenth century by boers (farmers) later called Afrikaners - a mixture of Dutch, Flemish, German and French Huguenot stock - under the rule of the Dutch East India Company. The overthrow of the Dutch in the East Indies by the French satellite administration calling itself the Batavian Republic prompted the British to seize the Cape of Good Hope in 1795 from the Dutch, seeing the security of this lucrative trade link with the East and staging post for India threatened. The Treaty of Amiens in 1802 ceded the Cape to the Batavian Republic but the British took it again in early 1806 shortly after the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, with the Earl of Caledon arriving as Governor of the Cape colony in 1807. Sartorius's known work from 1804-6 includes marine subjects in the East and West Indies.

We are grateful to Teddy Archibald and Dr Frank R. Bradlow for confirming the subject.