The two frigates in which the second Gold Coast expedition shipped cast anchor off Cape Three Points on December 27th, 1682, but some difficulty was experienced in finding the chiefs who had "signed" the provisional treaty and who were each to have received a ratification engrossed in letters of gold, "a silver-gilt cup, and a portrait of his Electoral Highness." Frederick William had also issued instructions that his black allies and their wives were to be entertained on board the warships.
After a great deal of trouble, some other chieftains of the "Moors," as they are called in the official correspondence relating to this matter, were hunted out and induced to contract a second and definite treaty; and on January 1st, 1683, with due ceremony and much beating of drums, blowing of trumpets, and firing of guns, the Brandenburg flag was hoisted over "the first German colony." The flagstaff had been planted on a little eminence, which was subsequently, with all speed, transformed into the fort Gross-Friedrichsburg, and no doubt the rusty cannon now in the Zeughaus at Berlin is one of the half-dozen which had been mounted on the hill on the previous day in preparation for the great occasion.
In the following year the headquarters of the African Company was removed from Pillau to Emden. This latter town was not situated on Brandenburg soil, and the manner in which the Elector secured a footing in it is both instructive and characteristic of his easy methods of intervening and making a good bargain wherever an opportunity presented itself. It chanced that at that time the Estates of East Frisia were at loggerheads with their ruler, and they appealed to Frederick William for assistance. Nothing loth, he landed a force by night, and by a surprise attack seized the castle of Greetsiel, which thus became his naval base. By an agreement with the town of Emden he subsequently acquired the right to station within its walls a "compagnie de marine" for the service of the African Corporation. This force, which was gradually increased to three, and temporarily to four, companies, and ultimately received the name of the "Marine Battalion," was drawn upon to man both the ships and the forts in Africa.
The transfer to Emden brought other advantages besides an ice-free port, a base on the North Sea, and an abbreviation of the route to Gross-Friedrichsburg, for the East Frisian Estates and the Elector of Cologne were both persuaded to invest largely in the African Company in consequence of the change.
In the year of the Emden agreement, the Brandenburg Navy was formally founded by the establishment of an "Admiralty" at Berlin. The Cabinet order by which this institution was created shows that the fleet then in full possession of the State comprised 10 ships, with 240 guns, while Raule was still under contract to provide 17 further vessels. The permanent personnel consisted of 1 vice-commodore, 5 naval captains, 3 officers of Marines, 12 mates, and 120 seamen. In 1686, the Elector took the Company entirely into his own hands, and simultaneously acquired a station on the island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies, as a place of call for the ships engaged in the slave traffic. He had also at that time made preparations for forming an East Indian trading company (at a much earlier date he had unsuccessfully attempted to acquire Tranquebar, on the Coromandel Coast, from the Danes) and for fitting out an expedition to China and Japan. These schemes, however, came to nothing.
The settlement at Cape Three Points had by no means an easy existence. Fever made fearful ravages among the garrison, which, when the first reliefs arrived, after an interval of nearly a year and threequarters, had been reduced by sickness from ninety to sixteen men. Everything that was needed for the construction of the fort, even building-stone, had to be brought thousands of miles across the sea from Germany. The Dutch traders in the neighbourhood had at once raised objections to the new colony, and, as their protests were unheeded, stirred up the natives against its members. It was only after prolonged negotiations at The Hague that the Elector secured a full recognition of his right to the settlement. And none the less the Dutch West India Company continued to harass the German colonists, appropriating their ships, and turning them out of a couple of subsidiary fortifications which they had erected at other points along the coast. Gross-Friedrichsburg and Taccroma, another of the four Brandenburg stations on the Guinea littoral, for several years maintained themselves only by the menace of their guns. These untoward events are believed to have preyed upon the mind of the Great Elector, and to have hastened his end. At the time of his death, in April, 1688, Brandenburg and Holland were on the brink of war over the Gold Coast affair.
His successor on the Electoral throne in one very important respect reaped what Frederick William had sown, for he obtained the title of King of Prussia, by virtue of which, far more than from any specifically imperial prerogatives, William II. holds his present power in Germany. Frederick I. was a vain man, who was more interested in appearances than in realities, and cared more for the pomp and ceremonies of Court life than for the solid business of colonisation and slave-trading. As a source of revenue, with which to defray the cost of his empty extravagances, the African undertaking was feebly encouraged to continue its work; but, deprived of the directing brain and the stimulating enthusiasm of its founder, it soon sickened and languished. Accada and Taccarary, the two settlements which had been seized by the Dutch, were delivered up after a lengthy squabble, but the fortifications of the latter had been destroyed, and they were not rebuilt.
At first the trade of the colony, which had called into existence a flourishing shipyard at Havelberg, near the junction of the Navel and the Elbe, was fairly satisfactory, and the spirit of the Brandenburg Navy was raised by the successful operations of a couple of its frigates against French merchantmen, but in 1697 the Company fell upon evil days. It suffered pecuniary loss, both through the capture of some of its ships by the French and through the peculations of several officials, whose multiple dishonesty hints at a scandalous laxity of control. The invaluable Raule, too, fell into disfavour, and spent four years in gaol, though he was reinstated in his position on being liberated. At last the Company was no longer able to send out ships of its own, and for eight years, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the garrison of Gross-Friedrichsburg was left entirely to itself. For a considerable portion of that time five large Brandenburg ships of war were rotting in the harbours of Emden and Hamburg, when they might have been much more profitably employed in attempting to keep up communications with the perishing colonists. When at last reliefs reached Gross-Friedrichsburg only seven men out of an original force of 1,700 were fit for duty.
What little credit attaches to the last days of the first German colony is the due of Jan Cuny, a native chief, who had placed himself under Brandenburg protection, apparently for the purpose of obtaining support against the English and Dutch settlements of the vicinity, with both of which he was at feud. It is characteristic of the period that, while Prussians were fighting shoulder to shoulder with English and Dutch on the continent of Europe, they were in open conflict with them on the West Coast of Africa. Frederick I. at one time thought it necessary to protest, through his Minister at London, against the difficulties which the English were causing him on the Gold Coast.
All the trouble seems to have arisen out of the demand made by a Dutch official at Axim for the surrender of a female relative of Cuny whom he claimed as a slave. Jan was evidently a man of considerable parts. He led his army with great discretion and resourcefulness, and no doubt the Prussians at Gross-Friedrichsburg thought it to their advantage to be on good terms with so formidable a warrior, especially as he was the sworn foe of their jealous European neighbours. At any rate, the relations between Cuny and the fort became both cordial and confiding, and when the last Governor of Gross-Friedrichsburg, Du Bois, discouraged by the indifference and neglect of the home authorities, sailed for Emden to enter remonstrances, he entrusted the protection of the colony to his black ally.