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Bruce Hamilton returned to Ermelo, and late in January again swept the country, with scanty results. His operations had been successful to the extent that they finally denied the high veld to Botha, who in February withdrew to the Vryheid district, and secreted himself among the mountains. Bruce Hamilton was sent after him and hunted him for a month.
When the Vryheid commandos rode over the western border of their district and invaded Natal, Louis Botha, the successor of Commandant-General Joubert, was one of the many Volksraad members who went forth to war in the ranks of the common burghers.
All then was settled: Tone was to accompany Dandaels with the same rank he had in the Brest expedition, and Lewines to return, and remain, as "Minister-resident" at Paris. On the 8th of July, Tone was on board the flagship, the Vryheid, 74 guns, in the Texel, and "only waiting for a wind," to lead another navy to the aid of his compatriots.
The Dutch admiral's ship, the Vryheid, held out gallantly to the last, but was at length compelled to yield, when the rest of the ships which had not yet struck their colours, did their best to make off. By this time the English were in possession of two seventy-fours, five sixty-fours, two fifties, and two frigates.
And as Utrecht and Vryheid and Newcastle are all within a few miles of us, and the Free Staters have already come down through some of the passes of the Drakensberg, they must be within an easy ride of us; and if they are in force enough to drive us out of this place, they must know they would find themselves in clover, for we heard at Ladysmith that there were provisions and stores for two months collected here."
The Melville Castle was accordingly equipped for the voyage, painted throughout, and her name changed to the Vryheid. On the the morning of November, 1802, she set sail from the Texel, a port on the coast of Holland, with a fair wind, which lasted till early on the following day, when a heavy gale came on in an adverse direction.
In a battle at Labombo mountain, June 6th of that year, Meyer and Dinizulu vanquished the enemy, and as payment for their services the Boers each received a large farm in the district now known as Vryheid.
In the first place, the Melville Castle, or as I suppose we should call her the Vryheid, was in a very decayed state; she had been long in the East India Company's service, and was by them sold to some Dutch merchants, who had her upper works tolerably repaired, new sheathed and coppered her, and resold her to the Dutch government, who were then in want of a vessel to carry out troops and stores to Batavia.
On March 6th French captured two more guns, and on the 14th he reported 46 more Boer casualties and 146 surrenders, with 500 more wagons, and another great haul of sheep and oxen. By the end of March French had moved as far south as Vryheid, his troops having endured the greatest hardships from the continual heavy rains, and the difficulty of bringing up any supplies.
When, owing to a change in the routes by which he was supplied, French was able towards the end of March to operate actively, he endeavoured to isolate the S.E. corner of the Transvaal by disposing his force in two lines. One line ran from Piet Retief to Vryheid and acted as the driving force, and the other ran from Piet Retief along the Swaziland border and acted as the stopping force.
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