The Sunburnt Queen isn't a novel, but a research work. I think I tried to acknowledge that she shows these events often occurred outside the literal area of written documentation and inside oral tradition at the time.
Somewhere I have the book and will seek out her references. (Hopefully not at the coast or loaned out :-( ) At the time, because it provided a way to link in the SA non-white community - a notoriously difficult endeavour - but without which, many black South Africans find accessing any sense of their own ancestry in our tree impossibly frustrating - I chose to recreate the oral tradition links. Perhaps I would think differently now.

I'm happy to open the debate on each.

The Grosvenor

Pondoland Coast - 4 August 1782

The wreck of the Grosvenor on the 4th August 1782, on the coast of Pondoland north of the mouth of the Umzimvubu River, near the place where the São João was wrecked more than 200 years before, is one of the best-known South African ship­wrecks, and is referred to in more than a hundred printed works.

The disaster was, it is suspected, ascribable to a grave miscalculation by the captain, possibly due to misty weather and treacherous currents, and to the carelessness of the look-outs. In January 1782, the Grosvenor left Bengal with a cargo valued at £75 000, a crew of 132 and 18 passengers (12 adults and 6 children). Of the 123 survivors, 6 eventually managed to reach the farm of Ferreira near Algoa Bay.

A search party sent by order of Governor Van Plettenberg from Swellendam rescued 3 Whites and 9 Indians. Only 18 of those shipwrecked eventually reached Cape Town, from which they were repatriated. The rest either died from their privations or were murdered by the Bantu or forced to live among them. A half-caste group later found in the vicinity of the scene of the wreck would seem to indicate that the White wives whose husbands had been murdered possibly lived with the Bantu. http://ancestry24.com/articles/algoa-bay/'''

When the survivors reached England and their story became public knowledge it caused a sensation that lasted well into thenext century – Charles Dickens would describe the story of young Tom Law and his faithful sailors as ‘the most beautiful and affecting I know associated with a shipwreck. .. In 1905… William Bazley [told how] forty years earlier [1860-1870] he had met ‘a very old white woman living exactly as a native’.. the woman told him that she had come off the huge ship that crashed ashore, lost her family, and been saved and raised by the Pondo. Bazley, at least, was certain that the woman was Frances Hosea, daughter of William and Mary, at two years of age left wandering alone in the wilderness after her parents lay down and died in a welter of diamonds on the high shores of the Wild coast. Cummins, Joseph. 'Cast Away'

Castaways from the Grosvenor, one of the East India Company's finest vessels, included the wives and daughters of gentry left defenceless after the male passengers were reportedly slaughtered. For the contemporary equivalent of the tabloid press it was a sensation. "By these Hottentots, they were dragged up into the interior parts of the country, for the purposes of the vilest brutish prostitution," said the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser. Newspaper accounts of ravishings by "the most barbarous and monstrous of the human species" were so shocking that British society was relieved to be subsequently assured by an official investigation that the women had in fact perished before the natives got hold of them. New evidence, however, suggests a rather different story. Several female passengers did indeed survive and become intimate with tribes men. But rather than being abducted and raped it appears they chose to become wives and mothers. A new book, ‘The Caliban Shore: The Fate of the Grosvenor Castaways’, has concluded that three, possibly four, women passengers joined tribes in what is today known as Pondoland, a remote, rugged landscape on South Africa's east coast. The author, Stephen Taylor, has scrutinised written and oral testimony, including previously overlooked material, pointing to the survival of white females who are still remembered by the tribes. "The notion of white women with black men was so horrifying to contemporary sensibilities that polite society tried to wish it out of existence," Taylor said in a telephone interview yesterday. "But that's what the evidence points to." The Grosvenor ran aground on her way from Madras to England, throwing 125 survivors onto an alien coast far from European outposts. The crew set out on a desolate trek lasting months - but only 13 made it back to England, the rest succumbing to hunger and disease. When the last male passengers died the women and children were dependant on assimilating with natives who eked a livelihood from hard, unyielding soil. Lydia Logie, the young, vivacious wife of the Grosvenor's chief officer, appears to have joined a Xhosa tribe after her husband died, impelled perhaps by a desire to save their unborn child. Several years later a commander of the Cape garrison, Robert Gordon, met a Xhosa man who told him a white woman had lived among his tribe, and that she "had a child, and she frequently embraced the child, and cried most violently". Piecing together other fragments, Taylor concluded that Ms Logie had been adopted by a sub-group know as the ama-Tshomane whose matriarch, by coincidence, was an Englishwoman named Gquma who had been shipwrecked as a child in Pondoland about 40 years earlier. By the time a rescue party from the Cape arrived in 1791, nine years after the Grosvenor sank, Ms Logie was dead, her spirit and strength probably worn down from the grind of tanning hides, planting crops and collecting firewood. The rescuers were disappointed not to find any survivors, but Taylor believes they blundered by missing Mary Wilmot and Eleanor Dennis, young girls who escaped the Grosvenor and grew up in Pondoland. Evidence for this comes from a former Royal Navy lieutenant Francis Farewell, who stumbled across the wreck in 1823 and was told of two white women who had lived there for some time but had fled a Zulu invasion. They disappeared into the bush and starved to death, he was told. Archives in the University of Natal suggest that Frances Hosea, who had been two years old when the Grosvenor sank, may also have survived and become the elderly, Zulu-speaking white woman encountered by a British trader in the 1860s. For a British public fed racist notions of baboon-like savages, such assimilations would have been inconceivable, Taylor said. Rumours and fragmented reports of white women rearing children in Pondoland kraals only deepened the dread. Relatives feared the official version of all the females swiftly perishing was too "optimistic". "English society saw theirs as the fate that was worse than death and out of kindness wished them dead," said Taylor.Carroll, Rory, The Guardian Newspaper, Jhb Monday 22 march 2004

[[Minna Minna] Minna] - the Grosvenor Castaway's Descendants

[[Minna Minna] Minna] was possibly Mary Wilmot, the 7yr old survivor of the wreck of the East Indiaman, the Grosvenor in 1782. In 1907 William Bazley describes how, “after the women and children were abandoned by Capt. Cox and his officers, one little girl, who he calls [[Minna Minna] Minna], was carried across the Mzimvubu River by a Lascar man. … Bazley calls her maMolo [so] she was probably raised by the amaMolo.” [Crampton, p299.]

Said to have married a [[NN Renegade Soldier NN Renegade Soldier] soldier] who had deserted from the Cape. Crampton speculates that it might have been one of the four Englishmen deserters who associated with the rebel boers: John Madder, Thomas Bentley; Harry Obry; Coves Bork associated with Willem & Nicholas Lochenburg (the old boer who guided the first missionaries to Bessie’s son, Mdepa in 1827) [Crampton, p299.]

[[Minna Minna] Minna] – or Minnie – as Bazley sometimes calls her, is said to have had children with this man, before he died. He says that she then married an escaped slave (or one of the Lascars who survived the Grosvenor) – [[Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG] Domosi]. Crampton suggests the name could be a corruption of [[Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG] Damin] – a runaway Bengalese slave, who spoke Dutch and acted as [[Ngqika ka Mlawu, 3rd Paramount Chief of the amaRarabe Ngqika ka Mlawu, 3rd Paramount Chief of the amaRarabe] Ngqika]’s mother’s interpreter, and who is known to have lived alongside the boers.

A missionary, van der Kemp, at Ngqiuka’s Great place, taught [[Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG] Damin] – who he called a ‘Mahometan Hindoo’ to read and write. Another of van der Kemp’s pupils was the Khoi woman Sarah, who later married Nicholas Lochenberg, and a ‘Heathen’ woman called Mary… As [[Minna Minna] Minna], like Sarah, eventually settled at the Butterworth mission station, it seems like to Compton, that [[Minna Minna] Minna] – the child survivor of the Grosvenor, Mary, the convert, and Mary Wilmot – the 7 year old Grosvenor survivor were the same person. [Crampton p300]

[[Minna Minna] Minna] and [[Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG] Damin] had several children. One, a son – [[May Jong Damoyi May Jong Damoyi] May Jong] (Eastern name?) is said to have lived for many years at the Ibisi in East Griqualand and died there, an old man.

Bazley says at least two of her daughters married white men – one becoming [[NN wife of Toohey NN wife of Toohey] Mrs ‘Toughy’] and the other [[NN wife of Richard Pierce NN wife of Richard Pierce] Mrs ‘Piarse] – with a daughter, [[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine], who marries [[John Robert Dunn, b5 John Robert Dunn, b5] John Dunn].

[[Daniel Charles Toohey Daniel Charles Toohey] Mr Toughy] was probably DC Toohey, a ship’s cook, who liked to be addressed as ‘Doctor,’ who arrived at Port Natal early in 1835 aboard the ‘Circe’. Within 4 years he had established himself as the acknowledged chief of around 2000 Zulu refugees, and along with another English settler, Henry Ogle, had considerable territory extending down the coast from the Mgeni River. He worked as a trader for a Grahamstown firm, travelling up and down the country with two other traders – Robert Biggar and John Cane. He had at least one son, [[Tshali Toohey Tshali Toohey] Tshali] (The Zulu version of Toohey’s name, Charles) by a Zulu woman who lived at the Thukela. [Crampton, p303]

Another of [[Minna Minna] Minna’s] daughters married [[Richard Pierce, Jnr. Richard Pierce, Jnr.] Piarse] or Pierce. The Pierces first arrived in SA as 1820 settlers aboard La Belle Alliance. [[Richard Pierce, Snr. SV/PROG Richard Pierce, Snr. SV/PROG] Richard Pierce], a 41 year old banker, his wife [[Ann Pierce, SM/PROG Ann Pierce, SM/PROG] Ann], and 3 sons were members of Wilson’s party. The eldest son, [[Richard Pierce, Jnr. Richard Pierce, Jnr.] Dick], who was then 11, grew up to marry a woman of ‘Cape Malay Origin’ – the daughter (name unknown) of the castaway [[Minna Minna] Minna] and [[Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG Damin 'Damoyi' damoyi, SV/PROG] Damin] the runaway slave. The other two sons were [[Paul Pierce Paul Pierce] Paul Pierce], aged 10, & [[Joseph Pierce Joseph Pierce] Joseph Pierce], aged 9.

[[Richard Pierce, Jnr. Richard Pierce, Jnr.] Dick Pierce] and his wife worked in PE as servants to [[Robert Newton Dunn, SV/PROG Robert Newton Dunn, SV/PROG] Robert Newton Dunn], also an immigrant of 1820. When [[Robert Newton Dunn, SV/PROG Robert Newton Dunn, SV/PROG] Robert Dunn] moved his family in the 1830s to Port Natal, where his father-in-law, [[Capt Alexander Harvey Biggar, SV/PROG Capt Alexander Harvey Biggar, SV/PROG] Alexander Biggar] was a leading figure in the fledgling settler community, with – like most of the other Englishman there – a son by a Zulu woman, the Pierces went with them.

[[Robert Newton Dunn, SV/PROG Robert Newton Dunn, SV/PROG] Dunn] settled at South Coast Junction, imposing his authority over several hundred Zulu and coloured clients. His son, [[John Robert Dunn, b5 John Robert Dunn, b5] John] , was born in about 1835, followed three years’ later by the Pierce’s daughter [[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine]. The 2 children grew up together. When[[John Robert Dunn, b5 John Robert Dunn, b5] John] was about 14 his father was trampled to death by an elephant. His [[Ann Harold Dunn, SM Ann Harold Dunn, SM] mother] died a few years later and the household broke up. The orphaned [[John Robert Dunn, b5 John Robert Dunn, b5] John], in his own words ‘took to a wandering existence, having always been fond of my gun and a solitary life.’ He disappeared for a few years, taking [[Minna Minna] Minna’s] granddaughter, [[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine] with him.

The teenagers lived off the land – ‘Dunn was a regular white kaffir and used, as a boy, to go about in native dress,’ said one old settler – surviving by hunting and ivory trading. They were ‘found’ by a trader named Walmsley while hunting in the wilds of Zululand near the Thukela River. Walmsley took Dunn under his wing and educated him. [[John Robert Dunn, b5 John Robert Dunn, b5] John] Dunn stayed with the trader for 6 years, marrying his childhood companion, [[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine] Pierce in 1853. (He was about 18; she 15.) [Crampton, p303]

By the 1860s [[John Robert Dunn, b5 John Robert Dunn, b5] John Dunn] was well established as a gunrunner, conducting an extensive trade in firearms, for which the Zulu king, [[Cetshwayo kaMpande, King of the Zulus Cetshwayo kaMpande, King of the Zulus] Cetshwayo] was a leading customer. Dunn became his friend and confidant and was awarded some land near the eMatikulu River. He became a man of power and adopted Zulu customs, one of which was polygamy.

Eight years after his marriage to [[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine] he took a Zulu woman by the name of [[Macebose Dunn Macebose Dunn] Macebose Mhlongo] as his second wife, then 48 others another, securing marital ties with clans living in his district, and beyond. He was careful to respect traditional marriage rituals, paying lobola of 9 to 15 head of cattle for each and every one of them..

During the Anglo-Zulu War Dunn sided with the British and betrayed [[Cetshwayo kaMpande, King of the Zulus Cetshwayo kaMpande, King of the Zulus] Cetshwayo]. When hostilities ceased, the vanquished kingdom was divided into 13 chiefdoms and Dunn was rewarded with the largest portion, the southern region, stretching from the coast to the Buffalo River.

John Dunn was described in 1880 as follows: ‘a handsome well-built man about 5 ft 8 in height, with a good forehead, regular features, and keen grey eyes; a closely cut iron-grey beard hides the lower half of his bronzed, weather tanned countenance, and a look of determination and shrewdness is discernible in every lineament.’

He was frequently visited by Whites – important officials from the colony and Natal, hunters and travellers – but neither his wives nor his children were allowed to socialise with them. Nor did Dunn ever take any of his black wives with him to Natal, and in this way their existence could be politely ignored. His son, Dominic acknowledged that ‘there was a kind of segregation practised… My father kept to his whiteness in social matters..we, the children, as coloureds, lived separately from the natives.” They were not encouraged to establish relationships with the Zulus.

[[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine] remained very much opposed to his marriages to Zulu women, and despite t fact that she was herself of mixed descent, she aspired to being as ‘European’ as possible and condemned Dunn for his ‘degenerate social behaviour.

Dunn died on 5 August 1895, aged 60. He was survived by 33 sons, 46 daughters, and 23 wives, including [[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine]. 2 years after his death the rinderpest epidemic destroyed 90% of Dunn’s cattle, and his descendants and dependants were reduced to extreme povert. The government of the colony of Natal set aside a piece of land for the occupation of Dunn’s descendants, but many were forced to leave Zululand to seek employment, and today can be found all over the world, including Britain, America, Canada and Australia.

[[Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu Catherine Dunn, Indlunkulu] Catherine] died on 27 January 1905, aged about 70. She left no building or land to her surviving children; the ones she lived in reverted at her death to her husband’s will, which stated they were ‘to be shared amongst all members of the family.’ Described as a ‘housewife’ in her estate papers, she was survived by several children, listed as [[Annie Agnes Gielink Annie Agnes Gielink] Ann Agnes] (41), [[Sarah Amy Green Sarah Amy Green] Sarah Amy] (39), [[Mary Rose Dunn Mary Rose Dunn] Mary Rose] (38), [[Alice Lily Green Alice Lily Green] Alice Lilly] and [[Lizzy Edith Dunn Lizzy Edith Dunn] Lizzy Edith] (both 35), [[Catherine Louise 'Katie' Samuelson Catherine Louise 'Katie' Samuelson] Catherine Louise] (34) and [[Jane Sunny Dunn Jane Sunny Dunn] Sunny Dunn] (26)”. [Crampton, p305-6]

Minna’s third daughter, [[Lydia Damoyi Lydia Damoyi] Lydia], married [[Poswa Poswa] Poswa] an Mfengu of the ‘Maskati or Langalati’ tribe, and had several children – the youngest of whom was [[Elizabeth Canham Elizabeth Canham] Elizabeth] – who Bazley mistakenly says married Carson – actually [[Charles Canham Charles Canham] Charles Canham]; a white trader of dodgy repute. One official described him as ‘a rascal.’ He’d lived on the Wild Coast since at least 1856, in which year he’d written a letter on behalf of the Thembu chief to the colonial governor regarding the murder of Rev Thomas of Beecham Wood mission, a crime in which some of Bessie’s descendants were involved. The missionary had apparently been caught up inadvertently in a squabble between the ‘Morley people’ – Canham’s close friend, Mathew Ben Shaw, son of Rev William Shaw, co-founder of Morley mission, and the ama Mpondo. the feud included an attack on the latter by several armed and mounted men led by Shaw…

When [[Sir Walter Ernest Mortimer Stanford Sir Walter Ernest Mortimer Stanford] Sir Walter Stanford], a colonial official, met the Canhams in the 1880s, they were living in the vicinity of today’s village of Lusikisiki – a little inland from the Lambasi Bay where Bessie was shipwrecked. [[Charles Canham Charles Canham] Elizabeth], says Stanford, was ‘a light-coloured woman of civilised ways and habits’ and assumes she is descended from Bessie: one of the three old women seen by Jacob van Reenen at Umgazi on his expedition in search of survivors of the Grosvenor. [[Elizabeth Canham Elizabeth Canham] Elizabeth]’s death notice in the Cape archives proves, however, that she was really Mina’s granddaughter, according to Crampton. [Crampton, p301-2]

Mina’s grandson, [[Smith Poswa Smith Poswa] Smith Poswa], the son of a Coloured man, was a Xhosa chief. He was literate, promoted education, and petitioned the granting of individual title deeds, which directly opposed the traditional communal use of the land. He was a Christian, condemned initiation dances, complaining ‘of being kept awake at night by the dancing going on’ and was opposed to ukulobola and polygamy. His nephew was the exact opposite: [[Francis Canham Francis Canham] Francis Canham], the son of a white man, was a polygamist with two Pondo wives and appears to have been illiterate.

Crampton thinks Mina may have married a third time – as on 14 Dec 1828 Rev Shrewsbury of Butterworth married [[Simon Xila 'April' Simon Xila 'April'] Simon Xila] aka ‘April’ ( a 70 year old runaway slave) to a woman called Mina (who he describes as one of Matiwana’s people– an Mpondomise chief of San descent) Brought to the Cape from Batavia, he escaped to the Xhosa of the east coast. He had at least one child – a daughter. By 1828 he had been living among Hintsa’s people for upwards of 30 years – since about 1798 (the same time as Lochenbergs arrived in the area. Rev Shrewsbury baptised him on 22 June 1828.In 1828 – when she was 53 yrs old , Mina could have known [[Simon Xila 'April' Simon Xila 'April'] Xila] from the time a ‘Zila’ had acted as van der Kemp’s interpreter at [[Ngqika ka Mlawu, 3rd Paramount Chief of the amaRarabe Ngqika ka Mlawu, 3rd Paramount Chief of the amaRarabe] Ngqika]’s Great Place. (William, Lochenberg – eldest son of Nicholas confirms he was the same man – who had left Lochenberg when the Butterworth mission was established.) [Crampton p300]

Crampton, Hazel. ‘The Sunburnt Queen’. Johannesburg: Jacana. 2004. Print. [[Sharon Doubell Sharon Doubell] Contact Sharon Doubell]

What fun :-)

What does the extract say, Lawrence?

Given Macebose as a potentially not uncommon first name, and the number of wives he had, it remains equally possible - without further info - that these were two different wives.