Whilst the dock-yard was in Table Bay, no ship could venture to strip her lower masts, or heave down, from the uncertainty of the weather and the rapidity with which a gale succeeds a calm, and the glassy surface is changed into a tremendous sea rolling in upon a dead lee shore. The loss of the Sceptre there in 1795, and of several large merchant vessels in the course of the seven years which Sir Jahleel Brenton passed there, are evident proofs of the dangers incurred almost at all seasons of the year in this bay; whereas in Simon’s Bay, scarcely an instance occurred during the whole of that time of a vessel driving from her anchors. Indeed the one only case was that of the Revolutionaire, parting a cable that had rotted in India, and falling on board the Zebra, carrying her adrift, with the wind immediately off one part of the bay, and driving on shore on the opposite side in a sandy cove under the block house, from whence they were both got off, the Revolutionaire much damaged from having passed over a ledge of rocks. But soon after the moorings were laid down for two ships of the line, and as many frigates, and no accidents afterwards occurred. It was found, however, that these were inconvenient, as they occupied too large a portion of the bay, which is not very extensive, and on that account they have since been removed. When it was decided that the only Naval Establishment at the Cape should be in Simon’s Bay, the new buildings were carried on with great energy, and it soon became a place of considerable importance. A jetty was formed in the dock-yard: a spacious mast house erected, with a working sail loft over it, and a very ornamental range of houses for the officers of the yard constructed upon a terrace overlooking the bay, and the whole yard enclosed with a wall, forming a remarkably neat and compact arsenal. Soon after the arrival of Sir Jahleel Brenton as Commissioner of the dock-yard at the Cape of Good Hope, a vessel arrived with the account of Buonaparte having escaped from Elba, and of war being revived in Europe. The consequences of this short war had a very material influence upon the colony of the Cape, as the transfer of the great prisoner to St. Helena caused a great demand upon the Cape for supplies of all descriptions, and excited amongst the wine growers and farmers a degree of energy quite foreign to the habits of the Dutch colonists, and to which nothing but English capital, and English example could probably ever have stimulated them.