For all his flabbiness Erasmus Smit had an uncommon instinct for survival. The ship in which he travelled from Amsterdam to the Cape in 1802 was wrecked, and Smit was the only one among its 250 passengers to be saved. His rescuers took him first to West Africa and finally to New York before he was able to find another ship sailing to the Cape. There he experienced all the dangers and tribulations of the Voortrekkers in Natal, and died at the age of eighty-five from, it was whispered rather unfairly, the ravages of drink.