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Argentina’s claim on the Falklands Islands is based on a bloody rampage by a serial killer. Also involved were gauchos, convicts, dodgy businessmen and mercenaries. It is a violent, sordid and almost forgotten story which undermines Argentina’s claims of sovereignty over what they call the Malvinas.
The first clash of arms on the remote, wind-lashed Falklands occurred in 1833, almost 150 years before Mrs Thatcher’s much larger conflict. It was not a war, rather a brief outburst of butchery involving a handful of men, but the passions unleashed had vastly bloodier echoes many generations later. Like the 1982 war it involved sea voyages across huge distances, diplomatic bungling and a power struggle over specks in the ocean once thought worthless.
The desolate, remote, beautiful islands in the South Atlantic have been the subject of controversy for centuries. No-one can agree who SAW them first from a distance, with claims made by the Spanish, British and Dutch. But there is no doubt that the first actual landfall was made in 1690 by the Plymouth sea captain John Strong. During much of the 18th century the islands were used as a staging post for British and French ships heading for the Horn and both established small communities there.
The Spanish established a colony on the main western island, but on the eastern island British and American sealing and whaling crews made permanent encampments. In 1820 the Argentinian government sent an American, Captain David Jewett, to take possession of all the islands. He found 50 ships from as far afield as Liverpool and New York whose tough crews ignored his orders. He meekly returned to Buenos Aires.
In 1829 the task was given to a Franco-German immigrant, Louise Vernet, told to establish a settlement at Port Louis on the eastern island. There Vernet found 70 English settlers and, with the help of a mercenary English sea captain, Matthew Brisbane, began collecting taxes while building a small town at Port Louis with the labour of imported blacks, gauchos, Indians and transported felons.
Vernet had a supply of free labour, took a share of the revenues raised, was free to pursue his own interests in cattle, whale blubber and sealskins, and had a monopoly of imported goods. It was a lucrative, if dodgy, business which exploited both existing settlers and the imported labourers.
Visiting ships were also required to pay a tax. An American vessel refused to pay the required levy and was impounded. Captain Silas Duncan of the USS Lexington retaliated, released the American vessel, took several prisoners and burnt the town. He also arrested Brisbane and took him for trial in Buenos Aires. Port Louis was still being rebuilt in 1832 when a sergeant, Jose Francisco Mestivier was appointed Governor of the Malvinas by the Spanish.
Mestivier found a small army of colonists and imported settlers in rebellious mood, demanding the back pay that Vernet had promised them. Several score of them mutinied and the sergeant-turned-Governor was hacked to death. He was replaced by Jose Maria Pinedo of the Sarandi, a Spanish warship patrolling the jagged coastline, who promptly captured the main mutineers with his crew.
No sooner had he done so when, on January 2 1833, Captain James Onslow of the newly-arrived HMS Clio told him he was claiming the islands for the British Crown. Pinedo, his own force weakened and demoralized, did not resist and the Argentine flag was lowered at Port Louis. Pinedo sailed home and seven mutineers accused of Mestivier’s murder were swiftly executed.
Captain Onslow was 36 and had served off the coasts of Spain, Jamaica and South America. His ancestors included a former Speaker of the House of Commons. His father, Admiral Sir Richard Onslow, had been a doughty fighter in the Napoleonic Wars. After a period chasing smugglers off Great Yarmouth, the younger Onslow had been put in charge of the 18-gun sloop Clio as she was being fitted out for the South American station.
Following his success in claiming the Falklands, Onslow ordered shopkeeper William Dickson, an Irishman not highly regarded by visiting British officers, to fly a Union Jack whenever a ship anchored off the colony. He called in the farmworkers and labourers employed by Vernet and offered them a deal: they would continue their work and if within five months no-one returned to pay them they could take the equivalent of their wages in cattle. Onslow sailed off, either unaware of or indifferent to the potential trouble had left behind him. His offer was effectively a licence to rustle. The colonists tried to return to normal. Brisbane returned to superintend Vernet’s business interests. Charles Darwin called for a few days on board the Beagle. The weather was appalling and the workmen grumbled about their unpaid wages.
After five months the men tried to claim the cattle they had been promised, but Dickson stopped that happening, backed up in his business ventures by a maverick English officer. The mood in Port Louis, by now reduced to just 21 men and three women, turned ugly. Legitimate grievances spawned talk of violence. Eight men, led by 26-year-old Antonio Rivero from Buenos Aires, plotted to take forcibly what they considered their due. They were initially deterred by the presence of Captain William Low, a sealer and businessman, and his nine seamen who were awaiting repatriation after their ship had been sold.
But at dawn on August 26 1833 Low and four of his crew sailed out of Berkley sound for a brief seal hunt. Rivero saw his opportunity and struck, leading two gauchos and five Indian convicts. Their targets were settlement leaders they believed had wronged them. They armed themselves with muskets, pistols, swords and knives. What followed was premeditated murder.
Brisbane was shot and killed. The captain of the gaucho settlers, Juan Simon, was slashed to death. A German called Anton Werner was also killed. A witness to those killings, Ventura Pasos, tried to flee but was brought down by an Indian’s bolas. He was stabbed to death by Rivero. All the victims had been unarmed. The other colonists, mainly Argentinians, escaped from Port Louis. A dozen men, a woman and two children hid in a cave on Hog Island a few miles away. Rivero and his men rampaged through the settlement, looting every home before driving the disputed cattle inland.
Two months later a British survey ship brought relief to the survivors, but was unable to chase the renegades inland. Its captain sent a message to the British naval commander in Argentina warning that “if an English ship does not arrive here soon, more murders will take place.” The commander despatched HMS Challenger and on January 7 1834 Lieutenant Henry Smith stepped ashore with six Marines. Smith, a hardened veteran, had instructions to keep the British flag flying over the Falklands, for which he was given an extra allowance of seven shillings. He was just in time to save the colonists huddled on Hog Island, who had survived on seabird eggs, from further attack. The Union Jack was hoisted while Challenger provided a 21-gun salute.
Smith and his Marines set off after the Rivero mutineers, combing the Eastern islands on horse and foot and relying on local informants. Rivero, meanwhile, negotiated with the master of a US ship for the sale of a fat cow and six steers. Smith heard of the deal from a missionary, but Rivero vanished. His hiding place was betrayed, however, by friends seeking amnesty and he and five of his men were sent in chains to Buenos Aires and then London. A court there refused to accept a trial because of confusion over whose jurisdiction the crimes came under.
The Argentine government launched a strong protest and to avoid further antagonism, Rivero and his party were quietly shipped back and put ashore at Montevideo later that year. The murder they had inflicted upon unarmed men was quietly forgotten.
The Commander-in-chief in Rio, Rear-Admiral Sir Graham Eden Hammond, conceded: “It is a very slovenly way of doing business.” Smith was left virtually unaided to make the islands both secure for Britain and self-sufficient so that they would not be a drain on the Crown. He set about that task with gusto, raising potatoes and corn, taming cattle and horses, repairing shelters. He built up stockpiles of supplies and seeds, and made the Crown 4,200 Spanish dollars from the sale of 850 hides.
The Falklands officially became a British colony in 1841. Argentina offered to accept that provided a previous loan was cancelled, but that was declined. The islands have been in dispute ever since.
But don’t let anyone tell you that British first took them by force for imperial ends.
Instead the motives were more to do with business disputes involving both Argentinians and the British which briefly turned into brutal murder. It was a sordid, bloody affair common in the days when unscrupulous entrepreneurs raised flags on remote rocks for business rather than patriotic reasons.
Ian Hernon has been a reporter since 1969, reporting from the Middle East during the mid-70s. From 1978 he was a lobby correspondent in the House of Commons and until 2000 Westminster editor of Central Press, covering for Scottish editions of Daily Express, Sunday Times, and News of the World He was 2010 Avanta Regional Journalist of the Year. He is the author of Massacre and Retribution (1998) The Savage Empire (2000) and Blood in the Sand (2001) for The History Press, amongst other books. His latest book, The Sword and the Sketchbook: A Pictorial History of Queen Victoria’s Wars is out now at only £13.49 from THP website.