Crusoe's Island

by Andrew Lambert

  After two centuries of intermittent raiding, Britain broke Spanish dominion in the South Pacific in a single decade, the 1780s, and it did so with merchant ships. That the key to success proved to be oil and smuggling, rather than war and violence, reflected the profound change that the British Empire underwent in the late eighteenth century. At first glance the change might appear to be a response to the shock of losing America, but the process began earlier, and was far more coherent. The ‘Second’ British Empire was a conscious return to the Tudor vision: ‘an “empire” of ocean trade routes, protected by naval bases and nourished by commercial depots or factories, received a new impetus with the growth of British seapower and industrial productivity’.3 These ideas found expression in contemporary literature on trade, security and history. The need to find markets for burgeoning export industries, combined with naval dominance saw the government force British shipping into the Pacific over the wreckage of Spanish imperium. Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger recognised that access to global markets depended on seapower. The Bourbon powers were desperately trying to hang on to their imperial assets in the face of a rapidly expanding and commercially dynamic state in the first flush of industrialisation, propelled by a democratic political system that empowered merchants and bankers.

  After 1782 British interest in the South Pacific shifted to whaling, a trade linked to the settlement of New South Wales, and opportunities for trans-Pacific trade with Spanish America. Sperm whale oil had become a critical resource for industrialisation: the clean, odour-free oil lubricated the spinning and weaving machinery of Britain’s burgeoning cloth factories, and lit the street lamps that made cities safe. Before 1776 Britain had relied on a heavily subsidised Greenland whaling fleet and New England whalers, based in Boston and the Quaker community on Nantucket Island. The American whaling trade was devastated by war, while British whalers saw their bounties increased, and the trade boomed. With owners receiving a subsidy of £2 per ton for each ship that sailed, the British trade was essentially artificial, and uncompetitive. Furthermore, this Arctic industry produced low-grade black oil.

  In 1783 the government imposed an import tariff equal to the current market price, to teach the Americans that the cost of independence was exclusion from the economic and strategic benefits of Empire. British ministers moved to generate a larger, more efficient domestic industry focused on sperm whale oil. Following the collapse of their market several Nantucket whalers moved to Nova Scotia and, when this opportunity was closed by legislation, to Britain. Fearing Nantucket men based in Nova Scotia would collude with Boston merchants to avoid British Customs London brought the industry under metropolitan supervision. The new Board of Trade of 1784, headed by neo-mercantilist economist Charles Jenkinson, established the bureaucratic power base for a systematic assault on the South Pacific. Cook’s voyages had done much to reveal the natural riches of the Pacific, and although the explosive growth of the trade in sea otter pelts between British Columbia and China has attracted much attention, not least because it sparked the Nootka Sound Crisis of 1790, whaling was the real motor of Pacific expansion. Whaling was a far bigger industry, and whaleship owners had far more political clout than fur traders.

  Americans began to exploit sperm whale fishing grounds off Brazil and into the South Atlantic in the 1770s. Voyagers reported the prized whales were abundant beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and Cape Horn. Jenkinson recognised that where the whalers led other British commerce would follow. In 1775, whaler Samuel Enderby shifted his base from Boston to London, his main market. In the same year the British government encouraged the South Atlantic trade, offering a prize for the five largest cargoes brought in each year by British built and owned ships, and cut the flat rate subsidy of Greenland trade. Enderby’s ships were given British registration, and in 1776 he and other American owners began sending their newly ‘British’ ships south. As the trade expanded the owners formed a political lobby group, the Southern Whale Fishery Committee, to press the government for financial support and access to the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. British navigation in these seas had long been restricted by the charters of East India and South Seas Companies. Both objected to the removal of exclusive rights, but the government disagreed. It promoted the new industry, both to make Britain self-sufficient in a key commodity, and recruit ships and men from a declining American industry. Critically, the policy was backed by the Board of Trade, while senior naval officers recognised the strategic benefits of increased access and knowledge.4

  South Pacific whaling would spearhead a trade offensive, expanding the sea-based British commercial empire. Although there would be no new colonies, Britain would acquire ‘new spheres and the sinews of power were strengthened without incurring onerous commitments’. This made whalers ‘an appropriate instrument for this mission’.5 The claims of the South Sea Company were dismissed as ‘baseless’: the Company had long been a City financial enterprise, with no commercial activity. In June 1786 the Pitt administration passed an Act for the Encouragement of the Southern Whale Fishery, allowing whalers to operate south of the Equator, and up to 500 miles west from the Coast of Spanish South America. The Juan Fernández Islands lay at the epicentre of the newly defined region. In 1788 the Whale Fishery Act was amended to allow fishing in the Southeast Pacific as far as 180° west.6

  The whalers were enmeshed in a global system. Samuel Enderby and others carried convicts and supplies to the new penal settlement at Botany Bay, via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean, before sailing on for the whaling grounds. Facing a two-pronged British assault on an ill-defended mare clausum, a handful of Spanish warships and coastguards found British merchant ships on the desolate shores of Patagonia, in the far south of Chile, and at uninhabited offshore island sealing grounds; there were simply too many of these ambitious interlopers to hold the line. Spanish patrols were little more than a face-saving device. The British argued that under international law Spain could not claim possession of unoccupied space, giving them a perfect right to use waters and land ‘where as yet no settlements have been made’, as long as they did not attempt to trade in violation of Spanish law.7

  In 1790 British policy was tested. Spanish warships removed a British trade post dealing in sea otter pelts from Nootka Sound on the shores of modern British Columbia just as Spanish opposition to South Pacific whaling and sealing reached a head. John Dalrymple had published further thoughts on the region the year before, following discussions with Sir Joseph Banks and Spanish Minister Count Floridablanca. While Floridablanca warned of the danger posed to Spanish dominion and British trade by citizens of the new American Republic, who would ignore the old world treaties and rules, Dalrymple planned another smash and grab raid on the Pacific, using Juan Fernández to refresh.8 There was no enthusiasm for significant land operations, this was a truly global maritime strategy. At the height of the crisis in November 1790 the Times reported a rumour that Juan Fernández was uninhabited, and about to become British. Instead Pitt exploited the Crisis to secure unrestricted access to the Pacific and the trade with China, as objects of national policy. Forced to back down by an overwhelming naval mobilisation Madrid accepted that British ships ‘shall not be disturbed or molested either in navigating or carrying on their fisheries in the Pacific Ocean, or the South Seas, or in landing on the coasts of those seas, in places not already occupied, for the purpose of carrying on their commerce with the natives of those countries.’9 After 200 years of intermittent raiding, charting and trading the Pacific had been opened to British enterprise by a few oily barques and a battle fleet at Spithead. Fear that Britain would open imperial markets and seize continental resources drove Bourbon Spain to ally with the regicide French Republic in 1796.

  British whalers quickly exploited their new freedom to roam the South Pacific, becoming the ‘principal instrument of the government’s policy of trade expansion in the North Pacific’.10 In 1792, fifty-nine British ships brought home Pacific cargoes of oil, seal skins, amberg
ris and whale bone worth more than £189,000, doubling the quantity of the previous year with catches that exceeded domestic demand. Enderby and the ‘Whale Fishery’ lobby demanded government support: the Board of Trade recommended sending a naval vessel to survey the southwest coast of America and the adjacent islands, to find a suitable base for the whalers. Ultimately they would look to Sydney. The new base enabled whalers, traders and smugglers to range out into the Great South Sea. Barred by occupation and artillery, Más a Tierra occupied a greatly reduced place in this new navigational system, Más Afuera remained a useful watering place, and an attractive sealing ground, but the last years of the eighteenth century reduced the magical islands to a matter of fact way station for pelagic hunters.

  The 1788 Fishery Act prompted Samuel Enderby to prepare his first South Pacific voyage. In August he consulted Sir Joseph Banks, now President of the Royal Society, a key adviser of government on global economic opportunities, imperial resources and grand strategy. Botany Bay was his idea. Could Banks:

  inform us if Juan Fernández is settled? If settled, whether there would be any Risk of our ship being seized if she should go to that Place through Distress, or to refresh the crew in case of Scurvy? Or if there are any other Places where she might derive benefit without those Risks?11

  He also enquired about charts, and reports of sperm whales. In return he promised his ships would conduct research for Banks. Such exchanges propelled eighteenth-century oceanic science, and Banks was happy to oblige. Suitably informed Enderby sent a reconnaissance mission around Cape Horn, the Emilia returned to London in 1790 with a full cargo of oil. Enderby sent two more ships in 1791: Britannia and William. Britannia carried convicts and stores to Botany Bay, before heading across the Pacific to fish but William sailed direct round Cape Horn, commanded by half-pay naval officer John Moss.

  Moss was a protégé of Captain Lord Mulgrave, naval officer, arctic explorer, member of the Board of Trade, and above all a friend and neighbour of Banks.12 He visited the Juan Fernández Islands twice, collecting material for a substantial report. On his initial approach, in January 1792, he observed a one-gun battery and a watch post at Puerto Inglese. There was an anchorage at around 14 fathoms, but it was dangerously exposed. Rounding the point into Cumberland Bay, Moss observed two ramshackle forts covering the village and landing. One consisted of a dry stone wall; the other was incomplete. When the governor refused permission to obtain wood or water, Moss demonstrated the impotence of the Spanish position by anchoring just out of range of the guns, and quietly fishing. While Moss had little to fear (the governor commanded a mere six soldiers, forty settlers and a rowing boat), this was a disappointing reception; the prospect of goats, fresh food and water was enough to make his scorbutic crew salivate. Their symptoms ‘would have been speedily arrested by the fresh venison, fish and vegetables to be obtained there’.13

  On 15 November 1792 Moss returned, persuading Governor Don Juan Calvo de la Canteza to let him land and cut wood. His sickly crew greatly appreciated ‘a large quantity of vegetables’, ‘a loaf of sugar, four fine sheep and as much craw fish as he wanted’. Moss visited the village, finding a welcome and a cup of Maté at every door, the whole village ‘swarmed with children.’ The vegetable plots were poor, which the governor attributed to the ravages of a ‘grub’. In return for his hospitality Moss gave the governor ‘a dozen of wine, a dozen of plates, two dishes, half a dozen of wine glasses, a small pot of pickles and a pair of new boots’. The exchange revealed just how isolated the islands were, far beyond the continental concerns of Spanish imperium. Departing Cumberland Bay, Moss sailed 110 miles to Más Afuera, where his men landed to collect water, goat meat and seal skins. While the other island provided ‘all the refreshments that can reasonably be wished’, the exposed position meant ‘nothing but great distress can warrant anchorage here’. To hold station off Más Afuera a ship had to remain in the lee of the island, which required constant attention as the wind shifted frequently. Moss advised bringing strongly built boats, his had been stove while landing: even so the crew loaded 2,100 seal skins in a few days, no mean feat. Finally Moss put Enderby’s Cove on the map. He returned home to find another war had broken out, and rejoined the Royal Navy, serving with distinction until his death in 1799. A decade later, as the attention of the British state turned once more to the South Pacific his notes appeared in the Naval Chronicle, as a supplement to Carteret’s account.14

  Predictably the new fishery provided cover for large scale smuggling. Wealthy Chileans and Peruvians, starved of European and Asian luxury goods by the Spanish monopoly, happily bought from long-distance fishermen. The occasional port visit for alleged ‘repairs’ or refreshment provided ample opportunity to breach the customs regulations, while unoccupied offshore islands offered a useful rendezvous for smugglers, especially Más Afuera and the more distant and difficult island of San Ambrosio.

  After Nootka the British government dispatched another voyage to survey the coasts and anchorages needed by the whaling fleet, only to redirect it to the contentious North Pacific, delay sailing while the crisis raged, finally sailing after the Spanish climb-down. The command fell to George Vancouver, who had sailed on two of Cook’s voyages.15 In a sign of the changing strategic picture Vancouver’s two ships, Discovery and Chatham entered the Pacific via the Cape of Good Hope and only reached the South Pacific as they headed home, when Vancouver called at several Pacific Islands, ‘for the purposes of watering and surveying’. Expecting a polite welcome he set a rendezvous at Juan Fernández, but the appearance of scurvy, a sprung mainmast and a chance encounter with his consort at sea led him to cancel the visit, sailing past both islands in March 1795. The scurvy responded well to the fresh victuals of Valparaiso, where the Spanish authorities, temporarily allies, proved unusually accommodating.16

  Vancouver’s would be the best-known of several voyages that extended British strategic and commercial activity in the South Pacific and along the west coast of the Americas after 1782, reflecting a growing awareness that these seas were the final link in a global trade network connecting Britain with India, Botany Bay, the Americans and China. It was, perhaps, no coincidence that this vision had been set out by John Campbell some fifty years before.17 Juan Fernández may have been the ideal base for such projects, but the islands would remain in Spanish hands while peace prevailed. Plans to seize the obvious South Pacific staging post were thwarted by the small garrison, so the British began to examine alternative, uninhabited archipelagos, even though none possessed the vital combination of a secure anchorage, ample water and fresh food. When Vancouver’s expedition was redirected to the Pacific Northwest the whaleship owners pressed the Admiralty to locate the ‘necessary places of refreshment and security to refit’ further south, stopovers that were essential for longer, more profitable voyages. With South Pacific cruises often lasting more than two years the need for fresh food, refit and relaxation was obvious. The economic benefits of prolonged voyages were overwhelming. The government took advice from Banks, and prepared HMS Rattler for a combined survey and whaling voyage in 1792. Delayed by the outbreak of another war Captain James Colnett sailed in January 1793.18

  The Rattler voyage was explicitly linked to Vancouver’s mission, to which Colnett had contributed his prior knowledge of the Pacific Northwest, and which he was at pains to avoid duplicating – and that of John Moss.19 The availability of a Spanish manuscript chart which included the isolated San Ambrosio–San Félix archipelago was a great help. The filthy, torn document was worked long and hard, inked over and then soaked when Colnett’s cabin was washed out near the end of the voyage.20 Colnett had served with Cook, sailing to the Pacific Northwest and China, he was the senior man seized in Nootka Sound, before resuming his naval career with a voyage that combined gathering economic intelligence on whaling harbours and stations with strategic reconnaissance. Among his textual sources none was used more frequently than Lionel Wafer’s voyage. Colnett provided useful charts of the Galá
pagos Islands and the San Félix–San Ambrosio archipelago, along with policy recommendations.

  Having seen the rich harvest of whales, seals and elephant seals to be made in the far south Colnett favoured establishing a whaling station at Staten Island close by Cape Horn. On the passage south Colnett and his crew had a predictable encounter with the scurvy, cured by two oranges a day and the use of a lime sauce, probably a form of cordial. Colnett had planned to call at Juan Fernández, but he feared Britain and Spain might be at war, so he shifted his attention to the Saint Felix and Saint Ambrose Isles, where he expected to find the same ‘refreshments’ as Más Afuera, trusting Moss had obtained all the necessary information.21 He did not mention his fear of being thrown into a Peruvian prison, for a second time. He took care to avoid the Spanish throughout the voyage, which limited the value of his work. He examined the isolated, unoccupied San Félix islands, a largely barren landscape without fresh water. He charted the islands, but the lack of water would be a major drawback for any visitors other than whalers, who filled their barrels with drinking water until they had oil to load. In a pioneering vision of terra-forming he suggested a water tank might be constructed, to be filled by passing ships, while ‘a few butts of earth might be landed, ‘and several kinds of herbs’ raised. Suitably transformed the islands would be habitable, and could be defended. He dismissed the idea that there were any islands further west and concluded with an accurate navigational position, vital in this vast ocean, where islands were easily misplaced.22 He did not stop to consider the feelings of a small garrison left in such a desolate place. Colnett’s account of the San Félix group did not lead to any immediate action, but it was not forgotten.