Y Wladychfa Gymreig: Welsh settlement in Patagonia from Confidential Print: Latin America

Britain in the nineteenth century was a country of emigration. The British Empire covered a quarter of the globe, and the British people went forth in their thousands to settle in its most promising regions. Australia, Canada and New Zealand owe their current form to the British enthusiasm for improving one’s lot overseas: as, of course, does the United States, which continued to attract a flow of settlers from the British Isles even after it freed itself from British rule.

Some emigrants, however, sought new lives in countries that were neither part of the Empire nor even English-speaking. Argentina was one such destination, and during the nineteenth century British people came to play a leading role in the development of commerce and industry there. But one group of Britons passed by the hubbub of Buenos Aires and headed far to the south, not for its economic opportunities but precisely because of its isolation. They spoke Welsh, and had emigrated to improve (they hoped) their material well-being but also, and mainly, to preserve their language and culture from English encroachment: an aim for which the isolation of central Patagonia, largely untouched even by Spanish-Argentine settlement, seemed to be ideal. The story of their colony and its early tribulations is covered in our recent release Confidential Print: Latin America, in file FO 420/23.

The first colonists, 150 in number, sailed from Liverpool to the mouth of the Chupat (now known as Chubut) River in 1865; early the next year, confused stories about their fate began to circulate in British newspapers, reports which were collected with interest by the government. In January 1866 the Liverpool Mercury reported that a ‘terrible calamity’ had befallen the colonists: a third of their number had died of starvation due to running out of grain before their first harvest and the depredations of local Indians. Less than a month later, however, the Wrexham Advertiser ran a long, completely contradictory piece, its details culled, it was claimed, from letters sent home by the colonists, expounding the advantages and successes of the venture. There had been hardships associated with life in a wilderness, but the land teemed with innumerable wildfowl, twenty-pound hares and wild sheep as big as either calves or donkeys, depending on which writers were to be believed. One correspondent concluded that ‘if all Wales were to go there [to Patagonia], the cry of every one would be “plenty of good land”’.

Was this nationalist boosting, or simply the happy truth? Uncertainty grew when two settlers turned up in the Falkland Islands with an appeal addressed to the governor, pleading that they were indeed starving: promises made in Wales that sufficient food, stock and seed would be provided for them to launch their colony had not been fulfilled. Nothing had awaited them in the valley of the Chupat but some crude huts, and within a short while they had been reduced to living on tea and handfuls of ship’s biscuit. These tales of woe were echoed by Henry Pain, the sailor who had brought the emissaries to the Falklands. From what he had seen he felt that the colonists had been deceived by their leaders as to Patagonia’s prospects; but when these men had realised just how little they could gain themselves from the venture they too had despaired. The colony’s first president, Lewis Jones, had run away, and his replacement, one Davies, had pleaded with Pain not to allow any settlers to leave on his ship – though Davies added that if their coming harvest failed they would probably all die.

The British official under whose purview the colonists came was the chargé d’affaires at Buenos Aires, Francis Ford. Suspecting that life in Patagonia was not as dire as the emissaries described – he knew that the Argentine government sent monthly supplies south – but wanting to know the facts about ‘this party of emigrants about whom no two statements agree’, Ford despatched his second secretary, Mr Watson, on board HMS Triton to find out for himself.

Watson and his Royal Navy hosts spent five days on the Chupat in June 1866 and discovered that the truth of the matter was, as Ford had predicted, more prosaic either than famine or an infinity of gambolling game. Life at the colony was generally cheerful and few wanted to leave; the plea that had found its way to Port Stanley was an exaggeration got up by just ten settlers unhappy with their lot, and many of the names on it were those of small children. The main problems were lack of cloth – the sailors subscribed amongst themselves to buy the colonists a thousand yards of flannel – and firewood (though the Wrexham Advertiser had talked of an ‘inexhaustible store’ of the latter), and a propensity towards scurvy. But for a good many months after they arrived the colonists had depended for their survival on supplies sent gratis by the Argentinians, and Watson was unsparing in his criticism of the way the venture had been handled by its organisers back in Wales.

It seems that the originators of the scheme had put their faith in a proposed Argentinian law that would have provided their colony with funds, livestock and agricultural implements at its inception in addition to the basic grant of land. This bill had suffered legislative defeat in 1863; but, nevertheless, the colonisation society had distributed Welsh-language pamphlets to prospective emigrants promising what they knew would not be delivered. The investigation of the site also seems to have been something between slapdash and negligent. Lewis Jones, the man in charge, had spent only a single day at the mouth of the Chupat before the emigrants had set off. He had also discounted, or not realised, the importance of their arriving in May or June, during central Patagonia’s planting season. It was in fact planned for them to leave Liverpool as late as 25th April, and as things transpired their departure was delayed for a further month. They arrived on the coast at the end of July and did not make it up the river to their destination until early October, whereupon Jones announced he was leaving; only the timely arrival of a ship bearing supplies he had ordered from Buenos Aires – thus, incidentally, saddling the new colonists with a considerable debt – made him (temporarily) change his mind. Watson reported that the colony’s first harvest was not expected until January 1867, a full sixteen months after its foundation.

Towards the end of the file is a despatch from Downing Street commending Watson’s investigative work but expressing little hope for the colony’s secure future. Isolation from markets and lack of wood in the vicinity would, the government believed, lead inevitably to abandonment. A subsequent proposal by the Argentinian state for a wholesale move of the colony northwards was greeted warmly the British, though it did not come to pass. In fact after their hesitant start the settlers found their feet, building irrigation systems and a railway (instrumental in this project was Lewis Jones, who seems thus to have redeemed himself) and expanding their territory west to the Andes. Welsh – now of course thriving in its homeland – is still spoken by a few thousand people in Chubut and is supported by teachers sent over from Britain. The founders’ dream of a ‘little Wales beyond Wales’ still clings on in the South Atlantic, despite their own rather dubious contribution to its fortunes.