By a royal edict of 1808 all foreigners in Chile were listed, the count resulting in a total of 79, among whom were 16 Britons and 9 North Americans. This number is probably far below the correct figures, the presence of such persons being still illegal according to Spain. It was not until 1811 that permission was given for the brig Fly to bring a cargo of merchandise to Chilean ports—similar permits having previously been given only to the French, when politically associated with Spain. John and Joseph Crosbie were the chief adventurers of this shipload, and the bales of cotton and woollen cloth, the hardware and tools of British make, were sold at such good prices that the supercargo, John James Barnard, presently returned with the Dart, equally laden. On board was Andrew Blest of Sligo, and both he and Barnard remained and married in the country.
Strangers and Independence
With the first dawn of the struggle for independence in the Spanish colonies of the New World, help came promptly from across the Atlantic. The political aspect, promising a definite cessation of the anxieties and restrictions that harassed Europe and offering the counterbalance to which Canning trusted, was a matter for statesmen; but it was the appeal to the spirit, the call for help towards freedom, that touched popular imagination and sent thousands of British volunteers across seas. Many of these men died; some returned home; and a large number remained in Latin America to form links that have proved invaluable on both sides of the world.
The money sent to Spain’s lost colonies in early days set the new-born countries upon their feet economically; the soldiers who flocked to Bolívar’s standard in northern South America turned the scale of battle on more than one occasion—the gallant Irish Legion is still commemorated in Venezuela and Colombia; but it was to the Pacific that the largest number of volunteers went, for not only were the armies of San Martín strengthened by fighters, many of whom had seen useful service in Peninsular campaigns, but the effect among seamen of the entry of Admiral Cochrane into the conflict was that of a magnificent example to be followed with enthusiasm. Cochrane created Chile’s navy; many of the British officers who followed him remained in Chilean naval service, the link between the British and Chilean navies being sustained by the descendants of these sailors as well as, officially, by the instructors traditionally lent by the British Admiralty.
The first British naval officers to fight for Chile preceded Cochrane by some months. Actually the first Chilean fighting ship was the Aguila, captained by Raymond Morris in 1817; Captain O’Brien, commanding the Lautaro, a converted East Indiaman, lost his life in April, 1818, when the Spanish blockading ship, the Esmeralda, was driven from Valparaiso; Captain Wilkinson, who entered Valparaiso as master of another East Indiaman, the Cumberland, loaded with coal, sold her and entered the Chilean navy commanding the vessel, renamed the San Martín.
Captain Morris commanded the Araucana when in October, 1818, Chile’s new little squadron went out to attack the big Spanish man-of-war, the Maria Isabella, lying with her transports in Talcahuano Bay, a brilliantly successful exploit. A little later came the former British brig Hecate, renamed the Galvarino and brought by two British naval officers, Captains Spry and Guise, who also entered Chilean service. About this time also came a number of North Americans, chiefly those brought by José Miguel Carrera from the United States.
Miners, investors, buyers and sellers and shipping men came in the wake of the fighters, and before 1850 there was a strong foreign, and chiefly British, colony at Valparaiso, with other groups at Santiago, Coquimbo, Copiapó and down south at Concepción. The kindly Chilean character, the pleasant climate and lovely scenery, held the hearts of the strangers, a great proportion remaining to identify themselves with Chilean fortunes.
A stream of scientific men and travellers was directed to Chile in the early nineteenth century, performing valuable work and leaving records; the list includes the names of Poeppig, Darwin, de Bougainville, D’Orbigny, Mayen, the two Philippi’s, explorers of the Atacama desert, and Humboldt. There was a lady, too, who has a place amongst travellers, artists and writers of the first days of Independence, the gentle and acute Maria Graham, widow of one of Cochrane’s officers, who eventually returned to England, became Lady Callcott and published a perennially delightful book of Chilean reminiscence.
Many explorers of the Chilean southerly regions did good service, for here came the Challenger, with a group of scientific men, and later the Adventure and the Beagle, carrying King and Fitzroy and Darwin; these vessels and the succeeding Alert, with Coppinger, performed invaluable surveying work. Inland, a number of such explorers as Musters, Viedma and Conway, preceded the official work of the Holdich Commission. Of recent years, no foreigner has owed more to Chile than Shackleton; after the casting away of his ship and men upon Elephant Island in the Polar Seas, and the failure of three attempts at rescue, it was the loan of the Chilean Government’s Yelcho that saved a score of gallant lives. But before the end of the nineteenth century the visitor to the Pacific Coast had ceased to be a stranger, and in Chile the newcomer no longer feels himself to be in a foreign land.