FALKLANDS 25TH ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT, APRIL 2007 i
W
ITH a slight
● A test of Endurance... Antarctic survey ship HMS Endurance in company with fl eet tanker RFA Tidespring off South Georgia was almost spiritual, encapsulated
jerk, 2,250 tons
Painting by Dean Regan – see page 48 of the main paper for his biography and details of his Falklands artwork by Almirante Emilio Massera,
of steel began
one of Argentina’s staunchest
“perfect security” for the Fleet. regular visitors to the Falklands. The mood in New York in station for ships bound to and Malvinistas:
to move, slowly His masters in the Admiralty The hunters hailed from Brittany, the 1950s and 1960s was anti- from the Pacific. They dabbled in
gathering momentum.
concurred. the historic port of St Malo. colonial. The UN had declared sheep farming on the side.
The Malvinas are an open
The drag chains, lying limply
The islands, the First Lord They named the islands in that the peoples of the world had When the Panama Canal
wound in the dignity of
on the slipway, quickly began to
of the Admiralty, Lord Egmont, honour of their home: les Îles the right to self-determination. opened sheep farming superseded
the Republic. The Malvinas
unravel with a deafening ‘clank’,
declared were “undoubtedly the Malouines. It listened to the Argentinian coaling as the principal ‘industry’,
are not a fragment of
growing more and more taut as
key to the whole Pacifick Ocean”. Madrid took its commitments argument that its settlers had been bolstered, bizarrely, by a growing
soil. They are a piece of
the hull picked up speed.
Claiming them for the Empire in the South Atlantic far more forcibly “evicted by violence”, trade in philately.
our soul and we must go
At 12.30pm on a fine late spring
would deal a fatal blow to Spain seriously than London. supplanted by British settlers and The 1,800 or so Falkland
forth to fi nd them because
day in Cumbria, the ship crashed
and her overseas trade. It removed the plaque from British rule. islanders thought rather more of
sovereignty, like dignity, is
into the waters of Morecambe
It was the Navy which had first Egmont and shipped it to Buenos The problem was that by the Britain than Britain thought of
not negotiable.
Bay.
set foot on these islands eight Aires, then razed the settlement. 60s, even if the islands themselves them. In the late 1970s the rhetoric
HMS Sheffield, Britain’s first
decades previously. For a good four decades, the were not undeniably British most Indeed, to Lord Chalfont and in Buenos Aires became louder,
Type 42 destroyer, had been
Capt John Strong of Her Falklands served chiefly as a of the people inhabiting them the Whitehall mandarins there was the tubthumping more bellicose.
born.
Majesty’s Ship Welfare put parties penal colony, ruled by a Spanish were. Staunchly British in fact. “no really intelligent reason” why Relations between London and
Several dozen workers leaned
ashore in 1690 and sailed through governor. Britain should hold on to the Buenos Aires worsened.
over the side of the forecastle and
the strait which separated the two But the Spaniards abruptly The Foreign Office had, islands. First an Argentine destroyer
waved. Twelve hundred men of
main islands. pulled out in 1811 as their South unsurprisingly, followed the UN The population was declining, fired at a British survey ship, the
Barrow had toiled 17 months to
He named the water for his American empire collapsed. debate with great interest. the industries struggling. The Shackleton, when she refused
reach this milestone.
expedition’s sponsor, Viscount Argentina was formally born It acceded to the resolution islands were thousands of miles to stop as she sailed near the
The breeze caught the Union
Falkland. Falkland Sound in turn on July 9 1816; the provinces of passed by the nations of the world from the motherland and just a Falklands.
Jack on the Jack Staff.
gave its name to the island chain. the Rio de la Plata had shaken off to find “a peaceful solution to the few hundred from the Americas. Then the Argentine Navy set
The crowd waved their small
Britain made no attempt to Spanish shackles six years earlier. problem” of the Falkland Islands. But the ministry had not up a tiny camp on Southern Thule
flags furiously; children, dressed
colonise these islands, however, The new nation immediately Foreign Office minister Lord included patriotism in its in the South Sandwich Islands
in woollen sweaters, presented the
until the 1760s. laid claim to former Spanish Chalfont regarded the archipelago equation.
and hoisted the Bandera Oficial de
Queen with posies.
A small settlement – Port territory – and that included the as “a kind of hang-over from When Lord Chalfont visited the
Ceremonia.
Malvinas. imperial days” and set about islands in late 1968, there was a The encampment was
The workers of the Vickers
Egmont – began to grow on
For the next decade, the islands resolving the issue. growing backlash at home and discovered by HMS Endurance
yard celebrated. That very day,
Saunders Island off the northern
remained uninhabited, however. Talks with Buenos Aires were in the islands over the talks with at the end of 1976. Britain
defence minister Lord Balniel,
shore of West Falkland. The men
Only in 1826 did Argentinians fruitful, so fruitful that Britain Argentina. protested, but did nothing forcible
had ordered a new ship from
sent to Port Egmont hated it –
begin to settle there. Their stay agreed to return the islands His reception in the Falklands to remove the base. The junta had
them: HMS Cardiff.
“the most detestable place I was
to Argentina “from a date to was “less than enthusiastic”. challenged British rule. It had
Cardiff would take shape on
ever at in my life,” one marine would last just seven years and it
be agreed”. It was in Britain’s The islanders made a point of invaded sovereign territory, albeit
that very same slipway. Before
officer complained. would be troubled.
For a decade Britain and Spain The Americans unceremoni- interests, in Argentinian interests, stating, perhaps overstating, their
the most remote of outposts, and
she did, another Type 42 would
squabbled over the islands until ously destroyed the fort at Puerto above all in the islanders’ interests, Britishness. Union Flags flew
the Empire had not bitten.
be built – and launched – there,
the Empire abandoned Egmont. Soledad when they were denied that the Falklands became the everywhere, as did a few banners:
Hercules.
Not for the last time, the cost of hunting rights in the islands, while Malvinas, Whitehall argued. Keep the Falklands British, We wa n t
She would serve not under the
defending such a far-flung outpost the Argentine governor was killed Of course, Lord Chalfont hadn’t to stay British in the British Falkland
White Ensign but the distinctive
was too much for the British when his troops mutinied. actually been to the Falklands... Islands.
white and blue of the Bandera
Government to bear. Whitehall spied an opportunity The minister was unmoved,
I
F there was a single day which
set Britain and Argentina
irrevocably on the road to war
then it was June 24 1981.
Oficial de Ceremonia, ensign of the
On May 20 1774, the British amid the turmoil in the South
Armada Republica Argentina.
departed the islands, the Colours Atlantic and despatched two ships
No-one cheering on June 10
still flying over Egmont, leaving a to reclaim British sovereignty.
1971 knew it but Hercules would
plaque behind: On January 2 1833, HMS Clio A
ND what of those islands, but MPs in Westminster were In the corridors of Westminster
those few thousand square not. They rejected the deal the lobby correspondents pored over
miles of sovereign British British and Argentinian Foreign Command 8288, a White Paper
soil in the South Atlantic? Ministries had struck. produced by the Ministry of
help to seal Sheffield’s fate.
Descriptions of the Falklands There could never be any Defence: The Way Forward.
The long fuse of the Falklands
Be it known to all nations
arrived off the islands. It gave
vary: Wales without any trees, the agreement between London White Papers are not renowned
war had already already been lit.
that Falkland Ysland, with
the settlers one day to leave. The
this fort, the storehouse,
Argentinians did not resist. The Hebrides but sunnier and windier, and Buenos Aires without the for their direct language.
wharfs, harbours, bays and
Union Flag was raised over the Dartmoor surrounded by the sea. Falklanders’ wishes being met. But Defence Secretary John
W
HAT, but a bleak and
The islands were never quite Buenos Aires felt snubbed. Nott did not mince his words.
gloomy solitude, an is-
creeks thereunto belong-
islands once more.
as unforgiving or bleak as many Westminster was burying its head “We cannot go on as we are,”
land thrown aside from
ing, are the sole right and
Britons painted them. in the sand – fatally, Lord Chalfont he began, then promptly began to
human use, stormy in
property of His Most Sacred
For the next 150 years the islands
Temperatures at the height warned. Unless the Falklands dismantle one third of the Royal
winter, and barren in summer; an
Majesty George III, King of
were British, but not undeniably.
of summer rarely topped 20˚C; were one day returned “in the Navy.
island which not even southern
Great Britain, France and
Argentina never relinquished
mercifully, in winter they rarely long term we are likely to end up A quarter of a century later, the
savages have dignifi ed with habita-
Ireland, Defender of the
her claim to the Malvinas – and
dropped below -5˚C and it rained in a state of armed conflict with name John Nott still draws a sharp
tion...
Faith.
found support in the Americas, in
the United Nations, and even in less than in Plymouth. Argentina”. intake of breath in Naval circles.
Thus mused Samuel Johnson The Empire would return. But
Whitehall. It was the wind which was the The long fuse was lit. Yet his appointment to the top
in 1771. He wondered what not for nearly 60 years – and it
With the Empire and the Grand killer, an almost constant presence post in Whitehall had originally
Britain had gained by claiming would have to evict the islands’
Fleet at its grandest in Edwardian in summer or winter with few It is difficult for Britons to been welcomed by the Admiralty.
sovereignty over a remote chain of new occupier. Britain, the Foreign Office trees to impede its progress. comprehend the importance of After a ‘weak’ defence secretary
islands off the southernmost tip of conceded Argentina had a case Eight tenths of the Falklands las Islas Malvinas to the people of in Francis Pym, Admiral Sir Henry
the Americas. British disinterest left Spain the – and Whitehall had invariably consist of peat bogs; what remains Argentina. Leach expected more from Nott.
What Britain had gained were uncontested masters of the land treated her unfairly. is sparsely populated. Almost all It was as if the republic was His appointment, the admiral
800 islands. None is particularly they called las Islas Malvinas. It was only in the 1960s that food, save lamb, mutton and a few incomplete without them. Burned believed, would be a “change for
large, habitable or populous. Yet the islands took their name Buenos Aires began to thump the vegetables, has to be imported. into the soul of every Argentinian the better”.
But the Royal Navy could see not from the Spanish tongue but shoe on the table and press for the The islanders for the most part was the conviction that those How wrong I was, the admiral
potential here. from bastardised French. islands’ return. live on East Falkland – and most barren, windswept islands lamented.
Commodore John Byron, From the end of the 17th The case ended up in the court of those in Stanley, the capital. belonged to them and one day Outwardly First Sea Lord Sir
grandfather of the poet, believed Century until the mid-1760s of world opinion, the United For the first half of British rule, would be theirs. Henry Leach was an imposing
the bays of the Falklands provided French seal hunters had been Nations. the islands had thrived as a coaling It was not a rational desire, it Continued on page iimarina
Falklands1a.indd 1 21/3/07 11:49:53
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