Historical Notes: Turbulence in the South Atlantic

IT WOULD have been interesting to be on the bridge with the English navigator Captain John Davis when his ship Desire was driven by fierce storms "in among certain islands never before discovered" on 14 August 1592. Sadly, one can only guess at his reaction when he first sighted that desolate coastline 8,000 miles from Britain but he must have been more than a little bewildered to learn that his peers would be fighting and dying over the bleak patchwork of islands for the next 400 or so years. That a war was fought in the South Atlantic in 1982 with the loss of over 900 lives is well known. However, there have been many more battles and far greater loss of life in its history, with the seeds of that particular conflict being sown many centuries earlier.

The Falkland Islands were given their name by Captain John Strong from the British ship Welfare when he made the first landing in 1690. Seventy-five years later, after a recommendation to establish a British base near Cape Horn, Captain John Byron was dispatched to "take formal possession of the Islands for the Crown of Great Britain, his heirs and successors". On what pretext we decided that it was our right to do so is unclear and largely immaterial, as we had already missed the boat. When Byron arrived he discovered that a Frenchman had already occupied the East Falklands and claimed them for his own country. So began the turbulent history of the Falkland Islands.

After the French sold the "rights" of the islands to the Spanish in 1769 the punch-ups began. At first the Spanish, utilising its fleet at Buenos Aires, fought and defeated the British who, by all accounts, were more than happy to be deposed. As one marine officer said, "It was the most detestable place I have ever been in my life." A few years later, after breaking away from Spain, the fledgling Argentinian state took control but made the mistake of picking a fight with a US seal-hunting party. In a style still unchanged to this day, the Americans reacted by sending a warship to raze the settlement to the ground, imprison its inhabitants, and declare the islands "free of all government", which, in foreign policy terms, left a bit to be desired.

Luckily the British were beginning to learn to hang on to the American coat-tails and were waiting in the wings to reclaim the islands and in 1833 asserted "her full rights" by establishing a naval garrison at Port Louis. Again, it was unclear how standing on a piece of land allowed you to claim it as your own and the Argentinians have been protesting ever since.

Squatters' rights aside, the battles had not stopped. In 1914 one of the major naval engagements of the First World War took place when the Germans arrived to take possession of the islands. Unluckily for them Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, had foreseen this turn of events, something Margaret Thatcher conspicuously failed to do 68 years later. He had already dispatched a large fleet to the South Atlantic and in the ensuing battle the German squadron was almost entirely sunk, with the loss of over 2,500 lives.

So after the latest war in 1982, has the last "Battle of the Falklands" been fought? Today there is much talk that the waters surrounding the Falklands may conceal huge reserves of gas and oil. And alongside its constitutional commitment to regain sovereignty the Argentinian Congress has draft legislation before it that would impose fines of $10m on companies that neglected to pay a 3 per cent royalty on any gas or oil production. As presumably any mineral reserves are currently British it will be interesting to see how this next battle will be decided. One can always hope that, this time, the politicians will be able to sort themselves out without the assistance of their military.

John Nichols is the author of `Exclusion Zone' (Hodder & Stoughton, pounds 10)