British Tierra del Fuego

Petete123123

The other day I was thinking why didn't the British settled in this Archipelago and did so in the Falklands, when the resources and climate of the former are a lot better than those of the Falklands. They also have a better position here as they have direct control of the Magalleanic Channel, as well as being closer to the Drake Passage, and so to the union of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which means control over this trading routes.

So lets say that after the founding of Punta Arenas in 1848, the British see that their dominance over the Souther Seas and Trade is threatened so they decide to found another town in the other side of the Magalleanic Channel, in Tierra del Fuego Island, or Fireland as it become known for English Speakers. After this, the British explore the Island and realize that the lands of the Beagle Channel and inland valley have a nice deal of fishing and wood, and also have a climate similar to that of Newfoundland. They also realize that they are suitable for settlement, so they start first founding towns in the coasts, and after that expanding inland. Some settlers start moving to the plains were they start practising sheep husbandry. While moving North they found gold in El Paramo, which leads to a small Gold Rush, which makes more people come to the Islands.

Is this possible? How can this TL evolve? Any ideas?
 

Falastur

Well it's plausible, but there are a few issues. For a start, who is going to threaten their control of trade over the southern seas in 1848? Chile? Argentina? I think not. Neither of them have anywhere near the pulling power, at best they would be seen as custodians of British trade, and in such a case Britain would just make an agreement with them to have both parties recognise the South American nation in question as the sovereign and Britain as the suzerain (metaphorically, not diplomatically). It would take someone like France to seriously threaten British dominance of trade, but 1848 is hardly a boomtime for France (I guess they had worse times though) and though they tried at times, the French really didn't have much chance of controlling the trade around Cape Horn in any way shape or form.

The second problem is that Cape Horn was THE worst trade passage in the world. The seas there are frankly horrendous, and the rate that ships sank there was worrying, not to mention the fact that it's a 6,000 mile detour compared to the later Panama Canal passage. I mean, sure, there's no overland route across Central America yet but when someone comes up with the concept, that's a huge deficit in Tierra del Fuego's account when it comes to weighing up the options, akin to how much the Suez Canal saved time over sailing round the entirety of Africa to reach India. 1848 may sound early but it was only 1855 IIRC when the British first thought of building a railway across Nicaragua in a manner akin to what the Panama Canal was in the 1870s(?).

If Britain planted a colony there I suspect it would "flourish" as you described, but with the anticipated route change to entirely cut out Cape Horn I don't think that even a British control of the Magellan Straits are going to persuade the British to keep that route going - it's just not a good route, and it's very unpopular. You'd probably see Tierra del Fuego becoming Falklands 2 - that is, a healthy and strong colony in its own right, but ultimately three shades of insignificant, and never getting a big enough population to be anything other than a faraway "Little Britain".
 

Admiral Brown

Chile founded Punta Arenas in 1843. It's on the mainland, but faces Magellan strait, and was founded there in order to discourage any other power from claiming control over the territory.

It's not, however, tha this would stop the British if they are determinated to get the island. But I thought it was something worse mentionning
 

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
Falastur said:
Well it's plausible, but there are a few issues. For a start, who is going to threaten their control of trade over the southern seas in 1848? Chile? Argentina? I think not. Neither of them have anywhere near the pulling power, at best they would be seen as custodians of British trade, and in such a case Britain would just make an agreement with them to have both parties recognise the South American nation in question as the sovereign and Britain as the suzerain (metaphorically, not diplomatically). It would take someone like France to seriously threaten British dominance of trade, but 1848 is hardly a boomtime for France (I guess they had worse times though) and though they tried at times, the French really didn't have much chance of controlling the trade around Cape Horn in any way shape or form.

The second problem is that Cape Horn was THE worst trade passage in the world. The seas there are frankly horrendous, and the rate that ships sank there was worrying, not to mention the fact that it's a 6,000 mile detour compared to the later Panama Canal passage. I mean, sure, there's no overland route across Central America yet but when someone comes up with the concept, that's a huge deficit in Tierra del Fuego's account when it comes to weighing up the options, akin to how much the Suez Canal saved time over sailing round the entirety of Africa to reach India. 1848 may sound early but it was only 1855 IIRC when the British first thought of building a railway across Nicaragua in a manner akin to what the Panama Canal was in the 1870s(?).

If Britain planted a colony there I suspect it would "flourish" as you described, but with the anticipated route change to entirely cut out Cape Horn I don't think that even a British control of the Magellan Straits are going to persuade the British to keep that route going - it's just not a good route, and it's very unpopular. You'd probably see Tierra del Fuego becoming Falklands 2 - that is, a healthy and strong colony in its own right, but ultimately three shades of insignificant, and never getting a big enough population to be anything other than a faraway "Little Britain".
Click to expand...

I'm a British colonist planning to move to South America.

"Hmmm. Let's see. Should I try Buenos Aires, or a windswept wasteland in the middle of nowhere? Well, Buenos Aires has beautiful weather, vibrant culture, and lost of fantastic farmland nearby, but Tierra del Fuego has fish and some trees. Hmmm."
 

Stephen

Banned
Perhaps you could have an earlier colony in the 18th century, perhaps a penal colony like Australia.
 

Zajir

Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
I'm a British colonist planning to move to South America.

"Hmmm. Let's see. Should I try Buenos Aires, or a windswept wasteland in the middle of nowhere? Well, Buenos Aires has beautiful weather, vibrant culture, and lost of fantastic farmland nearby, but Tierra del Fuego has fish and some trees. Hmmm."
Click to expand...

Well they did find settlers for the Falklands Islands, so they could probably find several thousands settlers, besieds the Welshmen who settled Patagonia in the 18-18th centuries could be redirected towards the Land of Fire.
 

Falastur

Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
I'm a British colonist planning to move to South America.

"Hmmm. Let's see. Should I try Buenos Aires, or a windswept wasteland in the middle of nowhere? Well, Buenos Aires has beautiful weather, vibrant culture, and lost of fantastic farmland nearby, but Tierra del Fuego has fish and some trees. Hmmm."
Click to expand...

With respect, your statement plays out more like a decision on where to take a holiday. A lot of British colonists were willing to expatriate, but not everyone. For some there would be the necessity of finding somewhere British to move. On top of this, yeah, T del F is hardly the Garden of Eden for colonists, but then neither were the Falklands, a very similar colony, yet they've built up a population of 25,000 odd and I see no reason their success couldn't be replicated in T del F. Finally, remember that when colonies are established, unless they are terribly run and/or in a horrible position and bound to fail, that the colony's sponsor, be it corporate or national, usually keeps pumping extra colonists there in the early years to keep it going. At any rate, I don't think that T del F is going to completely die out because "it's not an attractive enough holiday destinat...I mean, place to start a new life". At the end of the day, I did after all say that I didn't think it would ever become a big colony. I'd be satisfied with a prediction of 15-20,000 settlers by the TTL equivalent of the present day.
 

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
Zajir said:
Well they did find settlers for the Falklands Islands, so they could probably find several thousands settlers, besieds the Welshmen who settled Patagonia in the 18-18th centuries could be redirected towards the Land of Fire.
Click to expand...

The settlers on the Falklands, all 2,000 of them, had a specific purpose and serviced the RN station there. The same number would probably end up in TdF.
 

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
Falastur said:
With respect, your statement plays out more like a decision on where to take a holiday. A lot of British colonists were willing to expatriate, but not everyone. For some there would be the necessity of finding somewhere British to move. On top of this, yeah, T del F is hardly the Garden of Eden for colonists, but then neither were the Falklands, a very similar colony, yet they've built up a population of 25,000 odd and I see no reason their success couldn't be replicated in T del F. Finally, remember that when colonies are established, unless they are terribly run and/or in a horrible position and bound to fail, that the colony's sponsor, be it corporate or national, usually keeps pumping extra colonists there in the early years to keep it going. At any rate, I don't think that T del F is going to completely die out because "it's not an attractive enough holiday destinat...I mean, place to start a new life". At the end of the day, I did after all say that I didn't think it would ever become a big colony. I'd be satisfied with a prediction of 15-20,000 settlers by the TTL equivalent of the present day.
Click to expand...

The Falklands have a population of 3,000, of which 500 are there in connection with the military garrison, and that's as high as it's ever been. That's not exactly a colonial success.

While it's true colonists go to where there are other people of their nationality, given a choice, they're going to go somewhere nice where people of their nationality live, like Argentina, the USA, or Canada, not the desolate southernmost tip of the planet where there's no future.

If you could arrange for gold to be discovered earlier, then that's different. But otherwise, there is no possible advantage of TdF over the Falklands as a base, and neither have the ability to attract enough colonists for a going concern.
 

Falastur

Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
The Falklands have a population of 3,000, of which 500 are there in connection with the military garrison, and that's as high as it's ever been. That's not exactly a colonial success.
Click to expand...

Hmm, interesting, but fair enough. I could've sworn I remembered the population being far higher, but clearly not. I retract that statement.

I still stick by my opinion that TdF wouldn't just be completely abandoned because "it's not attractive enough" though. Even if the population remained comparative to the Falklands, it would still get settlers one way or another, even if that method is the government paying some people to take up land there until the population is high enough to make the colony both self-sustaining and having a positive birth to death ratio.
 

Petete123123

But remember that not all the island is a windy wasteland only good for raising sheep. The other half is pretty much like Alaska, but its not that cold. And there is oil near the coast, as well as beautiful landscapes, which aren't a major touristic attraction but in OTL, it's the major economic activity of a city of about 70.000 inhabitants.
 

Stephen

Banned
If the government decides it wants a colony in an unatractive spot, they could try to atract settlers by offering things like free passage and tax free land grants etc. And a penal colony for convicts, workhouse inmates, and orphans.
 

corditeman

The Crown Colony of Tierra del Fuego - A Summary

This is an amazing story, begun by a ship’s company that was wrecked on these islands in 1843 and established a small community. Their main advantages were that Ushuaia had both a sheltered anchorage and water, two essentials for a way-station on the Cape Horn route. The other aspect was that ship-owners in Bristol, London and Liverpool, decided that they needed a lighthouse service to reduce the hideous losses of ships in these waters. To the irritation of Chile and Argentina, the British Government passed the Tierra del Fuego Act in 1850, empowering the Fuego Islands Company to settle sufficient colonists to maintain lighthouses, ship-repair and provisioning services and ‘to exploit the local economic advantages’.

A Chilean force came to throw the colonists out in 1851, but gave sufficient warning of their intentions for the Royal Navy to intercept their force with two frigates. The Battle of Magellan Straits broke Chilean control of those waters and was a trigger for the development of the Royal Navy base at Port Victoria. That base grew in importance with the Nitrates Trade from the Atacama Desert coast and reached its zenith in the First World War with the Battle of Coronel (a disaster), the Port Victoria bombardment (a draw) and the later Battle of the Falkland Islands (a victory).

Development of Tierra del Fuego was gradual, with the Fitzroy expedition aboard HMS ‘Beagle’ landing the first Minister for the All Saints’ Church in ‘godless Ushuaia’, but the demand for fresh vegetables and meat lead to a farming economy being established. It also started skirmishes with the locals that were usually started by bows and arrows and ended by guns. Most of the indigenous population were gone by the 1870s, decimated by disease, conflict, deliberate extermination and a mix of prostitution and slavery. There are a handful of people who claim descent from the indigenous ‘Indians’, but in reality the last pure-blood Fuegans died during the brief 1870s Gold Rush, which briefly founded ten towns and caused a short-lived boom.

The twentieth century saw Tierra del Fuego develop as a definite colony; it is famous as a base for the Antarctic explorations of Shackleton and other venturers, but the fishery, wool and timber industries were to be the basis for a sustainable way of life. Whaling was important from the 1800s right up to the 1960s, but was replaced by oil and gas exploration thereafter. There is a great deal of international debate about the ownership of oil and gas under the continental shelf between Staten Island and the Falklands, but in international law it is agreed to be a Fuegan and Falklands natural resource. There is similar debate over the Palmer Peninsula, but as it is south of the Fuego Archipelago, the Argentinian and Chilean claims are not recognised. Attempts have been made by both countries to make the population of 87,000 change allegiance to one of them, but the staunch British loyalty of the Fuegans is matched only by the Falklands and Gibraltar.
 
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Nugax

If people move there it'll be for jobs, and in that neck of the world it'd generally be either military or corporate sheep farms. It'd effectively be much like the Southland Region of New Zealand rather than the Falklands due to more room and having some forests at least - but thats still only 50,000 people at most that were convinced to move down to Southland.

I'd say its possible with an earlier POD that changes Britains economic situation/settling prospects, that makes them more desirous of primary production sites rather than imformal empire - if there are still competitive merchentile powers opposing them in Asia for example.

If there is a settler and (more importantly) a corporate presence there they can probably convince the UK to annex the Archipeligo and buy off the Mainland states, but they're never going to try for more than that. This would give Britain the strongest claim to the Western Antarctic...
 

corditeman

...Speaks with forked tongue...

...The clipper ships going round the Horn (nice radio programme, that was) would have benefitted from a friendly port set up for their resupply and repair. They would also benefit from plenty of lighthouses. Call this the Trinity House solution.

Current OTL total population of the archipelago is a bit over 106,000. Allowing a slight diminution (no/few Catholic families) then you've a reasonable level of population at what I suggested.

Military/sheep farms in Falklands, but here it's a mix of timber, fishing, oil, gas, mining and then farming. Mighty valuable to Argentina and Chile, this here Fuego...

Thought of the Fuego Islands Company as an analogy of the Falkland Islands Company. Buy off the dagos, what? By jingo, sir, never! Fuego's British and British it'll remain! <screws monocle firmly into right eye and thinks of Sanders of the River>
 
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Nugax

What it provides now is rather different from what it would provided then, especially in terms of quick return on investment, and Britain could get all that stuff and easier elsewhere.

The Clipper route didn't stop at del Fuego - it'd just slow them down and bring them into huge risk as they approached the islands and they tried to spend as little time as possible in the area. The Clipper route from Sydney to Portsmouth is already making times of roughly a hundred days, they don't need a supply station that'll put them at massive risk and time cost to access when they can just pop to the Falklands on the way out.

A coaling station on the other hand would make more sense, but would have required British possesions and requirements to shake out in a different way before a Cape Horn station becomes useful.
 

corditeman

Nugax, you didn't read the summary...

...The caliche beds of Chile were the main source of sodium nitrate required to produce gunpowder and to manufacture nitric acid for manufacturing cordite and other smokeless propellants. The strategic importance was so great that the Imperial German Navy lost an entire fleet trying to break British control of access to the nitrates. Only the ingenuity of Fritz Haber's synthetic nitric acid plant stopped Germany from running out of cordite in 1916.

A coaling station in Fuego would have been a major asset. Curiously enough, brown coal (lignite) is/was mined at Isla Picton/Picton Island.

And I'm sure that other commercial interests would have found the harbours of Fuego useful - the whaling industry for one. The clippers were an off-the-cuff offer. I did mention whaling, which Port Stanley and South Georgia both provided support to.

Falklands and Alaska, with a pinch of Newfoundland, may give you the flavour of the Crown Colony of Tierra Del Fuego...

And where's Petete123123 when we need him?
 

Petete123123

corditeman said:
Current OTL total population of the archipelago is a bit over 106,000. Allowing a slight diminution (no/few Catholic families) then you've a reasonable level of population at what I suggested.
Click to expand...

There is a bit more population. I live in Ushuaia, and here there are about 70.000 inhabitants. In Tolhuin there are about 8.000 and Rio Grande is near 80.000. So that's more or less 158.000 in Argentinean side. Plus about 10.000 in the Chilean side that's near 170.000 inhabitants. It has grown a lot in the last years:D

Going back to the TL, i liked corditeman summary. It's really true that lighthouses are very important, as indeed, colonization of the island started with the one in Isla de los Estados.
And people, I must tell you that this kind of supplying stations are really important. Just look at Punta Arenas. Besides of controlling the sheep farming in the region, it was an important coal station and stop point for sail ships. Why? Because its in the Magalleanic Channel. If you go through it, you have an easier way to cross from one Ocean to another, without the storms, serious obstacles and the rough sea.
So that's why I say that a port in the other side of the Channel will be pretty much the same if there is at least some effort.

Also does anybody know how good is fur trading as an economic activity? It seems the Islands are a very good habitat for beavers, because the few couples introduced in 1945 have done well and now we have more than 200.000 beavers in the wild.
 

Falastur

Petete123123 said:
Also does anybody know how good is fur trading as an economic activity? It seems the Islands are a very good habitat for beavers, because the few couples introduced in 1945 have done well and now we have more than 200.000 beavers in the wild.
Click to expand...

They used to be an incredibly, incredibly lucrative trade resource. I honestly couldn't believe how profitable they were for such an average, unexciting material, when I first read about the fur-trappers of Canada. However, unfortunately by 1850 the fur-trapping trade had long since had its heyday and gone into decline. It might support the colony in TTL but it wouldn't make it prosperous.
 
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