THE remote and rugged Galapagos Islands are celebrated as the inspiration for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. What is little known is the fact that their first permanent resident was an Irishman. His extraordinary adventures were recorded in the diary of a US naval captain who visited the islands early in the 19th century, writes Brendan Cardiff
The identity of the original discoverers of the Pacific archipelago is lost in the byroads of history, though it is probable that Spanish conquistadores sighted them in the 1530s. Their remoteness, and the enveloping mists which made them often invisible to passing ships, caused them to be known as the "Encantadas" or "Enchanted Islands". They were first mapped by Ortelius about 1584.
If many Spanish mariners considered they were just shadows, long doubting they really existed, buccaneers - including Sir Francis Drake and his cousin Sir Richard Hawkins - realised their value. Located on the Pacific side of the Darien isthmus, they were an ideal refuge and a base for attacks on Spanish royal treasure galleons sailing to Acapulco from Peru and the Philippines.
While hiding their vessels among the many islands, with their treacherous currents and reefs, the buccaneers could rest up, collect firewood and the fresh meat of giant land tortoises, even if the stark volcanic islands were lacking in fresh water. They would smoke the meat of feral pigs left by previous visitors in constructs known as "boucans", from which the word "buccaneer" evolved. Live land-tortoises served as a source of fresh meat on ships as the unfortunate creatures could survive for over a year without food or water.
It was this availability of fresh meat, as well as a proliferation of whales in the surrounding, nutrient-rich waters which attracted whaling ships in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among their crews was Herman Melville, who later wrote the novel Moby Dick. Isolated from their homes for years on end, the whalers devised their own voluntary postal system, erecting a postal barrel on Charles Island (later called Floreana when the islands were claimed by Ecuador). They would leave their (unstamped) letters in the barrel for other kindly souls heading back to civilisation to deliver, while also seeking any incoming post.
The individual Galapagos islands were created over the ages by volcanic eruptions from a hot-spot deep in the earth's core. Piercing the Nacza tectonic plate, which shifts about at the rate of about 5cm per year - the speed one's nails grow at - each eruption, occurring every million years or so, caused the resulting islands to be separated by many miles. Flora, though not large trees, floated over from the continent; seeds were carried by migrating birds, many of which settled, some even losing the ability to fly due to the lack of any natural predators.
Reptiles were carried down Ecuadorian rivers on rafts of floating vegetation and many survived the trip of some 900km of open ocean; mammals could not. Birds, including finches and mockingbirds, evolved special characteristics over a million years or so; reptiles over multiple millions. Any mammals found on the islands are descended from those released by passing ships over the past few hundred years.
These, especially rats, feral dogs, pigs and goats, began to exterminate the endemic bird and reptile life which had evolved in genetic isolation on the individual islands over the millennia. The government is now killing off these predators, which threatened to destroy the unique ecosystem.
THE ISLANDS were visited in 1813 by David Porter, captain of the US warship Essex, who later wrote his Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean. It was on reading an old copy I chanced upon that I first came across the extraordinary story of the first permanent resident. Porter describes at length this cantankerous individual, Irishman Patrick Watkins, a deserter, runaway tar or impossible mate, marooned on Charles Island in 1807. Mr Watkins was partial, if not addicted, to rum.
To replenish stocks he grew potatoes and pumpkins on a rare piece of watered land he discovered far in from the coast. He exchanged fresh vegetables for rum with passing sailors desperate for fresh supplies. Apparently he presented quite a sight, with a mass of unkempt red hair, sunburned skin and ragged, tattered clothes. In a spirit of enterprise he would occasionally lure sailors away from their ships and hold them prisoner in the depths of the rugged island until, in desperation, their ship eventually sailed, whereupon they became his slaves.
After a few years eking out an existence on the island, he decided to try his luck further afield. He stole the longboat of a passing whaler and set off for Ecuador with five slaves. What exactly happened during the trip is not recorded, but the slaves were either thrown overboard when water ran out or, it was even suggested, helped satiate his hunger on the lengthy voyage. At any rate, he arrived solo at Guayaquil in Ecuador. Here the enterprising Irishman attempted to further broaden his horizons.
As Porter noted, he "wound himself into the affections of a tawny maiden, and prevailed on her to accompany him back to his enchanted island, the beauties of which he painted in glowing colours; but from his savage appearance, he was considered by the local police as a suspicious person, and being found under the keel of a small vessel then ready to be launched, and suspicious of his improper intentions, was confined in Payto goal where he now remains. . ."
Captain Porter's story was latter taken up by Herman Melville in his series "Piazza Tales", wherein he wove and enhanced the adventures of Watkins as the "Hermit Oberlus", under the title The Encantadas.
The informal postal barrel tradition is practised to this day. Indeed, some kindly and anonymous maritime Samaritan even picked up a couple of cards left there last October and delivered them to Dublin last April - which just confirms one's belief in the basic goodness of humanity.