Author: Joel Griffett
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15482264
While famous for inventing high-pressure steam engines and for the first ever locomotive journey at Merthyr Tydfil in 1804, Cornish inventor Richard Trevithick also spent over a decade in Latin America between 1816 and 1827, a period that remains thoroughly understudied. It could be argued that with the running of the first steam engine at the silver mines of Cerro de Pasco in July 1816, the industrial revolution arrived in the New World. Trevithick arrived at Callao in February 1817, over two years after the initial shipment of the machinery was dispatched. He had travelled aboard the whaler Asp. Two of the three Cornish technicians sent with the machinery were dead and only one engine was in full working order. The following month he finally arrived at Cerro de Pasco and he was heralded by the Viceregal government and the Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima as the saviour of the Peruvian economy. Yet barely two months passed before tensions arose between Trevithick and Francisco Uville, one of the directors of the Pasco Drainage Company, a private venture formed by leading Lima merchants Pedro Abadia and Jose Arismendi in 1812. Ironically, Uville was the man who had brought these engines to Peru after he happened upon a model of Trevithick’s engine in a shop window in London in 1811. With permission from the penultimate Viceroy, Joaquin de la Pezuela, he left Pasco and prospected at Cajatambo and further north in the region of Conchucos, where two of his men were murdered in the night by their guides. In August 1818, Uville died and Trevithick returned with full control of mining operations. With Trevithick back in charge, 1820 was a record year for silver production: 313,000 marks of silver were officially registered, the highest since 1812.
The arrival of Thomas Cochrane and Jose de San Martin, leaders of the revolutionary forces that would rid Peru of Spanish rule, at Pisco in November 1820 seemed destined to ruin Trevithick’s chances of earning a fortune. With the collapse of the Pasco Drainage Company all but complete, Trevithick was at a loose end owing to the company’s Royalist affiliations. Instead of returning home with the majority of the British miners employed at Pasco, he decided to stay in Peru and make himself useful to the new government. He engaged with the Republican government in various schemes, with differing degrees of success. Not long after the Royalists fled Lima, the ship San Martin sunk off the coast of Chorrillos, south of Callao on the 16th July 1821. Trevithick agreed initially to salvage ammunition from the wreck using a diving bell, according to Lieutenant James Liddell of the HMS Aurora, who witnessed his rescue mission. He also refloated one or more of the sixty cannons aboard, building on a similar project in Margate in 1812, where he refloated a sunken ship using hollow iron tanks. If locals accounts are to be believed, they were responsible for the salvage of many tons of bronze and copper, 20ft beneath the surface, without equipment of any kind – verifying this assertion, however, requires further research. According to celebrated Peruvian historian Estuardo Núñez, Trevithick was also contracted by the government to design a monument celebrating independence during 1822, but this scheme came to nothing.
Despite Pasco constantly changing hands in the four years up to 1824, the Patriots were well aware that mining was a good way to raise capital for the destitute government. A previously unseen report written by Trevithick himself, dated 8th November 1822, shines new light on work at Pasco in the war years. As per the report, produced at the behest of San Martin’s government, the last engine broke down in December 1821, a whole year after the Battle of Cerro de Pasco, when official silver mining production ceased until 1825, implying that small-scale production continued as the town changed hands. Furthermore, the engine was not in as much of a ruinous state as previously thought and was repaired early in 1825.
Production at Pasco would not become a feature of the Peruvian economy again until the 1830s, but a ‘special mission’ for Simon Bolivar gave him a chance to leave Peru on his own brig, and it is unlikely he ever saw the country again. It remains unclear how, if at all, the two met and therefore this requires further investigation. It is also unclear when Trevithick left Peru, but in late December 1823, he passed through Guayaquil and a letter addressed to the Vice President of Colombia stated that Trevithick was on his way to Bogota and ‘the mines of the state.’ He never reached Bogota, instead arriving into the Costa Rican port of Puntarenas in early 1824, staying in the country until 1827.
He had heard of newly discovered gold mines in Costa Rica whilst in port at Guayaquil, an opportunity so lucrative he dropped his alleged mission for Bolivar for a new venture in an unknown country without the infrastructure or labour required to efficiently work them for profit. He spent three and a half years in the Aguacate mountains, constantly making requests the governing Junta could not fulfil owing to Costa Rica being but a constituent part of the United Provinces of Central America, such as the granting of citizenship and a seven-year monopoly not only on mining concessions, but pearl fishing rights in the Gulf of Nicoya. He failed to gain any grasp of Spanish and the slow pace of bureaucracy forced Trevithick away from mining. Still, with his own brig, he could now begin to trade various goods from food to tobacco to mercury and most impressively, he secured a contract with the Junta to import 600 rifles from Peru, with the help of US merchant John Thwaites.
None of these schemes left him satisfied; since the country had neither the labour nor the infrastructure necessary for efficient mining, he departed San Jose by land north on the 7th July 1827, his destination being San Juan del Norte (Greytown, Nicaragua). The Governing Junta of Costa Rica had recently offered a reward for anyone who could find a navigable passage to the Caribbean port and while not the first, he and Scotsman John Mair Gerard made it after an expedition lasting three weeks, through the jungle and the rivers Sarapiqui and San Juan.
Almost eleven years to the day he returned to Cornwall and he remained adamant he would return to Costa Rica with the capital needed to work the mines. He put forth a plan requiring some £20,000 in investment but he died in relative obscurity in Dartford, Kent. While not a pauper as previously thought, it was a situation ill-befitting of his contributions to the industrial revolution in both Britain and Peru.
Selected Sources:
Davies D.W., ‘Richard Trevithick in Costa Rica’, Journal of the Trevithick Society 5, 1977, pp. 7-26; Trevithick, F., Life of Richard Trevithick, 2 Vols, London:E. & F.N. Spon 1872; Trevithick, Ricardo. 1822. Tratado acerca del mineral de Pasco con algunas observaciones sobre las medidas que son más a propósito para su adelantamiento. Imprenta Lopez; Fisher, John. “Silver Production in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1776-1824.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 55, no. 1 (1975): 25–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/2512735; Stiglich, German. 1923. Chorrillos: José O. Laya y otros patriotas chorrillanos que actuaron a favor de la independencia del Peru. Lima: Imprenta C.F. Southwell; Sharron P. Schwartz, A ‘Professor’ in Peru: Trevithick and the Transatlantic Migration of the industrial revolution’ paper presented at the Richard Trevithick – Romantic adventurer or Unacknowledged Genius Seminar, 4 July 2022, Kew Bridge Steam Museum London, available at https://www.cousinjacksworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/A-Professor-in-Peru-new.pdf
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15482264
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