Falkland Islands Philatelic Bureau

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

150th Anniversary of California Gold Rush
and the barque 'Vicar of Bray'

Issue Date: 3 November 1999

Improbable though it may sound, the California Gold Rush of 1849 contributed significantly to the establishment and prosperity of the town of Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, the isolated and windswept archipelago situated in the South Atlantic about 300 miles northeast of Cape Horn.

Established as the capital of this British colony, only a few years previously in 1843, Stanley might have never been established or remained no more than a collection of small wooden buildings and a barracks, had it not been for its geographical location. Until the opening of the Panama Canal, the Falkland Islands occupied a strategic position in relation to the passage of ships from the East Coast of the Americas to the West, a fact no doubt not lost upon the guardians of the british Empire, the Royal Navy.

Taking advantage of Stanley's virtual monopoly as a port of refuge for sailing ships which had taken a beating rounding - or perhaps failing to round - the dreaded Cape Horn, local companies involved in ship repair, provisioning and outfitting were able to charge extortionate rates and the town prospered accordingly. So excessive were the charges imposed, we are told, that often it made sense to owners or masters to sell off damaged vessels for next to nothing for use as storage hulks of jetty heads.

Building materials being in short supply in a essentially treeless country, timbers from many a tall ship, 'condemned in Stanley' found their way into some of the houses which were built in Stanley around this time.

When gold was discovered in California, the amount of this valuable 'passing trade' increased dramatically. In 1848 only eight ships from the East Coast of the United States had visited the sleepy village of San Fransisco, one year later nearly 800 vessels cleared East Coast ports bound for the gold fields, virtually all of them via Cape Horn. The few unlucky or improvident members of this mightly fleet, which put into Stanley created a boom time for the economy of the fledgling port.

Such were the pickings to be had from this bonanza that it is reported that when a ship called into Stanley offering free passage to the Australian gold fields, some time later, no takers could be found. Many of Stanley's larger houses date from this time of plenty and were built for shipwrights as well as for merchants.

This business of provisioning and ship repair which the population of the Falklands had got into almost by accident, lasted only until the opening of the Panama Canal, but by that time in any case, the commercial focus of the Islands had become agriculture. While a ship does appear on the Islands crest, it is the huge sheep above it - the symbol of the Islands' long-term dependency on wool production - which dominates.

Only since the mid nineteen eighties' has the focus of attention switched back to the sea with the introduction of a fisheries protection zone around the Islands. It is on the revenues obtained from the sale of fishing licences that much of the Falklands current wealth depends.

The Vicar of Bray

There is another, even more amazing link between the Falkland Islands and the Californian Gold Rush, which is at Goose Green, just an hour and a half from Stanley along a gravel road is the last resting place of The Vicar of Bray, the sole survivor of the 1849 flotilla which converged on San Fransisco, crammed with fortune seekers. Counting vessels from countries other than the United States, this fleet amounted in all to more than a thousand ships.

Now just a partly submerged hull, but once an integral part of the jetty which preserves it from the worst of the wind and tide, the Vicar of Bray made its 1849 trip from the west coast of South America, carrying a cargo of mercury, an important ingredient in the processing of gold.

We know from the ships articles which survive in the archives of the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen in Wales that The Vicar of Bray arrived in San Fransisco on November 3rd. The same source informs us that by November 6th, the crew had deserted to a man and headed off to the "diggins" in the hills.

The Captain, Charles Duggan, remained with his ship and before Christmas 1849 advertised for a charter in the Alta California newspaper. There were no takers, however, though his ship, unlike many of the '49ers was relatively new and classified "A1 at Lloyds". Whe he did finally depart, Captain Duggan had to pay the new hands 'Gold Rush Wages' of $80 per month, though his own monthly pay was only $50 dollars.

Saved by Captain Duggan's determination from the common fate of becoming land-fill ij the bay for an expanding San Fransisco, the Vicar of Bray sailed on for many years. In 1870, 133 days out of Swansea, and bound around the Horn to Valparaiso with a cargo of coal, she put into Stanley, damaged, but survived to sail again.

The records show that ownership of the Vicar of Bray passed to the Falkland Islands Company in 1873 and she appears to have been refitted and used in trade between London and the Islands. A small entry in Lloyds' Register in 1880 marks the end of her active life with the ominous, but oft repeated words, "hulked in Stanley".

A collier, boxy, unglamorous, throughly practical, and of the same generic type as Captain Cook's more famous Endeavour, the 281 tonne bark The Vicar of Bray, only 121ft 5ins long and 24ft 5ins wide, was launched in Whitehaven, Cumberland, in the North-west of England on April 22, 1841. In 1979 the USA National Park Service described her as "one of the most important artifacts" of America.

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