From the archives: Admiral Brown was born in Castlebar - not Foxford!
By Tom Gillespie
ADMIRAL William Brown, founder of the Argentine Navy, was not born in Foxford - but Castlebar!
That’s according to an article published in The Connaught Telegraph on Saturday, September 20, 1913.
It read: It is rather remarkable that very few Castlebar people are aware that there was born in its vicinity the very remarkable man who founded the Argentine Navy.
Foxford claims the honour of being his birthplace, but there is authentic proof that he was born at Rahins, a short distance from Castlebar, and we have pleasure in presenting our readers the following sketch of his life:
At Rahins, near Castlebar, the founder and first admiral of the Argentine Navy and the naval hero of the War for Latin American Independence, William Brown, was born in 1777. He spoke nothing but Irish until he left home for the United States in his ninth year with his father.
Soon after landing in Philadelphia he lost his father, and was thrown an orphan upon the world. He was taken on board a ship by an American skipper and became a cabin boy.
For 20 years he saw many lands and many hardships. He was made prisoner during the Napoleonic wars, he was sent to Metz, escaped, was half starved in the woods of Ardennes, staggered across the Rhine into Germany, and fell into the hands of the Grand Duchess of Wurtemburg, who gave him the means of going back to sea.
He had worked his way from forecastle to quarterdeck, and now sailed southward by the Spanish Main as commander of his own ship, which a bungling pilot ran aground near Buenos Ayres. Saved the cargo, hawked it through the provinces and sold it, crossed the Andes into Chile, bought a schooner in one other of the Pacific ports, came back to the River Plata and established a market service between Montevideo and Buenos Ayres.
He was two years here when the revolution gave him a chance.
In 1814 the government asked him to fit out a squadron to fight the Spanish Navy, then in complete mastery of the sea on both coasts of the continent.
Brown crossed the broad estuary of the Plate with three old whalers armed as warships, attacked a Spanish squadron composed of nine vessels, defeated it, and then went down stream to Montevideo, having been reinforced by two or three other leaking ‘old tubs’, which the government of Buenos Ayres had picked up in the meantime and went to strengthen the fighting line.
The Spanish fleet of the south Atlantic consisting of 13 warships was under the batteries of Montevideo. Brown drew them out, and on the high sea captured or sank every ship and came back to seal the fate of Montevideo, the last stronghold of the Spanish on the Atlantic seaboard.
The Irish Admiral was the hero of the hour. His deeds were chronicled with great wonder and admiration. Brown, meanwhile, was busy preparing for a raid around the Horn and up the Pacific coast to destroy the Spanish fleet in those waters.
He bombarded Callao, captured several Spanish ships in Peruvian waters and attacked the fortified fort of Guayaquil almost single-handed. His ship went aground in a falling tide and was boarded by a regiment of Spanish infantry. He sat over the powder magazine, torch in hand, and ordered them ashore.
Brown made terms with them and sailed back around Cape Horn, found a Spanish fleet in the River Plate, beat out to sea in a half-crippled condition, put his guns in the hod when the British, refusing to recognise the Argentine flag, then new on the sea, regarded him as a pirate and ‘treated him in such a way’, says his biography, ‘that to the end of his days he would sooner hear the evil unspoken of that the English. He could not say much to them in Spanish, a tongue which he never spoke fluently, nor even in Bearla; but in Irish he often eased his mind about them and it is said that the suave and elegant leaders in the revolution, with the manners of Spanish hidalgos, from whom most of them were descended, lifted their eyebrows mildly at the torrential flow of Gaelic lava which rolled out of the Castlebar man’s lips when he was getting rid of some of the things that were on his mind’.
Trouble with Uruguay sent Brown on board again 10 or 12 years later, and it was during this war that he administered a memorable whipping to Garibaldi, who was fighting against the Argentine Republic.
Garibaldi sailed up the Parna with a squadron, to the relief of Corrientes. Brown followed him and overtook him at Costa Brava. Garibaldi fortified himself by drawing his ships together close against the shore and placing all his guns on the side facing his opponent.
Brown sailed close in and gave his enemy such a pounding that Garibaldi resolved to abandon his ships which he tried to blow up.
Brown boarded the beaten enemy, cut the fuses, towed off the prizes and took prisoners all of the crew that had not been killed.
As for Garibaldi, he crept over the side into a boat down stream, and out of South American history in a most humble and unobtrusive manner, date 1842. In due course he went to Europe and donned the bloody shirt, but never forgot Brown and Costa Brava.
The end of the war brought to a close Brown’s career on the sea. He retired to his country house in the suburbs of Buenos Ayres, and after that made only one more appearance in public life.
He was summonsed once to take up the reins of government and be the Argentina chief magistrate in a great national crisis. He obeyed the call and held the post until the crisis passed, when he cheerfully resigned it and went back to his gardening.
For 40 years he kept the Argentina flag flying on the main. It was he who first carried it through history on the waves.
He destroyed the Spanish power in South American waters, thereby saving the revolution in a series of daring and splendid victories, which in their own way leave the deeds of Nelson and others in the shade.
He contributed to the consolidation of the Republic, and may be regarded as one of its saviours. He had been welcomed back in triumph by the people of Buenos Ayres from repeated victories. He had been made the recipient of the highest honours in the gift of the nation. He died in 1857, honoured by a grateful country.