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For more than 10 years at the start of the 1800s, Cornwall's most famous inventor Richard Trevithick wandered South America bringing his engineering genius to the continent. After failing to find fame and fortune in London, the inventor of the high pressure steam engine was persuaded to bring steam power to the silver mines of Peru. Silver was first thought found in Peru in the Andes by a lucky shepherd around 1630. Prospectors and miners flooded to the area dubbed 'Discovadora'. This spawned the mining town of Cerro de Pasco, a badly built hellhole high in the mountains, perpetually swept by snow and wind at 14,200 ft. A Swiss called Uville came to England, the world centre of steam development, to find engines to mine the rich seam. But Boulton and Watt broke his heart, telling him their low pressure engines could never work in the rarified atmosphere of the Andes. U ville was all set to sail for home when he found a model steam engine in a curio shop in London. The model was one of Trevithick's and led Uville to Cornwall, where he persuaded the Cornish Giant to begin work on the required engines. Getting the huge engines up into the Andes was a huge task, and getting them to work there was equally difficult. But all this was achieved only for the Peruvians to revolt against their Spanish masters, who had taken all the silver for themselves, and plunge South America into chaos. Trevithick tried to work through the wars but the Cerro de Pasco mines were attacked and machinery destroyed by both Spanish and rebel armies. So he moved South, establishing copper mines in Chile at Valparaiso, Copiopo and Coquimbo. He then moved on to Bolivia, and on to Costa Rica as a gold miner and pearl fisher. Trevithick's influence is still felt across South America. Many Cornishmen followed him there to work the mines, setting up Cornish enclaves where you can still get a pasty today. Other Cornish miners took routes Trevithick hadn't, to Mexico, for example, where Cornish engine houses dot the landscape around places like Pachuca, where the community reverently maintain the Cornish graveyard to this day. Cornish World reader Terry Dudley's grandfather was born in Real-del-Monte in Mexico and to this day Terry buys football kit for the local kids, to commemorate the fact that the first ever Mexican football team was formed by Cornish miners. |