Ireland’s William Brown and the Battle of Martín García Island
Declan McGarvey tells the extraordinary story of how the orphan from Foxford in Co. Mayo came to found the Argentinian navy and become its first admiral.
For a small island, Isla Martín García was fought over with remarkable frequency in the 19th century. Its enduring advantage, or eternal weakness – it depended on which side of the cannon fire one stood – was to be the gateway to South America for ships sailing the South Atlantic Ocean.
This great strategic value rested on a quirk of geography. As seen on a 19th century map the island’s location was at the tip of South America. There it rested on the River Plate, the widest river in the world at its mouth, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.