Ushuaia 1
Day 4 - Friday 13th January
Stupidly early, our alarm woke us from a restless sleep and we assembled downstairs in the lobby of our hotel to meet some of our other cruise explorers and to get ferried to the airport.
In spite of the best endeavours of some who found simple instructions like ‘get on bus 5’ difficult to understand, we did all make it the airport where the domestic lounge was brimming with tourists waiting expectantly to head to the world’s most southerly airport. Hurtigtruten, the organising company for the Antarctic cruise that we had chosen, clearly had expected their group of new recruits to be more stupid than we actually were and had allowed way too much pre departure time and as a consequence we had nearly three hours to wait for our flight.
We thought that we were already a long way south of home in Buenos Aires, but a three hour flight to Ushuaia on the Tierra del Fuego showed this to be big misconception!
The landing on the precarious island strip of Malvinas Argentinas airport was made more exciting by the turbulent air above the tail of the Andes mountain range and the first glimpse of our home fro the next three weeks: the MS Ronald Amundsen. Buses picked us up again to the confusion of the less well mentally equipped who were astonished at being expected to learn another number and we were transferred the short distance to the dock that edges the small town.
On the way in, we passed a sign proclaiming that we had reached the bottom of the world. Clearly, geographically inaccurate but, as was evident from a first glance, entirely accurate as a description of the town’s appearance and character. If the place was only 10% as good as the stunning surroundings in which it sits, it would be at least twice as nice a place to spend some time but as it is, and unless you are keen to buy the same walking socks from a hundred different shops, the place a shambolic collection of I’ll formed shacks. It reminded me a bit of Newhaven which if you’ve not been to, don’t.
More waiting ensued before we could board our vessel so after lunch, which was expensive compared to Buenos Aires, we walked along the sea path in the glorious summer sunshine and admired the backdrop.
Ara General Belgrano Cruise
We recognize the historical value of the Ara General Belgrano cruise ship and its crew, which on April 24, 1982 touched the mainland for the last time. They set sail from the port of YPF, in our city, where they restocked, unaware that it would be the last place where they would land before being sunk.
On May 2, said cruiser, at the service of the Navy, received a torpedo attack from the HMS Colqueror submarine, outside the 200-mile-radius military exclusion area established by the United Kingdom. the attack sank the ship, leaving 323 crew members dead and numerous injured who arrived in our city on May 5 to receive medical assistance
At the end of the promenade sits the southernmost naval port of South America (accurate) and a plaque commemorating the last sailing of the ARA General Belgrano. This plaque dated 2017, together with name of the airport given after its construction in 1995, lead me to ponder The Falkland Islands more and to want to understand better what happened and why. The following summary was garnered from internet research and mostly from the excellent ‘The Rest Is History’ podcasts which, if you haven’t listened to, do.
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You say Las Malvinas I say the Falklands, let’s call the whole thing off
Described by Denis Thatcher as ‘miles and miles of bugger all’, the nondescript islands lie some 500 miles off the nearest coast of Argentina and 8000 miles from their sovereign nation Great Britain. There was no indigenous race of man that inhabited the islands when they were first discovered by the English navigator John Davies in 1592 and indeed, no human inhabitants at all until the French created a settlement in 1764. Following this time, the islands swapped hands regularly between the French, British and Spanish and finally by the newly independent country of Argentina in 1816 who claimed sovereignty over all of the lands that the Spanish had been extracted from.
In 1831, the US warship Lexington destroyed Argentine settlement on East Falkland in reprisal for arrest of three US ships that had been seal hunting in the area. Then, in 1833, the British ousted the few remaining Argentine officials without firing a shot and shortly after a colony of some 1800 souls was established.
Periodically since these times, Argentina has challenged the sovereignty of the islands and in 1964, the issue was considered by the UN committee of decolonisation with an inconclusive result. And here is the nub of the matter. Should the islands belong to the Country that gained them by separating themselves from the colonial power of Spain or to the empire of Britain whose citizens had enjoyed occupation for over a hundred years? Would allowing the Argentinians to have sovereignty of the islands effectively create a new colony that was something the UN committee were set up to remove? Tricky. Too tricky for the UN who ended up saying ‘tell you what guys, just sort it out between yourselves’. Not a totally unreasonable response perhaps seeing as how the two countries were Cold War allies.
So what went wrong? Well, that’s complicated but it appears clear that the British government had no real desire to keep the islands that were expensive to maintain and offered no real value in return but torn by the base requirement of needing to look after all of its citizens. They were prepared to do a kind of sale and lease back deal with the Argentinians whereby a Hong Kong style arrangement would exist. The problem was that when the inept envoy Nicholas Ridley is sent to try to sell the deal to the Falklanders, he is dispatched from Port Stanley with hail of eggs and abuse. The islanders saw themselves as British and that, as far as they were concerned, was that!
Meanwhile in Argentina, the sufferance under the brutal regime of the Junta was becoming harder and harder to maintain with a growing unrest from the populous. The key figure in the leading triumvirate was Leopoldo Galtieri who was better known for attaching electrodes to the testicles of left wing poets and throwing argumentative women out of moving aeroplanes than having any naval or military nouse. Keen to find something to rally opinion, he considered taking on the countries’ arch enemy and neighbour Chile over some boundary lines in Tierra del Fuego but realised that this might be a bit of an uphill task. No, much easier was to reclaim some islands that otherwise would be celebrating 150 years of occupation in the following year. This option became particularly appealing when he had news of the proposed depletion of the British navy in the form of the ageing ice patrol ship HMS Endurance that was stationed in the area. This, when combined with the other woes of Britain at the time ( Pound devalued, EMF bail out, IRA bombing campaign, trouble with unions, riots on the streets and the most unpopular pm ever ), made him think that they simply wouldn’t give a shit and would never consider any resistance. So a plan was hatched for an invasion that was planned for autumn 1982 when the weather alone would prevent any naval task force being sent.
The war
Maybe if the original planned date had been stuck to the ultimate outcome of the pending war would be different but, in a bizarre twist, an incident in South Georgia in February 1982 set matters on a different course. A scrap metal deal had been in place but Argentina wanted more and sent troops to force the position. The mission would probably have passed without too much note had it not been for the fact that the troops behaved very badly on the island daubing walls with anti British graffiti, getting drunk and barbecuing one of the protected reindeer in a public square! News got back to London, there is uproar in the House of Commons and statements of protest were duly issued.
The Junta panicked! They fear that if they wait until the autumn then there will be British battleships about to keep the peace so they send their navy straight off to war.
News of the invasion reaches Rex Hunt, the Governor of the Falklands, the night before so being British, he sends messages out to shut schools and shops etc and then pops off to bed with his loaded shot gun beside him to make sure he is ready for the Argies! Then, on the 2nd April 1982, the arrival of the Argentine marines at Port Stanley was broadcast live from Port Stanley radio station to anyone that might be listening and the clearly outnumbered small garrison of marines laid down their weapons in surrender.
What would Britain do? Should Margaret Thatcher endeavour to stand up for the remote citizens of her Queen’s realm or role over and accept humiliation? Perhaps driven by the weakness of her position but more likely by the confidence of First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach who when asked by Thatcher why she should go said ‘because if we don’t in a few months, we will be living in a totally different world where Britain’s word counts for nothing’, her iron resolve was set and a task force was sent.
Air craft carriers Hermes and Invincible are saved from the scrap yard and are combined in a Dunkirk style ensemble of vessels including requisitioned passenger ferries loaded with young troops who for a long time felt that the whole thing was a bit of a joke and would be all over long before their four week voyage was complete. indeed, as the fleet made its way to an unlikely rescue, attempts are made to reach a peace deal with Galtieri that were still likely to have resulted in Argentina gaining sovereignty of the islands but no agreement could be reached.
Even before the fleet had left the English Channel its mere existence took the Junta by complete surprise. They simply had not considered the concept that the British would actually do anything to protect the islands and, not having done any real political prep work, found themselves isolated in World opinion. Previous allies quickly fell away; France stopped supplying arms to them and also supplied the British with spec details of everything that had been supplied to date, Chile rubbed their hands together in glee and Pinochet jumped to the side of the British and most importantly, the US abandoned financial support and later helped the British decipher Argentinian battle commands.
Success for the British came first with the re-establishment of control of South Georgia achieved with the use of helicopters. Two crashed before a third successfully landed and Thatcher was spurred on.
As the British fleet got closer to the islands the controversy of the sinking of the Belgrano unfolded. A 200 mile exclusion zone around the islands had been set by the British within which, they said, any Argentina vessel would be attacked. Specifically though this did not exclude vessels outside from being attacked as well. What it did mean is that permission was required from the PM to attack. The Belgrano and another cruiser were tracking the two HMS aircraft carriers because they knew that if they succeeded in disabling these then they would win the sea battle. The two ships were north and south of the British fleet and moved in a zigzagging route to maintain a small target but there was no doubt of their intent. (After the war had finished, it came out that, with the help of the US, the Argentinian coding had been cracked and radio messages commanding the Belgrano to attack had been intercepted.) Submarine HMS Conquerer spotted the Belgrano and the call to London was made and within 20 minute, the confirmation to attack was given. Was this the right thing? Would the alternative of saying no and giving the Argentine battleship a chance to attack the aircraft carriers later been better? Hours later, two torpedoes struck the ageing vessel and it quickly sank. 223 sailors perished and suddenly the rhetoric on the war changed and everything was serious. The British press, lead by the Sun newspaper, published jingoistic headlines to stir the nation: ‘Stick it up your Junta’ and ‘Gotcha’. Elsewhere though, the world press started to paint a different storey where the NATO bullies were attacking the plucky underdogs.
Various conspiracy theories and suggestions of war crimes that have come out in the forty years since the war have been dismissed by non other that the Argentine admiralty who along with Héctor Elías Bonzo, the captain of the Belgrano itself, accepted the event as an act of war.
The Argentine navy were in retreat but the war continued and both HMS Sheffield 4th May is hit by Exocet missiles and later sunk. Attempts at peace continued and on 5th May the Peru deal is accepted by the Tory government, which would mean that both the British and Argentines would retreat and the UN would get to decide on the sovereignty of the of the islands which would in turn probably mean that Argentina would be granted what they wanted. The British fleet is still two weeks away from Port Stanley. However, Galtieri says no! The offer was sent again on 16th May with a two day deadline and when no response is received, the D Day style amphibious landing commenced. Whilst the overall casualties are not high by the sad standards of warfare, the battle is intimately gruesome in nature and not what either side were well prepared for. The repellent details of disrespect for opposition soldiers came out to the shame of the British and somehow these seemed worse than wars before because of the decade when it occurred. Surely everything was more civilised now?
With a naval supply line cut and the airport trashed on Monday 14th June the Argentine forces in Stanley surrender after three days of intense fighting for the capital and the short war is over.
The aftermath and did it really matter
Clearly it was cataclysmic to the 904 servicemen that died in the 74 day campaign and for their families but on the world stage, whilst regarded as a trifling scirmish, it was seen by all as a landmark event in establishing the future of each of the participating countries.
Britain is jubilant and Thatcher’s government was saved. Even the political and media left are in full support of her effective Churchillian determination. If there was any doubt about the Conservatives’ chances of winning the 1983 election, there weren’t any more. With National pride swelled, Britain’s sense of self worth and independence was set, some argue, to carry it through to the resolution to leave the EU some 33 years later.
In Argentina, Galtieri is removed from his seat within days and early in 1983, he is charged with human rights crimes but not prosecuted. A few years later, he is charged with incompetence over the handling of the war and how I’ll prepared the Junta were to defend the islands once captured. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison but, due to I’ll health, did not serve this. The Junta, having expended so much energy and focus on the capture of Las Malvinas, is utterly discredited and their decline to oblivion accelerated to an early end in 1983 and civilian rule was restored.
Inevitably though, the Argentine national pride was dented and to this day the sense of loss and resentment still exists although, like the people of Britain struggling to understand how the Brexit vote went the way that it did, perhaps the historic reasons for wanting sovereignty over some remote islands that their nation has never really populated are no longer clear.
At 19:00 hours with hours of daylight remaining, our ship pulls away from dock and the sea leg of our adventure begins.