The first human resident of the Galapagos Islands on record was Patrick Watkins, an Irish castaway. According to Captain David Porter’s journal, a United States Navy officer who served in the archipelago during the Anglo-American war of 1812, the man’s appearance was the most dreadful that can be imagined. His ragged clothes were infested with vermin and scarcely sufficient to cover his nakedness; his red hair and beard matted, his skin much burned from constant exposure to the sun; and so wild and savage was his manner and appearance that he struck everyone with horror. He had no apparent desires aside from getting enough rum to keep himself intoxicated. Mostly he was found in a state of perfect insensibility, rolling around the rocks of the mountains.

After several years on Charles Island [now known as Floreana], where he supported his thirst by growing and selling vegetables to visiting ships, Watkins got some sailors extremely drunk and kidnapped them. He then stole a boat and embarked with these men. The boat arrived in Guayaquil on the coast of Ecuador with only Patrick Watkins on board; nobody knows what happened to his slaves. Watkins was thrown in jail in Peru and nothing more was heard of him.

During the 19th century there were various attempts to colonize the Galapagos Islands, none of them very successful. The General Jose Villamil tried to develop an enterprise to cultivate and export “orchilla” for the manufacture of dyes, for which he brought the first colonists to Charles Island. These were a group of eighty Ecuadorian soldiers who had been condemned to death for mutiny, but reprieved on condition they worked for the general. The islands were also used as a dumping ground for political exiles, common criminals and prostitutes deported from Guayaquil.

At the same time, the islands were regularly visited by whaling boats, naval ships and scientific expeditions. In 1825, Captain Lord Byron of the British Royal Navy, son of the poet, anchored off Albemarle Island. He wrote in his diary, “The place is like a new creation; the birds and beasts do not get out of our way; the pelicans and sea-lions look in our faces as if we had no right to intrude on their solitude; the small birds are so tame that they hop upon our feet; and all this amidst volcanoes which are burning round us on either hand. Altogether it is as wild and desolate scene as imagination can picture.”

|Article contributed by Dominic Hamilton|||

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