Spanish subjects, stranded soldiers and a Mayo admiral

Before 1806 there was no Irish community in the Río de la Plata, only Irish-born and Irish-descended subjects of the Spanish crown. The link came later, through prisoners of war, a sea captain from Mayo and a merchant from Wicklow.

Subjects of the Spanish crown

The historian Patrick McKenna argues that Irish defeats in 1601 and the 1640s sent the Gaelic elite and their soldiers to Catholic Spain, and that these Irish reached Spanish America in subordinate positions under the Spanish flag, so the records never counted them as a group. Irish names appear in numbers, he says, only after the viceroyalty was created in 1776.

Two families stand out. Patrick Lynch, born in 1715, settled in Buenos Aires in 1749, according to the emigration museum EPIC, and Che Guevara's father descended from him. Dr Michael O'Gorman of Ennis, Co. Clare, sailed for Buenos Aires in 1777 under a royal order, and an Argentine medical-history editorial credits him with helping to create the Protomedicato around 1780.

Enemy uniforms, 1806 and 1807

The British invasions brought the first Irish in numbers, as invaders. Mercedes Giuffré's archive study finds that the largest unit in 1806 was the 71st Highlanders, whose first battalion had sailed from Cork, and that both Sir Denis Pack and Beresford were Irish-born members of the Ascendancy. After the 1806 defeat the prisoners were sent inland to Córdoba, Mendoza, Tucumán and San Juan.

A documented minority stayed. In Córdoba twelve prisoners petitioned to remain as Spanish subjects, saying they feared losing their faith outside Catholic lands; those who stayed swore loyalty to the Spanish king and were baptised if they were not already Catholic. Giuffré names them from parish records: Patrick Island of the 71st, later alcalde of San Antonio de Areco and shot as a unitario in April 1841; John Ross of Dublin, a mason buried in 1863 in the Copacabana church he helped build; James Cannon, recorded in San Juan as "Diego Cano". Deserters later served in the independence armies under Spanish forms of their names, Gelly for Kelly, Reyles for Reilly, Buteler for Butler.

One famous story should not travel. A genealogical newsletter drawing on Thomas Murray's 1919 popular history says the 88th Regiment was sent in without flints and about 800 men died. A National Army Museum summary records instead that the battalion surrendered in the street fighting of July 1807. This site treats the 800 figure as a myth.

The admiral from Foxford

The Argentine Navy's official biography gives William Brown's birth as Foxford, Co. Mayo, on 22 June 1777, into a Catholic family; his father took him to the United States, where he was orphaned and went to sea as a cabin boy. His Irish biographer John de Courcy Ireland disagrees: Brown was related to the Westport Brownes, Admiral Lord Howe placed him as a Royal Navy midshipman, and the poor-peasant story is highly unlikely. The navy has him in Buenos Aires in April 1810; de Courcy Ireland says 1811.

In March 1814 the Directorio made Brown squadron commander. The navy records a failed attack on Martín García island on 11 March and its capture on 15 March; Mayo County Library places the capture on St Patrick's Day, so this site says only "in March 1814". On 17 May 1814 he won the naval battle off Montevideo, the date Argentina keeps as Navy Day. He commanded the fleet in the war with Brazil from January 1826 until the naval war ended in August 1828, and de Courcy Ireland says he became governor of Buenos Aires that December. He died on 3 March 1857, when Mitre said he had been worth a whole fleet to Argentina.

O'Brien and Campbell

John Thomond O'Brien was born in 1786 in Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, by most sources, though an older text gives Mallow. He came to Buenos Aires in 1812 as a merchant, joined San Martín's Mounted Grenadiers in 1816 and became his aide-de-camp at Chacabuco and Maipú. In 1826 he went home to recruit Irish immigrants and met John Mooney, whose emigration began the chain from the Westmeath and Longford border. Rosas imprisoned him; he died in Lisbon in 1861, and in January 2017 his remains moved from Recoleta to Mendoza.

Peter Campbell, born in Ireland in 1780, was a tanner who deserted in Buenos Aires, joined Artigas and commanded his river squadron; de Courcy Ireland calls him the founder of Uruguay's small navy.