Minas de plomo en Cartagena

Jacob Chivers

The industrialist Jacob Chivers was born in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England on 29th May 1825, and like Isaiah White, his family moved to South Wales.  He was only one year older than Isaiah and similarly started work as an engineer but at the other iron works in Maesteg -  the Cambrian Iron and Spelter Works - and so was on very similar career path to Isaiah.  No doubt there were others there from the Forest with the skills required, and they probably they all knew one another.  People like Isaiah and Jacob, particularly as contemporaries, would have had much in common.

It is quite likely that Isaiah and Jacob, and perhaps others, discussed the future extensively and got to hear about the opportunities in Spain from those on ships docking at Porthcawl and visiting the iron works in Maesteg.  It is possible that some of the ships were bringing metals like copper from Spain for processing in Wales and returning with loads of Welsh coal which was cheaper to mine in Wales and transport rather than use expensive local coal.  When the Maesteg iron works closed down in 1848, and Isaiah was out of a job, this could have been the catalyst for him and Jacob, and perhaps others, to make the brave decision to take the five day steamer journey to Cartagena, a fortified sea port in South East Spain. 

The exact year of their arrival in Spain is not known, but it is known that Jacob had already married Elizabeth Bright, and that their daughter Elizabeth was born in Cartagena in 1848.  Jacob settled in Cartagena and became the operator of a lead mine.  It is not known when Isaiah went on to Seville, where he eventually settled, but it is likely he spent some time with Jacob in Cartagena first.  

                                Marrazon lead mining area

 

Jacob’s son William Bright Chivers was also born in Spain on 21st February 1858, but Jacob returned to Wales fairly soon afterwards, having made enough money to buy the Kidwelly Tin Works in South Wales in 1860.  He bought the works for £2,225 with the initial help of his brother Caleb, a chemical manufacturer living in Carmarthen.  As a working partner he took on Thomas Bright, an iron founder at Carmarthen, who retired when Jacob’s son Thomas, born in Maesteg in 1843 before Jacob went to Spain, entered the business.  Jacob was Mayor of Kidwelly in 1872 and 1873.  The business was clearly very successful and Jacob went on the purchase further property and estates and the Hawkwell Colliery in the Forest on 1st January 1874, where he struck a valuable new seam of coal in 1876.  He also went on to establish a tin plate works at Hawkwell. 

Looking back at the time that Isaiah and Jacob arrived in Spain the Spanish Government were seeking to close the gap between its country’s economic development and that of other European countries.  However, they did not really know how to go about it and so took little useful action.  Despite having important mineral resources, there was not the wealth to exploit them. Consequently significant foreign investment was allowed into the country after 1850, but this merely created enclaves of activity that hardly affected the rest of the economy at all.  Spain’s rich mineral resources provided a very suitable source for investment, being second in importance only to the textile industry.  Mining experienced successive booms, the capital being provided from abroad, and most of the resulting ore was exported.  Overall little ore was processed in Spain.  One of the main ores to be exploited was lead and it was here that Jacob took his interest.  Lead mining was well established on a large scale by 1868, but little of the resulting wealth found its way back into the Spanish economy, thus allowing people such as Jacob Chivers to return home as wealthy men with money to invest in British enterprises. 

Thomas Armstrong’s novel of Skewdale (Swaledale in Yorkshire) lead mining - ‘Adam Brunskill’- opens in 1879 with a description of the community in Spain in 1879 in which Adam was born and grows to manhood.  This gives a very clear picture of the involvement of a foreign company and its servants in Spanish lead mining.  “He took the steamer to Spain and then travelled by mule and cart to the mine. The village is in the foothills of mountains that rise to 6,000 or 7,000 feet.  The view from the village is not beautiful—the land is scarred by the crumbling headgear of disused mineshafts. A vast area has been poisoned by fumes from the smelt-mill chimneys, forming a wilderness with sickly herbage that could kill or maim straying livestock.  Nevertheless it is a happy place, and although the older people remember their origins with nostalgia, they are aware of the poverty they left behind (in England).”

“The Company village has at its centre a main thoroughfare, where the Company offices are housed, with a counting house, a bar-room for the British workers where beer is served, and a separate common room for Spaniards where food and wine are available.  The company provides a minister (there is a stone built Wesleyan chapel) and a doctor for their staff.”

“The British community lives in a separate part of the village, with cottages set around a green—where no decent grass could be persuaded to grow—looking for all the world like a Yorkshire village green, but a closer inspection reveals differences of detail.  A roof pitch here, a style of door latch there, a massive squat chimney, all reflecting connections with the various lead mining areas of Britain and the faithfully characteristic cottages where the Yorkshire Dales folk live.”

“British people provide all the company’s managers at this site—the general manager, the head agent and his four assistants, a cashier, clerks, and the skilled men. Their families are with them. Rivalry exists between the different groups of British—a Cornishman, a Yorkshire man.  Adam’s father is dying, probably from lead poisoning, at the age of 50, having worked in Spain for nearly 30 years.  The Wesleyan chapel is full, with men from the lead mines of Durham, Northumberland, the isle of man, Alston Moor in Cumberland, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Wanlockhead in Dumfriesshire, the once famous Leadhills of Lanarkshire, ,from the western dales of Yorkshire.  The Spanish miners are also present, the southerners more demonstrative in their grief than the grave men of the Asturias in the north.  Despite this touching display of community feeling, the funeral tea is given only to those with Skewdale connections. The old links are the strongest.”

“Adam, born in Spain decides to leave to travel to Skewdale, where he knows times are hard and lead mining is in a poor way.  He is given greetings to carry to all manner of friends and relations who live along the Dale, and the Head Agent is surprised that he and his friends have never seen Skewdale but only know it through the conversations of their elders.”

“Adam travels from the mine with the mule teams hauling wagons laden with pigs of lead and bars of silver. The cheapest way home from Seville would be to take passage in a grimy coal ship going to Newcastle carrying part treated ore for reduction, but he chooses to travel to London, then by rail to Yorkshire.”

Armstrong’s fictionalised account bears all the hallmarks of a true picture, and one has no reason to dispute that his view of a Spanish lead mining community is less than faithful.

It is clear that Jacob and Isaiah could easily have fitted into this scenario in Cartagena, perhaps taking jobs initially as clerks for example.  Jacob in due course made his fortune, and Isaiah, now known by his Spanish name Isaias, moved on to Seville?