Britain & Spain Nearly Fought over Australia

Intriguing!
"Spain planned to attack Britain's colony in Australia and force them from the land by using cannons filled with fire-spreading 'hot shot', newly uncovered documents reveal.
According naval archives the Spanish planned to lay siege on Sydney from the Spanish colonies in South America with a fleet of 100 boats.
The invasion was intended to prevent the southern colony from being used by the British to cause 'great harm' to Spain's colonial interests in the Philippines and in central and southern America.
King Carlos IV approved plans for the Spanish navy to launch a 100-ship attack and to fire new fire-speading ammunintion in their fight to expel Britain from their colony in Australia, new archival documents reveal
Spain wanted to 'take the fight to the British in the Pacific', and according to the documents, they feared Britain could attack them using the 'castaway bandits' it was sending there.
The Spanish documents reveal that King Carlos IV approved the plot after a Spanish expedition arrived in Sydney in 1793. The British established a settlement there in 1788.
Chris Maxworthy of the Australian Association for Maritime History said the Spanish intended to use heated ammunition that could set fire to ships and buildings on impact.
'The goal was the complete surrender by the British and their expulsion from the Australian land mass ... The effect [of the hot shot] would be to not only impact the targets ashore but also create multiple fires in the wooden buildings of that era in Sydney, particularly if the plans occurred during the hot summer months,' he told The Australian Financial Review.
The Dutch and the French had coveted territory in the southern Pacific but abandoned their plans after concluding the land was unsuitable, but the Spanish were not deterred.
Spanish naval commander Alessandro Malaspina reported back to his Government in the 1790s that Britain planned to use Australia for commercial reasons and to discover resources, rather than simply as a place to send their convicts.
And he warned that Britain could use their colony as a base to launch an attack on Spain using an army of 'castaway bandits'.
According to the historical documents, the deputy commander of the Spanish expedition, Jose de Bustamante y Guerra, proposed an invasion to King Carlos IV who approved it.
He was then sent to Uruguay to start building the attack ships. But they never set sail.
Mr Maxworthy said: 'As the military and naval commander, Bustamante was tasked to both defend South America from an anticipated British invasion, and to take the fight to the British in the Pacific.'
If Spain had managed to seize the colony, historians say, Britain would have quickly recovered it."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2928603/Spain-planned-invade-Britain-s-colony-Australia-1700s-100-vessel-armada-historian-uncovers.html#ixzz3Q4llKTnZ

 

I knew that the Spanish had interest in Australia, I just didn't know that they wanted it this much.

 

Too bad, so sad...

Castaway Bandits indeed...!

 

Malaspina was promoted to fleet-brigadier in March 1795.

In his examination of the political situation in the Spanish colonies Malaspina had decided that Spain should free its colonies and form a confederation of states bound by international trade. In September 1795 he began trying to influence the Spanish government with such proposals. Unfortunately Malaspina had lost the support he used to have at the royal court before his voyage and the political situation had changed radically, due in part to the French Revolution. He formed part of a conspiracy to overthrow Prime Minister Godoy, so Malaspina arrested on November 23 on charges of plotting against the state. After an inconclusive trial on April 20, 1796, Charles IV decreed that Malaspina be stripped of rank and imprisoned in the isolated fortress of San Antón in La Coruña, Galicia (Spain). Malaspina remained in the prison from 1796 to 1802. Francesco Melzi d'Eril and Napoleon campaigned for Malaspina's release. He was finally freed at the end of 1802 but was exiled from Spain.Because of his political conflict with Spain, his seven-volume account of the 1789–94 expeditions was suppressed and remained unpublished until the late 19th century. A large portion of the documents meant to be used as source material for the publication of Malaspina's expedition remained scattered in archives to the present day.


While recognizing the strategic threat Australia posed to Spain's Pacific possessions in time of war, Malaspina wrote:

“It is not the concern of these paragraphs to demonstrate in detail the many schemes for these projected plunderings, so much as the easiest ways of preventing them”.

He preferred the peaceable approach of drawing attention to the commercial opportunity the new colony offered for a trade in food and livestock from Chile and the development of a viable trade route linking that country with the Philippines. Having seen carts and even ploughs being drawn by convicts for want of draught animals in the colony, and having eaten meals with the colonists at which beef and mutton were regarded as rare luxuries, Malaspina saw the trade in Chilean livestock as the key to a profitable commerce. He proposed that an agreement be signed with London for an Association of Traders, and for an agent of the colony to be resident in Chile. Conscious that the policy he was proposing was a bold and imaginative one in the face of Spain's traditional insistence on a national monopoly of trade and other relations within her empire, Malaspina declared that "this affair is exceedingly favourable to the commercial balance of our Colonies", and it would have the advantage of calming and tranquilizing "a lively, turbulent and even insolent neighbour....not with sacrifices on our part but rather with many and very considerable profits"


After returning to Spain in 1794 Bustamante continued to work with Malaspina until the latter was imprisoned on charges of plotting against the state. Bustamante remained free of the political troubles of Malaspina.

Bustamante was promoted to navy brigadier shortly after his 1794 return to Spain. In 1796 he was appointed political and military governor of Paraguay and Commander-General of Río de la Plata (Governor of Montevideo). On October 5, 1804, while sailing to Spain in command of four frigates Bustamante was attacked and captured by a British squadron, in "the Action of 5th October 1804".

Under the terms of a secret convention Spain had to pay 72 million francs annually to France, until it declared war on Britain. The British had learned of the treaty, and knew it was likely that Spain would declare war soon after the arrival of the treasure ships. Since the British also knew that by law the fleet could only land at Cádiz, as well as its place and approximate time of departure from South America, it was not difficult to position a squadron to intercept it.

 

See how a quirk of fate can go!

Spain takes Australia, America Takes Spain's colonies in the Spanish American war!

All you Digger's could have become simulated American's!

'course it really would have screwed up the flag

 

Yes.

See how well it went for Hawaii...

 

Buenos Dias, Mate!

 

My eyes hurt...

 

Think that's a rather fetching flag, actually...

 

If the day had a "y" in it, we were usually fighting someone.

 

Hornblower (the TV series) captures this nicely...

 

but how much of a plan was it ?
You have plans and plans. One is a plan, signed and partly prepared, the other only an assessment/simulation plan, a if-necessary-then-do-this plan.
Were there battle ships concentrated in Chile nearing the 100 vessels in 1790 ? or did the plan immediately end in a drawer in Chili ?

Where (naval archives ? madrid ? chili?) did he find it ?

 

Doesn't say where the papers were actually found, and both links are subscription-only.