A
Trinidad and Tobago stamp illustrating Raleigh’s discovery of the Pitch Lake in
1595 Image credit: Mark Morgan
People will tell you all kinds of silly stories about how Sir
Walter invented potatoes and about his tobacco smoking exploits.
But have you ever thought about how journeys today are more
comfortable thanks in part to one of Sir Walter’s lesser known discoveries?
In 1595, during his exploration of the Caribbean island of
Trinidad he found the Pitch Lake, the largest
natural deposit of asphalt in the world. Raleigh found the pitch useful for
caulking his ships. It was, he wrote ‘most
excellent good’, commenting that ‘it melteth not with the sunne as the pitch of
Norway’ and noting that it was ‘for ships trading the
South parts very profitable.’
Painting by an unknown artist of Raleigh discovering the
Pitch Lake
Many years went by before horse-drawn
transport gave way to modern vehicles. By the early years of the twentieth century,
mechanised road transport was becoming commonplace. The newly developed
motorcycles, steam and petrol cars needed a good flat surface on which to run,
and Tarmac Limited came up with the solution.
Originally,
to make
the road surfacing material in a process developed and patented by Edgar
Purnell Hooley in 1902, the company used aggregate mixed with coal tar,
a once
commonly available by-product from the many town gas works that heated coal in
a closed retort. In 1971 Tarmac acquired Limmer and Trinidad, a
London based quarry products firm, high
quality asphalt from Limmer in Germany
and from the Pitch Lake in Trinidad.
Tarmac then became the largest road surfacing contractor and blacktop producer
in UK.
Having tried unsuccessfully to persuade
various crisp manufacturers to sponsor Fairlynch’s Raleigh 400 exhibition I had
hoped that Tarmac might be interested in supporting the Museum. I thought that the
story of Raleigh’s little-known discovery of their prize product would be good
publicity for the company, but my suggestion was not followed up. Ah well, you
can’t win them all.
Described as the 8th Wonder of the World, the
Pitch Lake covers about 40 hectares (99 acres) and is reported to be 75 metres deep, containing 10 million tonnes of asphalt. It’s a major tourist attraction with a small museum,
attracting about 20,000 visitors annually.
Sir Walter Raleigh's raid on the island of Trinidad in 1595. The captured Spanish Governor, Antonio de Berrio, is being escorted. Engraving by Theodore de Bry
Trinidad was simply a
stopping-point for Raleigh on the way to Guiana, now part of modern Venezuela. It
was there that he was hoping to discover gold mines which would make his
fortune and that of his investors, including Queen Elizabeth I. He failed to
find gold, but managed to anger the Spanish by attacking their settlement on
Trinidad and capturing the Governor.
But the dream persisted. Raleigh’s
second voyage to Guiana in 1617 was prompted by the same desire to discover the
fabled City of Gold and its chief, El Dorado, but that too was a failure and
led indirectly to his execution on the orders of King James I.
Some historians believe that Raleigh's greatest accomplishment may have been in creating
good relations between the English and the natives of South America.
Raleigh
was keen to learn about the culture of peoples of the New World, as were
members of his teams like the artist John White and the scientist Thomas Herriot.
During the 1595 expedition to Guiana he had befriended the native chieftain
Topiawari, making known English hostility to Spain. Spanish invaders had
succeeded in alienating large areas of the New World and its tribes. It had
been relatively easy for Raleigh to conclude an alliance with the Topiawari,
although the latter passed away not long after Raleigh's first voyage.
But the
goodwill remained and future English explorers are said to have benefitted from
it.
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