JOEL GRIFFETT

Pre-order ‘Long Road to Nowhere: The Lost Years of Richard Trevithick (Part One)’ now, HERE.

Anywhere in the world you come across a mine, the chances are someone British was at one time bankrolling it and someone Cornish was down there with a lovely bit of crib in his lunchbox. In the mid-19^th century at least 170,000 Cornishmen and women left Cornwall for pastures new, ending up all over the world: South Africa, Australia, America, South America, Mexico.

While Cornwall’s status as England’s first colony remains valid, Cornish and British history are inextricably linked when it comes to mining and therefore these hardworking Cornishmen get the worst of both worlds. Their future stolen by Westminster yet they are guilty of participating in the British plunder of minerals all over the world

The Trevithick Trail is where I begin my travels in the footsteps of these 19^th century Cornish folk. Ironically, given my preface, Richard Trevithick was not a miner; he was an engineer, an innovator and perhaps even a mystic with ideas his generation simply couldn’t fathom. He designed the machines, tinkering away night and day with better results than those with years of study and theoretical applications behind them. The illustrious ‘Cap’n Dick’ and his high pressure steam engines were at one point the pinnacle of innovation. No idea why. Initially I endeavoured to understand how these engines work but eventually I realised I didn’t give a shit; it’s not important to The Trevithick Trail and all those who congregate in Camborne every year at Trevithick Day with a love for steam and it’s intricacies couldn’t convince me otherwise.

The Trevithick Trail is a name and an idea I coined myself. In reality, the Trevithick Trail was a collection of spontaneous movements done by an erratic man. Worse still, it is woefully undocumented and what information already exists out there is sparse. Sometimes he would be in two places at once, other times he would disappear off the face of the earth for a year or two and reappear again somewhere else entirely. He was certainly an erratic man so such a journey would be in keeping with his spirit but the biggest problem, from a historian’s perspective, is that most of what we know about his 11 year stint across South America came from the man himself. I will explain in a moment why in one sense this is incredibly problematic but first some context – I’ve jumped the gun a bit here.

The Blurb

When by chance a man from the Peruvian Mining Company happened upon one of Richard Trevithick’s steam engines in London he shipped it back to Cerro de Pasco, Peru. When they needed repairing only one man was good for the job, so Trevithick left Penzance for Lima on the 20^th October 1816 and he wasn’t meant to be gone for much more than a year.

What began a short and simple venture to maintain his machines quickly became one man’s search for his own personal El Dorado: one fortune to beat them all. He concocted hairbrained schemes and lost huge sums of money through sheer belligerence, dodgy investments and often simply bad timing as war broke out across South America. From Peru to Chile, up the pacific coast to Ecuador and Costa Rica and finally leaving from Cartagena, Colombia a short trip became the journey of a lifetime.

Almost 11 years to the day, he returned without word and acted as if he had been gone only a night. Those 11 years broke Trevithick. He returned home a stowaway; penniless and destitute with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. He hadn’t sent a single letter or a single pound home to his wife and children during that time but upon his return his son Francis was delighted. He was obsessed with his father’s disappearance and tried to leave Cornwall in search of him.  

Father dazzled son with tales of gold, silver, deception, corruption, war, revolution, dices with death, pearl fishing, jungle expeditions, white water rafting and huge sums of money that slipped through his fingers in the blink of an eye. 50 years later Francis wrote his father’s biography and these stories were immortalised into the first and most comprehensive account of Richard Trevithick’s life.

There’s only one problem…they might not be true.

Of course there’s only one way to find out. 5 countries, over 8000km travelled and a whole  host of stories, rumours and myths surrounding Richard Trevithick and his trail. VAMOS!