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The barque Layton loading at Ichaboe, August 1845

(c. 1845 Britain)

Martyn Gregory Gallery

This painting is a remarkable record of a dramatic but short-lived episode in the history of maritime trade - the 'guano rush' of 1843-5.
The tiny island of Ichaboe (pronounced Itchaboo), off the coast of south-west Africa, is about 500 metres long and 150 wide; yet it is said to be more thickly covered with birds than any other island on earth. The place was first described by the New York sea-captain Benjamin Morrell, who came here in search of seals in 1828; in his Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Sea... (New York, 1832) he noted in passing that the surface of Ichaboe was 'covered with birds' manure to a depth of twenty-five feet'. Yet his observation escaped notice for some years.
In the 1830s the great value of guano as a fertiliser became clear to British merchants, who began to import it from Peru. In 1843, when Britain was suffering the worst shipping depression of the century, the Liverpool mariner Andrew Livingstone found a copy of Morrell's book, and sent three ships to Ichaboe with sealed orders. The location of the island could not long be kept secret, however, and the result was a rush to hack the 'white gold' from Ichaboe - which became a tumult of seals, penguins, gannets and diggers inflamed by guano mania. An Irish deserter named Ryan declared the island a republic, and officers who attempted to land were pelted with dead penguins. In May 1844 marines arrived to restore order, and in 1861 the island was annexed by H.M.S.Furious, on behalf of Queen Victoria.
Shelter was minimal, scurvy was rife, and fights were frequent. One prospector wrote home from 'the father of all dunghills... so barren, so desolate, so sandy! without a soul, or a bush, or a stream near, where it never rains... with a beastly smelling bottle sort of mess, looking like bad snuff mixed with rotten kittens'. Yet the frenzy gathered momentum, with American vessels and East Indiamen joining the pursuit; in December 1844, 460 ships lay at anchor off Ichaboe. By the following summer the island had been effectively scraped clean of guano.
Although short-lived, the guano boom had revitalised the British shipping industry. About 300,000 tons had reached Britain, achieving an average price of £7 a ton, and more was sent to fertlise the sugar plantations in the West Indies. Handsome profits had been made: it had been possible to pay for a vessel with the proceeds from a single round trip to Ichaboe. After 1845 the guano trade continued elsewhere, but never in such dramatic fashion. On Ichaboe itself, a system of protecting the birds was initiated, so that deposits of guano could be laid down and gathered by entrepreneurs largely from the Cape.