Battle of Carmen de Patagones

In order to fulfill the objective of taking the town, the Imperial Navy sent a division under the command of the English frigate captain James Shepherd. This force consisted of the following vessels:

• The corvette Duqueza de Goyas, commanded by Sheperd.
• The Itaparica corvette, commanded by Guillermo Eyre.
• The Escudeiro brig commanded by Luis Pouthier.
• The schooner Constanza, under the command of Joaquim Marques Lisboa.

The force consisted of slightly more than 600 men, 250 of whom were non-Brazilian.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Since Carmen de Patagones was too far from the main theater of operations, there were not enough troops available to defend the main square. The fort's commander, Martín Lacarra, had a hundred infantrymen, and managed to recruit about 80 men on horseback, mostly gauchos, plus the corsairs and an artillery picket from one of the ships under repair, the Chacabuco. This was later joined by a group of black volunteers and a squad of neighbors. In addition, the inhabitants of Patagones, the majority women, were provided with sticks, hats and militia clothes, trying to simulate a column in the rear.

This "rearguard" occupied visible positions in the fort, pretending that the Argentine forces would resist in that place, without going out to fight. This contributed in a fundamental way to the surprise effect used by the Argentine troops in the battle, since the spies sent by the Imperials reported this situation to their leaders, who were surprised when they wanted to overcome the small Cerro de la Caballada, named after the horse charge with which the Argentines defeated the invaders.

As for the fleet, it was made up of:

• The smack Bella Flor, under the command of Santiago Jorge Bynnon
• The brigantine Oriental Argentino, under the command of the French privateer Pedro Dautant.
• The corsair whalers Hijo de Mayo and Hijo de Julio, commanded by the Englishman James Harris and the Frenchman Francisco Fourmantin, respectively.
• The schooners Emperatriz and Chiquita; these had recently been captured from the Brazilians.

In total, the number of men embarked was approximately 330.[1][2][4][5][6][7]

On the morning of February 28, 1827, the brigantine Escudeiro entered the Rio Negro, waving another flag to deceive the defenders. At the entrance to the estuary there was a 4-gun battery under the command of Colonel Felipe Pereyra, beginning the exchange of fire. After overcoming the defenses in the skirmish, the Escudeiro crossed the entrance, followed by the Itaparica corvette.

On March 3, the Duqueza de Goyas was lost, which had been stranded days before due to the nature of the river and the great draft of the ship. This produced 38 casualties among the invaders.

On March 6, 1827, the Brazilians landed a group of men on the south bank and demanded fresh meat from a Creole scouting group, but the justice of the peace Fernando Alfaro gave orders to deny them support.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Due to the difficulties in navigating the river, the Brazilian commander decided to attack Patagones by land. At dawn there was a general landing of the Brazilian forces, around 350 men, in order to march on the population to take it definitively.

The Brazilian column began the march on the hot night of the 7th, having to do so through sandy terrain covered with thick thorny bushes, which forced the officers to be transported on their soldiers' shoulders. They also had the additional difficulty of not having a competent guide, which led to the column, made up of more than 400 troops, getting lost during the march, moving away from the river and water sources. This fact, added to the suffocating heat and the desert terrain, began to undermine the forces and resistance of the imperial soldiers.

The invading forces arrived at the Cerro de la Caballada at 6:30 a.m., completely exhausted and without having been able to drink water for 24 hours, with the aggravation that the only food they could consume was salty meat.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

The defenders, unaware of the location and intentions of the imperial column, discovered the tracks of the Brazilian advance and began preparations for the defense. On the Cerro de la Caballada, the republican militias led by Second Lieutenant Sebastián Olivera and the gauchos of the baqueano José Luis Molina caught up with them and immediately presented battle. With the first shots the Brazilian commander Shepherd fell dead, who was supplanted by Guillermo Eyre. Soon they were surrounded by guerrillas who proceeded to encircle the Imperials, setting fire to the vegetation, a fact that forced Eyre to order the withdrawal to the ships, without noticing that they were already taken over by the Argentines.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Indeed, the flotilla of corsair ships under the command of Santiago Jorge Bynon opened fire on the Escudeiro, which resisted until the moment when its hard-working captain fell mortally wounded. Taking that ship, the Argentines attacked the schooner Constanza, which had separated from the Escudeiro to join the corvette Itaparica, a ship to which it would not take long to reduce.

This last ship was sunk off the town of Carmen de Patagones. Remains of her hull still remain buried in the bed of the Negro river in that place, and her huge flag was exposed for more than a century and a half, being in recent years on one side of the atrium of the city church. In the 1990s, the Argentine government decided to return that flag belonging to the Itaparica to Brazil, as a sign of goodwill, but the "maragato" people (name of the inhabitants of Carmen de Patagones) strongly opposed, and they are still exhibited. this and another flag captured in that same battle, in the colonial church of the town, in front of the Plaza 7 de Marzo.

Upon confirmation of the surrender of his squad, Eyre finally surrendered to Alfaro, who was chosen along with other men to bring the news of the victory to Buenos Aires.[1][2][3][4][6][7]