Scorpion scandal

The Scorpion scandal (1809) was a smuggling, criminal and political scandal that caused the downfall of the Spanish Royal Governor of Chile, and hastened the Independence movement in that country.

During the entire colonial period, Spain maintained a very strict monopoly on international commerce with its American Empire. In 1808, the British whaling ship Scorpion, under the command of Captain Tristan Bunker, arrived at the Chilean coast with the stated purpose of whaling. The real purpose of the trip was to smuggle into the colony a very valuable consignment of British cloth that the ship was carrying in its hull. To this purpose, Captain Bunker contacted Henry Faulkner, an American medical doctor then living in the city of Quillota.

The Scorpion was just one of many ships trading contraband English fabrics on the Pacific coast. In 1807 the British Government, at the urging of the parliamentarian William Jacob, had modified the monopoly of the South Sea Company so that vessels were permitted to enter the Pacific Ocean via Cape Horn. This incentive had been created as part of Britain's goal of challenging Spain's dominance of Central and South America. The short but failed invasion of the Rio de Plata in 1806-1807 had encouraged this approach.

Captain Bunker, though commanding a British merchant sailing ship, was a North American, born and raised on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. Many Nantucket whaling families had relocated to Britain in the 1790s at the urging of the English government and William Rotch to establish a whale oil industry. Pacific Ocean whaling was then known as the Southern Fishery.

Faulkner and Bunker reached an agreement, and the captain was to deliver the goods at the Topocalma Hacienda that was owned by one José Fuenzalida. The agreed price was 80,000 pesos of the time, a small fortune. Don Francisco Antonio de la Carrera, Royal Delegate of Colchagua, with jurisdiction over Topocalma, got wind of the scheme and decided to intervene.

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