SAMUEL TIQUETS starts again at RIO Tinto
by Chris Chaplow
..... continued from Liebert Wolters; the bachelor from Stockholm
Tiquets resolutely began all over again, raising capital for a new company and recruiting old and new miners. One such new recruit was a young tailor from Valencia called Francisco Thomas Saenz, who became his right-hand man.
Most copper was still made from the immersion process. However, a leap in production occurred in 1750 when some problems of smelting ores were solved. A new furnace called El Chorrito was built at a site called Los Planes which could successfully smelt excavated ores and refine the crude copper produced in an old furnace known as the Horno Romano. Even the produce of El Chorrito was still a crude cobre negro (black copper) sold to the government for the Sevilla artillery foundry, and mint for coin making. Due to its impurities, it needed refining again on arrival.
By 1758 the mine was on its way to becoming economically viable, with 14 men in primitive conditions producing 25 tons a year. Samuel Tiquets died on 11 September 1758, and he "bachelor of Stockholm" left his friend Saenz all his personal effects (furniture, domestic silver they used, clothes, valued at 500 reales - €8) in the mine house they shared. He left half his shares in the mine to his mother, or sisters if not alive; and the other half to the wife of the mines' Sevilla agent and merchant. He nominated Saenz as administrator for 20 reales a day.
to be Continued ....... Francisco Sanz the tailor from Valencia, 1758
Thanks to Martin Murphy,a descendent of Joseph Gage, who undertook detailed research and published accounts of their lives in the Montgomeryshire Collections and the book "The Duchess of Rio Tinto - The story of Mary Herbert and Joseph Cage"
Thanks to David Avery and RTZ for their 1974 book Not on Queen Victoria's Birthday, which is the definitive history of the Rio Tinto Mines. Thanks to William Giles Nash for his 1910 book The Rio Tinto Mine: Its History And Romance,from which much of this information was sourced.
Buy your copy of Not on Queen Victoria's Birthday
Not on Queen Victoria's Birthday: Story of the Rio Tinto Mines by David Avery
The story of Rio Tinto Zinc is in no small part the story of Britian imperialism. In the last hundred years of the British Empire, Rio Tinto grew massively, as its miners and engineers discovered lucrative mineral deposits throughout the empire. An interesting look at a little-covered aspect. But one that provided the raw materials for much of Britain's needs. Albeit at often exploitive cost to the native peoples around the mines.
What might be a little suprising is how Rio Tinto survived the implosion of the empire, and the rise of newly independent nations, several of which wanted their mining rights returned. But Rio Tinto had the technology and skilled personnel that helped it navigate decolonisation. As well as access to the markets of the developed nations.
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