The gringo revolutionary
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/features/tm_objectid...
Dec 6 2005
Rin Simpson, Western Mail
Caryl ap Rhys Pryce was a Welshman who could have changed history...but didn't. Rin Simpson found out why John Humphries thinks that despite this, the
man is still worth writing a book about
JOHN Humphries believes that every life should be an adventure. As a journalist, an editor, a writer of historical non-fiction - and simply as a man,
ever interested in the world around him - he has travelled the four corners of the globe, and even though he retired some years ago, he shows no sign
of slowing.
It was while he was travelling that he came across another Welshman whose adventures captivated his journalistic instinct and natural curiosity -
Caryl ap Rhys Pryce, the Gringo Revolutionary.
Caryl was in his mid-thirties when he left his fianc e in Canada, sailed to Mexico and led an army of mercenaries across the Sonoran Desert to capture
the town of Tijuana in 1911. Rumour has it he was an agent of the British Empire, whose interest in the area at the time was considerable, but could
it be that Caryl, like Humphries, was simply a man drawn by the alluring call of adventure?
Caryl's story first came to Humphries's attention through a chance encounter with the owner of a ranch in Arizona, where Humphries and his wife were
staying while visiting the last refuge of General Geronimo, Chiricahua.
"He was a real red neck - (the kind who thought) the only good Indian was still a dead one and all Mexicans were useless," Humphries, a former editor
of the Western Mail, remembered. When the ranch owner found out where his guests had travelled from, it stirred his memory.
"He said 'We had a Welsh guy around here a while back - he caused a lot of trouble round the border'."
It was a casual comment and Humphries thought little more of it. He continued on his trip, eventually reaching Ensenada where he met an American
tourist and, on his recommendation, the two visited Husongs , the oldest cantina in the Californias. Eventually the subject of the "Welshman who
caused trouble" came up again and, as it happened, the American had some more information.
"He went out to his van and got his travel book and sure enough, there was just one line about him - this man who had caused trouble "a few years
ago'," said Humphries. "It wasn't a few years ago, it was 100 years ago."
Most people wouldn't have bothered following up what amounted to little more than a passing reference, but Humphries's journalistic instinct told him
there was a story here.
"Because I'm a journalist I tend to be more inclined to follow up ideas that intrigue me or things I come across that intrigue me," said Humphries.
"You have got to be fascinated, you have got to ask why, why, why? That's the most important question in life, not how."
When he got back to the UK he started making inquiries and gradually a picture of Caryl ap Rhys Pryce began to grow.
While looking for possible connections with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, Humphries stumbled upon Meurig ap Rhys Price, Caryl's nephew. Miraculously he
was still alive, albeit 92 years old, and pointed Humphries in the direction of Caryl's first series of adventures in the South African police force.
"He was reluctant to talk about the Mexican episode. He described him as a scallywag," said Humphries. "In fact, I almost called the book General
Scallywag but the publishers weren't too keen. But he did send me what he had which unlocked the South Africa bit for me - where he served and so on."
It was five years from the time Humphries first got wind of Caryl's story to the day the book was complete. During that time Humphries and his wife
returned to Mexico twice, and had many more adventures while on the trail of Pryce's story.
One trip followed the road on which Caryl took his army across the desert and up through the Picacho Pass.
"There are very high mountains in this area - very rigid mountains, hugely eroded, a gun metal colour washed clear of vegetation and soil and
everything, and jammed between two ridges you've got this lake called Laguna Salada, which is a salt lake," Humphries said.
"We came to a fork - one road seemed to go up into the mountains and the other seemed to be going close to the lake, so we went that way. Suddenly my
wife, who spoke a bit of Spanish, shouted 'danger, danger'.
"We had gone past this sign saying quicksand. We just managed to stop in time and with much difficulty backed out."
Another journey included a trip to find a group of Indians whose native tongue was reputed to have links with the Welsh language.
"I had heard about a lost tribe of Indians called the Seri Indians who had lived on an island called Tiburon in the Gulf of California and apparently
they still survived on a small reservation," he explained. "So we took a light aircraft and we flew down, hired a car and decided to drive out looking
for these Indians. We took a wrong turn, went 20 miles into the mountains and came across this huge reservoir. It was like an inland sea.
"And suddenly there was a lorry-load of armed Mexicans descended on us. We discovered that there had been an alert that drug smugglers were coming in
to land on the reservoir with this huge consignment of drugs."
Luckily Humphries looks nothing like a Mexican drug smuggler and he and his wife were allowed to continue on their search.
"I finally found this old woman - she must have been about 90, with a face like a walnut - sitting on a stone. She wanted $50 to say anything," said
Humphries. "So I said OK, got my tape recorder out, gave her $50 ... and she uttered one word. To this day I can't understand what it was."
Humphries's travels make him a fascinating storyteller, but there were many times when it seemed his quest was destined not to succeed.
"I went so far and at one stage it looked like I wasn't making much progress with Caryl ap Rhys Pryce," Humphries admitted. "At one point we had been
down in Australia looking around the convict trail and again we stumbled upon the story of John Rees.
Another trail had been uncovered and Humphries spent two years researching and writing the story of Chartist leaders Rees and Zephaniah Williams which
became his first book, The Man from the Alamo.
Still, Humphries never gave up on Caryl - it was just too intriguing.
"Here you have a man who was all his life a policeman. He went out to Africa to join the South African police, he then signed up with the Natal
police," Humphries counted off on his fingers.
"He then went back into the South African constabulary, he applied while out there for a job as a chief constable in Britain, then he pops up in
Mexico running an uprising. And not just any uprising but a Marxist anarchist uprising!
"This same guy was born in India, the son of the Raj. What's he doing in Mexico running an anarchist revolution?"
It was questions like this that make Gringo Revolutionary such a captivating read, even to a non-historian. Because the fact that these events
happened a hundred years ago are almost secondary to the people, the real life characters like Caryl, who lived them.
"He's the kind of person you would love to spend an evening with, he would have been a great drinking companion at the cantina in Ensenada," Humphries
laughed.
"He had a totally restless life. Life to him was an adventure. I would very much like to have met him. Although I've met some of his surviving
relatives and they find it difficult to comprehend how he got involved in this revolution other than that he was a scallywag. He was the black sheep
of the family.
"In some senses I suppose he died the way he had lived. For 10 years he lived in a hotel in c-ckermouth and he died there friendless, a loner, but
still doing what he wanted to do which was fishing, shooting and outdoor sports."
For Humphries it was what could have been, that made Caryl's story such a poignant one, the fact that if he had just done things slightly differently
he could have changed history.
"If Caryl had stuck with the revolution rather than abandoning it, today a large part of Mexico might have been part of America or even of the United
Kingdom," he said. "History is full of people like this, who don't get mentioned in history books, they pass away virtually unnoticed because in a
sense they failed. They didn't change the face of history, they failed to do so because they took the wrong turning at a certain moment."
"His life was filled with more adventure than most men would have in 1,000 years," said Humphries. "I would have loved to share a margarita with him.
Or two."
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