After both torpedoes from Almirante Condell had missed, Blanco Encalada was hit by a torpedo from Almirante Lynch and sank in minutes, with the loss of 182 men. The loss of Blanco Encalada hindered the Congressional forces, but they ultimately defeated the Balmacedist forces that August. Blanco Encalada was the first ironclad warship lost to a self-propelled torpedo. The engagement prompted countries to rapidly grow both their torpedo boat and torpedo boat destroyer forces (the latter commonly referred to as destroyers).
Background
In 1891, after a series of struggles about multinationalnitrate interests, Chilean President José Manuel Balmaceda refused to sign the national budget passed by the Chilean National Congress. Balmaceda then dissolved Congress.[2] The dissolution split both the Chilean Army and Navy, with some forces remaining loyal to Congress and others to the President. An armed conflict ensued after a mutiny by the navy, which at that time was docked at Valparaíso.[3]
Supporters of those forces loyal to Congress, including members of the dissolved parliament and their backers among multinational nitrate interests, bought weaponry from Europe and the United States. Better equipped than the forces loyal to the President, they rapidly captured Chile's northern provinces, which had recently been conquered from Bolivia and Peru during the War of the Pacific.[4]
Since the Congressionalists controlled all of the current ships in the Chilean Navy, the Balmacedists commandeered vessels that were nearing completion in England and France, including the torpedo boats Almirante Condell and Almirante Lynch.[5] They were built by Laird Brothers, the same firm that built the Confederate raider Alabama thirty years before.[3] Both Almirante Lynch and Almirante Condell carried an armament of five Whitehead torpedoes, two 14-pound (6.4kg) guns in echelon on the forecastle and one on the poop, four 3-pound (1.4kg) guns and two machine guns. Their maximum speed was around 21 knots (39km/h).[3]
The two ships arrived at Valparaíso on 21 March. Both ships docked at Quintero Bay on 18 April. While at Quintero, their commanding officers, Commander Carlos E. Moraga of Almirante Condell and Commander Juan Fuentes of Almirante Lynch, were informed of the possibility that Blanco Encalada, a Congressionalist frigate, was going to be in Caldera Bay in five days. The two commanders consulted with one another and sent their proposal to attack Blanco Encalada to the Balmacedist government, which was approved.[3]
Blanco Encalada arrived at Caldera Bay on 22 April, under the command of Captain Goñi, escorting several transports. The troops on these ships landed and captured the surrounding railroad and town of Copiapó.[3] At about 01:20, Goñi returned to Blanco Encalada. Although it was known that Balmacedist torpedo boats were nearby, the Congressionalists believed that they would not attack the transports.[3] Because of this, torpedo nets were left onshore, and watertight bulkheads which would have isolated a hull breach were left open. [1]
Battle
Blanco Encalada in 1879Patricio Lynch torpedo gunboat
At 04:00 on 23 April, Almirante Condell set out toward Caldera Bay about 450 miles (720km)[6] away, with Almirante Lynch20 yards (18m) behind her.[6] The armed steamer Imperial traveled with the torpedo boats, taking up a position to the left of both boats. It was to wait some distance off Caldera, in order to escort the ships back home when the attack ended. Both torpedo boats entered Caldera at roughly 3:30.[6] When they were 500 yards (460m) from Blanco Encalada, both boats came under fire by rapid-fire guns on board the frigate, which only had seven men stationed as guards.[7] About 100 yards (91m) from Blanco Encalada, Almirante Condell fired her bow torpedo at the Congressional frigate. It missed and landed on the shore, unexploded.[8] Moraga then turned the torpedo boat into the direct fire of the frigate and fired both his starboard torpedoes. The front torpedo hit, but failed to explode, and the rear torpedo passed clear under the frigate.[3]
As all of Blanco Encalada's guns were occupied by Almirante Condell, the crew did not notice Almirante Lynch approaching from the opposite direction of Almirante Condell.[3] From 50 yards (46m) out, Almirante Lynch fired her bow torpedo, which missed, and then fired her forward starboard torpedo after executing a turning maneuver like Almirante Condell had done. The second torpedo struck Blanco Encalada, creating a hole roughly 7 by 15 feet (2.1 by 4.6m).[3] The ship sank within minutes, taking 182 men with it. Several of the men who escaped, including Captain Goñi, did so by clinging to animals in Blanco Encalada's cargo hold, including a llama and a cow.[1]
As she was sinking, the torpedo boats fired their 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns at the survivors, killing about forty.[9] The torpedo boats also fired at the transport Biobio, which had been trying to rescue the surviving crew.[9] Including Captain Goñi, 106 men survived out of the 288 aboard.[6]The entire engagement lasted nine minutes, and Blanco Encalada sank two minutes after the torpedo hit.[6] As Almirante Lynch and Almirante Condell left the harbor, they spotted the transport Aconcagua, which they attacked with their 14-pounder guns (after ruling out their Gatling guns due to their potential for overkill).[10][11]Aconcagua surrendered after an hour and a half battle, but the torpedo ships were unable to seize her due to an approaching ship which they thought was the Chilean cruiserEsmeralda. It turned out to be the neutralHMSWarspite.[12]Almirante Lynch was slightly damaged in the battle, suffering hits to her steam-pipe and flooding in her aft compartment, but besides that, the two torpedo boats were undamaged.[13]
Aftermath and impact on torpedo use
The sinking of Blanco Encalada led to an attack by Almirante Condell and Almirante Lynch on her sister ship, Almirante Cochrane, at that time moored at Iquique.[14]Almirante Cochrane retreated before any torpedoes were fired.[15] On 28 August, the Balmacedist army was defeated at the Battle of La Placilla. Their army lost about 1,000 men, and three days later Congressional forces marched into Santiago, effectively ending the Chilean Civil War.[16]Blanco Encalada underwent some re-floating attempts after the war, which were ultimately unsuccessful, and she was left in Caldera Bay until being demolished in 1954 when a new bridge was under construction.[1] The Chilean government launched another Blanco Encalada, a cruiser, in 1894.[17]
The battle had a wider impact on naval weapons development because Blanco Encalada was the first ironclad warship sunk by a self-propelled torpedo.[18] News of the attack spread and as a result of the action, navies of several major powers realized the potential of torpedoes as a cheap counter to expensive pre-dreadnoughts,[19] which led to the acceleration of submarine and torpedo boat production, the addition of torpedo nets to ships for use when they were moored in port, and the addition of torpedo tubes to surface ships. During the Russo-Japanese War, over 300 self-propelled torpedoes were fired, in one instance finishing off the already seriously damaged Russian flagshipKnyaz Suvorov at the Battle of Tsushima.[20] Torpedo boats also sank two armored cruisers and two destroyers during the course of the war.[21] By the start of World War I, torpedo boats and submarines were in widespread use in many navies.
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish Navy as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War.
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes.
The Chilean Civil War of 1891 was a civil war in Chile fought between forces supporting Congress and forces supporting the President, José Manuel Balmaceda from 16 January 1891 to 18 September 1891. The war saw a confrontation between the Chilean Army and the Chilean Navy, which sided with the president and the congress, respectively. This conflict ended with the defeat of the Chilean Army and the presidential forces and President Balmaceda committing suicide as a consequence. In Chilean historiography the war marks the end of the Liberal Republic and the beginning of the Parliamentary Era.
The Battle of Angamos was a naval encounter of the War of the Pacific fought between the navies of Chile and Perú at Punta Angamos, on 8 October 1879. The battle was the culminating point of a naval campaign that lasted about five months in which the Chilean Navy had the sole mission of eliminating its Peruvian counterpart. In the struggle, two armored frigates, led by Commodore Galvarino Riveros Cárdenas and Navy Captain Juan José Latorre battered and later captured the Peruvian monitor Huáscar, under Rear Admiral Miguel Grau Seminario.
The Karel Doorman-class frigates are a series of eight multi-purpose vessels built for the Royal Netherlands Navy. Its namesake is Karel Doorman, a Dutch naval officer whose ship was struck by a Japanese torpedo in the battle of the Java Sea in 1942, and who, as a result of which, went down with his ship.
In late 19th-century naval terminology, torpedo gunboats were a form of gunboat armed with torpedoes and designed for hunting and destroying smaller torpedo boats. By the end of the 1890s torpedo gunboats were superseded by their more successful contemporaries, the torpedo boat destroyers.
The Faulknor class were a class of flotilla leaders that were under construction in the United Kingdom for the Chilean Navy at the outbreak of World War I. Six ships were ordered by Chile, of which the first two were delivered to Chile before the outbreak of the war. The remaining four ships were purchased by the British, taken over and completed for the Royal Navy for wartime service. In common with Royal Navy convention, they were named after famous Royal Navy captains of the past, in this case the members of the Faulknor family.
Several ships of the Chilean Navy have been named Almirante Condell after Admiral Carlos Condell (1846–1912), hero of the Battle of Punta Gruesa during the War of the Pacific:
Several ships of the Chilean Navy have been named Blanco Encalada after Manuel Blanco Encalada (1790–1876), a Vice Admiral and Chile's first President
Chilean frigate Almirante Condell (PFG-06) was a Condell-class frigate of the Chilean Navy, and was the third ship in the Chilean Navy to bear this name.
Almirante Cochrane was a central battery ship of the Chilean Navy in the late nineteenth century. She was built, like her twin, Blanco Encalada, in the UK in 1875. She participated in the War of the Pacific, with her most prominent action being her victory over the Peruvian turret ram Huáscar in the Angamos naval battle. Almirante Cochrane was part of the forces that defeated President José Manuel Balmaceda in the Chilean Civil War of 1891.
HMS Broke was a Faulknor-class destroyer leader of the Royal Navy, initially built for the Chilean Navy as the Almirante Lynch-class destroyer Almirante Goñi. The outbreak of the First World War led to her being purchased by the Admiralty in August 1914 shortly after her launching, and renamed HMS Broke. All of the class were present at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May to 1 June 1916 where Broke, out of control after hits from German ships, collided with the Acasta-class destroyerHMS Sparrowhawk leading to the latter's loss. Broke saw action in several battles, and was resold to Chile after the conclusion of the war.
Blanco Encalada was a central battery ship built by Earle's Shipbuilding Co. in England for the Chilean Navy in 1875. She was nicknamed El Blanco. She participated actively in the War of the Pacific, her most important action being the capture of the Peruvian monitor Huáscar during the Battle of Angamos.
The torpedo gunboat Almirante Lynch and her sister ship Almirante Condell, were purchased in England and launched in 1890.
A torpedo cruiser is a type of warship that is armed primarily with torpedoes. The major navies began building torpedo cruisers shortly after the invention of the locomotive Whitehead torpedo in the 1860s. The development of the torpedo gave rise to the Jeune École doctrine, which held that small warships armed with torpedoes could effectively and cheaply defeat much larger battleships. Torpedo cruisers fell out of favor in most of the great power navies in the 1890s, though many other navies continued to acquire them into the early 1900s.
Agustín Manuel Hipólito Orella Macaya, known simply as Manuel Hipólito Orella, was a Chilean naval officer who made a career in the Chilean Navy. He was one of the first Chilean midshipmen who entered the nascent navy in 1818. He joined the First Chilean Navy Squadron and participated in the naval war for the independence of Chile and Peru. He also spent time in the Chilean Army in the infantry branch. Furthermore, he held several important positions in the navy until his death in 1857.
Almirante Simpson was a unique design of torpedo gunboat, built by the British shipyard Laird Brothers. Acquired by the Chilean Navy in 1895, during construction. The ship had a brief service in Chile, being transferred to the Ecuadorian Navy in 1907 and renamed Libertador Bolívar. She was the first Ecuadorian warship of the 20th century and had an important participation in the Ecuadorian Civil War of 1913–1916. After the war, the ship was retired and then sank in 1928.
The Pilcomayo was originally a Peruvian gunboat involved in several actions during the War of the Pacific. Captured by the Chilean navy on November 18, 1879, it was repaired and participated in the blockade of the Peruvian ports. After the war it was used for hydrographic research, then as a training ship. In service until 1909, it was finally used as a pontoon at Talcahuano.
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Balmaceda Government 
