Chilean corvette Abtao | |
History | |
---|---|
Chile | |
Name | Abtao |
Namesake | Battle of Abtao |
Ordered | by the Confederate States Navy |
Builder | Dennis Brothers, Scotland |
Launched | 29 October 1863 |
Commissioned | 1 June 1867 |
Decommissioned | 1922 |
Renamed | ex Texas, Cyclone |
Honours and awards | Naval Campaign of the War of the Pacific |
General characteristics | |
Displacement | 1600 t |
Length | 211 ft 6 in (64.47 m) |
Beam | 12.7 m (42 ft) |
Draft | 8 ft (2.4 m) |
Installed power | 800 ihp (600 kW) |
Speed | 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
Crew | 200 |
Armament | 1 × 5.8" and 4 × 4.7" guns |
The corvette Abtao was a wooden ship built in Scotland during 1864 of 1.600 tons and 800 IHP. [1] She fought in the War of the Pacific and was in service for the Chilean Navy until 1922.
During the Chincha Islands War, the Chilean Government sent her agent in Belgium Manuel Carvallo to British shipyards in search of unsold warships originally laid down for the Confederate States Navy; He found in Glasgow and Greenock, on the River Clyde, the hulls of the 1600-ton commerce-raider Texas (not the ironclad CSS Texas) and the 1200-ton Pampero. In order to conceal the true owner of the ship and to elude the Foreign Enlistment Act, several names were used for the ships. [2] Both ships used the name Pampero but the 1600-ton Texas was also named Cyclone and finally Abtao and the 1200-ton true original Pampero was also named Canton and finally Tornado under Spanish command.
The 1600-ton hull was christened Pampero by a Mrs. Galbraith and launched on 29 October 1863. [2] Through the efforts of the American consul in Glasgow, Warner Underwood, she was placed under a 24-hour scrutiny by British customs officers and as late as January 1865 she was still considered to be Confederate property, and apparently remained so until the end of the American Civil War. She was purchased by Chile for £75,000 through Isaac Campbell & Co.in January or February 1866. [2]
Robert Winthrop Simpson in behalf of the Chilean Government ordered both ships, Pampero and Texas to be manned in Hamburg and later to the Faroe Islands.
Texas arrived at Valparaiso in November 1866 and was rechristened as Abtao after the Naval Battle of Abtao.
But the Pampero (later the Spanish corvette Tornado) should have been in rendezvous with the British filibustering ship steamer Greathem Hall, aiming to interfere against the Spanish trade, as planned by the Chilean Government. But the later was captured by Caledonia and taken into Portland. Pampero waited patiently in the rendezvous point, until the crew were ordered to re-coal and head for the desolate islands of Fernando de Noronha, an old pirate haunt off the Brazilian coast, in order to collect unpaid wages and bonuses offered by the delivery of the vessel. [3]
The Spanish frigate Gerona, brought strict orders from the Spanish government to capture the Chilean (and the Peruvian Independencia and Huáscar) ships. [4] However, the Peruvian vessels made it to Latin American waters but the Chilean Pampero was about to be captured. Gerona sailed from Cadiz in the early morning of the 20th instant, arriving at Madeira, Portugal on the 22nd instant. At 6:15 in the evening; before arriving at the anchoring ground, she discovered a suspicious steamer weighing anchor and apparently getting ready to put to sea, for which reason the Commander of Gerona, Don Benito Escalera, thought fit to proceed towards her to see if he could obtains news, and to be at the same time in readiness to follow in her track, should she turn out to be either of the vessels indicated to him by the Spanish government. [5]
Abtao was commissioned on 1 June 1867, after the Chinchas war, under the command of Capitán de Fragata Enrique Simpson Baeza later was she under command of Galvarino Riveros Cárdenas and 1868 she brought help to Arica after the 1868 Arica earthquake.
Under Capitan de Corbeta Francisco Rondizzoni de la Cotera she made a hydrographic survey of the Chilean coast between Mataquito River and the Tumán Bay.
On 12 February 1873 she was put under the command of Capitán de Corbeta Jorge Montt Alvarez and she sail to the Strait of Magellan to a hydrographic survey as she did up 1876 between the Parallel 23°S and the Caleta del Cobre.
According to Oscar Bermudez Miral, [6] the corvette Abtao set sail under the command of Commander F. Rondizzoni, member of the Northern Atacama Coastal Exploration Committee, tasked with making studies as proposed by Minister Victorio Lastarria. Also aboard the steamship Abtao were the engineers Eugenio Plazolles and Macario Sierralta who were under government orders to do reconnaissance work along the northern Atacama coast. They set sail on 21 October 1876 from Mejillones, arriving the next night at Antofagasta. There, the engineers Sierralta and Plazolles chose the elderly miner Secundino Corvalan, who was familiar with the area, to help them reach the interior of the desert in the area between the 24th parallel and Caleta el Cobre, some 15 or 16 nautical miles south of that parallel.
According to Bermudez, as the corvette Abtao continued further south of Caleta el Cobre, the members of the expedition observed that the mountain range was further and further from the coast and, in its place, a wide plane appeared. In front of the expedition was Caleta de Remiendos and the ravine of the same name. The members of the expedition had located the conditions necessary for the establishment of a port, as well as an overland means of communication with the desert interior.
1877 Abtao could not be sold and was used as transporter until 1878 when she was sold for $18,000.
At the beginning of the War of the Pacific she was bought by the Chilean Government for $25,000 and armed with four 150 lb and four 40 lb guns and set sail for Callao with the Chilean Fleet as planned by Almirante Juan Williams Rebolledo.
On 28 August 1879 she fought off Antofagasta together with Magallanes against Huáscar.
She was involved in almost all Chilean expeditions and landings during the war. In the final stages of the war she was refitted completely.
At the beginning of the 1891 Chilean Civil War she sailed out of Valparaiso harbour and adhered to the cause of the Congress.
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.
Agustín Arturo Prat Chacón was a Chilean Navy officer and lawyer. He was killed in the Battle of Iquique, during the War of the Pacific. During his career, Prat had taken part in several naval engagements, including battles at Papudo (1865), and at the Abtao (1866). Following his death, his name became a rallying cry for Chilean forces, and Arturo Prat has since been considered a national hero.
The Chincha Islands War, also known as Spanish–South American War, was a series of coastal and naval battles between Spain and its former colonies of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia from 1865 to 1879. The conflict began with Spain's seizure of the guano-rich Chincha Islands in one of a series of attempts by Spain, under Isabella II, to reassert its influence over its former South American colonies. The war saw the use of ironclads, including the Spanish ship Numancia, the first ironclad to circumnavigate the world.
The Battle of Abtao was a naval action fought on February 7, 1866, during the Chincha Islands War, between a Spanish squadron and a combined Peruvian-Chilean fleet, at the island of Abtao in the Gulf of Ancud near Chiloé Archipelago in south-central Chile. It was limited to a long-range exchange of fire between the two squadrons, as the allied ships, anchored behind the island, were protected by shallow waters inaccessible to the Spanish ships, whose gunnery, nevertheless, proved more accurate and inflicted damage to the Chilean and Peruvian ships.
The schooner Virgen de Covadonga, was a schooner built in Spain and launched in 1859. During the Spanish-South American War (1863-1866), it was captured by Chilean forces at the end of the Papudo naval action and incorporated into the Chilean Navy. After being assigned to exploration missions, she was later assigned to the Chilean squadron that participated in the Pacific War (1879-1883). In the Battle of Punta Gruesa she defeated the Ironclad Independencia.
Corvette captain is a rank in many European and Latin American navies which theoretically corresponds to command of a corvette. The equivalent rank is lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy and other Commonwealth navies, the United States Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy – a bilingual country which actually uses the term capitaine de corvette (capc) for the rank of lieutenant-commander when written or spoken in French.
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.
Carlos Arnaldo Condell De La Haza was a Chilean naval officer and hero of the Battle of Punta Gruesa during the start of the War of the Pacific.
The Descubierta and Atrevida were twin corvettes of the Spanish Navy, custom-designed as identical special exploration and scientific research vessels. They were built at the same time for the Malaspina Expedition. Under the command of Alejandro Malaspina (Descubierta) and José de Bustamante y Guerra (Atrevida) the two vessels sailed from Spain to the Pacific Ocean, conducting a thorough examination of the internal politics of the American Spanish Empire and the Philippines. They explored the coast of Alaska and worked to reinforce Spain's claim to the Pacific Northwest in the aftermath of the Nootka Crisis. After crossing the Pacific Ocean, the colonial government in the Philippines was examined. Exploration and diplomatic reconnaissance followed, with stops in Qing dynasty-era China, New Zealand, Australia, and Tonga.
Esmeralda was a wooden-hulled steam corvette of the Chilean Navy, launched in 1855, and sunk by the Huáscar on 21 May 1879 at the Battle of Iquique during the War of the Pacific.
Tornado was a bark-rigged screw steam corvette of the Spanish Navy, first launched at Clydebank, Scotland in 1863, as the Confederate raider CSS Texas. She is most famous for having captured the North American filibustering ship Virginius, which led to the "Virginius Affair", which afterwards led to the Spanish-American Crisis of 1873.
The action of 22 August 1866 occurred during the Chincha Islands War near Funchal, on the island of Madeira, and was the final action of the war battle between Spanish and Chilean forces.
In 1864 the Chilean government ordered the construction of two corvettes in Ravenhill, the O'Higgins and the Chacabuco. Both corvettes were seized by the British authorities in order to enforce a neutrality provision in the impending state of war between Chile and Spain. In 1866 the countries reached an agreement in which Chile received the corvettes and Spain the ships Arapiles and Victoria.
José Galvarino Riveros Cárdenas was a Chilean naval officer, Commander of the Chilean Squadron during the War of the Pacific.
BAP Unión was a corvette of the Peruvian Navy, originally ordered by the government of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Built in France it was bought by the Peruvian Navy and during its service participated in the Chincha Islands War and in the War of the Pacific in which it was scuttled following the Blockade of Callao to prevent it falling into Chilean hands.
The Raids of the Huáscar were a series of raids that occurred by the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar under the command of Miguel Grau Seminario during the War of the Pacific. The actions kept the Chilean government in check for nearly five months which ended after the Battle of Angamos.
The Second Battle of Iquique was a naval battle of the War of the Pacific that occurred on July 10, 1879. During the battle, the Huáscar faced the 2nd Chilean Naval Squadron which was blockading the port which lead to both forces to face each other.
The Capture of the steamer Rímac or the Hunt and seizure of the Chilean transport Rímac was a part of the Raids of Huáscar during the Naval campaign of the War of the Pacific. During an expedition over the conflicting seas, the Peruvian Navy ships, Huáscar and Unión, apprehend the Chilean war steamer Rímac, which was an artillery transport, taking all its cargo and capturing its crew, including a squad of the Carabineros de Yungay. In Chile, the news of the capture of the Rímac detonated a political and social crisis that led to the resignation of several government officials, including Rear Admiral Juan Williams Rebolledo, Commander General of the Chilean Navy.
The Second Battle of Antofagasta took place during the Naval campaign of the War of the Pacific between the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar against the Chilean corvettes Abtao and Magallanes as well as the land defenses at Antofagasta.
The Rupture of the Blockade of Arica was a naval battle of the War of the Pacific during the Blockade of Arica. The rupture was carried out by Manuel Villavicencio who commanded the BAP Unión of the Peruvian Navy. The Unión broke the Chilean blockade of the port twice in less than 8 hours on March 17, 1880.