I first saw this image as a black and white illustration in The Encyclopedia of Sea Warfare, the first book on naval history I ever owned and the one that started my enduring fascination with the subject. Aspects of the painting are so well rendered that at the time I naively believed the book’s black and white image to be a photograph. This painting and another shown below illustrate two key naval engagements in the so-called ‘War of the Pacific’ involving Chile, Bolivia and Peru. The flags of the first and last of these nations are clearly shown in the colour print. Immediately obvious in the picture above are the ships’ very different designs. The Chilean Esmeralda is a heavy-masted wooden broadside corvette; the Peruvian Huáscar, a turreted ironclad. The Chilean vessel is down at the bows, yet her crew remain defiant at the stern, apparently intent on boarding their opponent. The Huáscar is portrayed side-on to the Esmeralda, evidently about to ram her adversary. This painting depicts the Battle of Iquique on 21st May 1879. Although the Peruvian navy would win this encounter, it would lose another the same day; one that would ultimately cost the nation and her Bolivian ally the entire war.
Until the 1870s, Peru and Chile had been allies. In fact, both countries had modernised their naval forces over the previous decade partly for the same reason; to counter the re-emergence of imperial Spain. In 1864, the region’s former colonial ruler had attempted to seize control of the guano-rich Chincha Islands, off the coast of southern Peru, prompting a declaration of war not only by that country’s government but also those of Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador. The Chilean navy was especially weak, and proved powerless to prevent a Spanish squadron’s destruction of its merchant fleet at Valparaiso. However, one success the Chileans did have was when the corvette Esmeralda captured the Spanish schooner Covadonga at the Battle of Papudo, in November 1865. The Esmeralda had been constructed in England a decade earlier, and her name celebrated a Spanish ship that had been captured at the Peruvian port of Callao by the Scots-born Chilean mercenary Thomas Cochrane in 1820, during Peru’s war of independence. A young midshipman called Arturo Prat was aboard the Esmeralda at the Battle of Papudo, which was fought north of Valparaiso, and as Captain Prat he can be seen at the stern of the same ship in the above painting, sword raised, rallying his men.
While the Spanish were sabre-rattling in South America, a real war was raging in North America. It was in the American Civil War that the ironclad was first tested against wooden warships, and the turreted gun first compared to the traditional broadside. In the same period, the navies of Britain and France were in the midst of an ironclad arms race, and British shipyards were already building turreted warships in answer to the Union’s ground-breaking Monitor. These included the Rolf Krake, built by R. Napier & Sons of Glasgow for the Danish navy, and the Affondatore, constructed for the Italian navy by Harrisons of Millwall. Even the Royal Navy was coming round to the idea of turning the gun to the enemy rather than the whole ship. Thus, the warships ordered by the Peruvian government around this time were technologically cutting edge.
The Huáscar was built at Lairds of Birkenhead, alongside a second vessel, the Independencia, between 1864 and 1866. The Huáscar, which was named in honour of an Incan emperor, displaced 1,200 tons, and was 220 feet in length. She was single-screwed; her 1,500hp engine giving a top speed of 12 knots. Her main weapons were two 10-inch muzzle-loading Armstrong guns. These were housed in a turret behind the foremast, which gave them a 135˚ firing arc. While the turrets of Monitor and other Union warships had been designed by the Swedish-American engineer John Ericcson, British-built turret ships utilised a design by the Royal Navy Captain Cowper Phipps Coles.[1] The ‘Coles turret’ was widely held to be superior to Ericcson’s design, as it rotated on rollers rather than a central spindle. Nevertheless, the Huáscar’s turret was still cumbersome to manoeuvre, requiring up to 15 minutes for a 16-man crew to rotate it manually through 360˚. Like all early monitors, the Huáscar had a low-freeboard to accommodate the extreme weight of the turret. She was also fitted with a ram bow. This was owing to the then widespread belief that cannon was next to useless against an armoured iron ship.
Huáscar’s guns had seen action before she went up against the Esmeralda. Although the ship commissioned too late for combat against the Spanish, her first battle would be against another European sea power; the Royal Navy. In May 1877, Huáscar was seized by mutineers, in support of a broader uprising against the Peruvian government of the day. The ship was taken to sea, where it harassed passing steamers and disrupted trade. The Royal Navy was called on to intervene after the Huáscar had stopped a British vessel. The 6,000 ton iron frigate HMS Shah and the wooden corvette HMS Amethyst were tasked with securing her surrender. The warships clashed off Ilo in the south of the country in what became known as ‘the incident of Pachoca’. During the two-hour engagement, Huáscar was hit by at least 60 shells, but owing to the British lack of armour-piercing ammunition, none could breach her 4.5inch armour. In reply, Huáscar managed to fire her main guns only five times, scoring no hits on either British vessel. The mutineers surrendered to Peruvian authorities soon afterwards.
By the time the War of the Pacific broke out two years later, the Peruvian navy found itself outgunned by the Chileans, which had more recently acquired two powerful armoured frigates from British shipyards. Nevertheless, it still posed a serious threat to the seaborne movement of Chilean troops to the area of conflict in the Atacama Desert. The Chilean navy’s first act was to blockade the port of Iquique on 5th April 1879. The main units of the Peruvian navy were based further north at Callao. However, before Chilean warships were able to reach there, Peru’s two most powerful ships, the Huáscar and the broadside ironclad Independencia started south; the two squadrons passing within 30 miles of each other. The Chileans had left two of their weakest units at Iquique; the Esmeralda and Covadonga, and it was these ships that confronted the Peruvian squadron on the morning of 21st May. Suffering from engine trouble, the Esmeralda had no choice but to contest the fight, but the Covadonga attempted to escape. Commodore Grau, commander of the Peruvian squadron, dispatched the Independencia in pursuit of this ship, leaving his own ship to engage the Esmeralda.
On paper, the Chilean corvette was no match for the Peruvian monitor; this was wood against iron; 40-pounder weapons against 300-pounders. However, owing to the deficiencies in Huáscar’s gunnery, Grau found it impossible to land a decisive blow, while the Esmeralda’s more accurate fire couldn’t penetrate the monitor’s armoured hull. After nearly three hours of inconsequential battle, the Peruvian commander made the decision to ram his adversary. However, even this proved difficult and it was only after the third ramming that the enemy finally succumbed. By this stage, the Esmeralda’s own commander, Arturo Prat, was dead. Taking advantage of Peruvian tactics, he and several other crewmen had managed to leap aboard the Huáscar after the initial ramming, only to be shot down by Peruvian marines. After the battle, Grau returned Prat’s uniform and belongings to his widow along with a message of condolence stating his admiration for her husband’s ‘reckless courage in defence and honour of his country’s flag’. It was one of several chivalrous acts that later earned Grau the sobriquet ‘El Caballero de los Mares’.
Lamentably for Peru, just as Grau was securing a notable, albeit hard-won victory, a disaster was befalling the other ship in his squadron. The image below shows the Independencia listing to starboard while being fired on by the ship she’d been sent in pursuit of. The David and Goliath nature of the battle reflected in this painting is largely accurate. At 3,500t, the Independencia was the heaviest ship in the Peruvian navy. The Spanish-built schooner was, in contrast, a mere 630t and at just over 100ft, half her length. Covadonga’s two 70pdr guns were half the weight of the Peruvian ship’s main armament, which was mounted ‘broadside’ on pivots. The one advantage the schooner had was in her 50% lighter draught. Her wily captain was aware of this and lured his pursuer into shallow waters. The crew of the larger ship proved as inept in their gunnery as those of the Huáscar, and like Grau, Independencia’s captain Guillermo More felt compelled to resort to ramming tactics. In spite of having his men sound the depth of the waters as he made his approaches, More led his ship onto the rocks off Punta Gruesa, after which the battle is named. The crew were saved and the guns salvaged, but the ship was lost.
Despite the loss of the Independencia, Grau’s victory over Prat came as a great blow to Chilean pride. A month later, they suffered a second blow when Grau captured the Liverpool-built supply ship Rimac, which was carrying a contingent of 250 Chilean cavalry, a loss which led to riots in Santiago and the resignation of the navy’s commander-in-chief. The Huáscar evaded capture for the next four months, delaying the enemy’s invasion plans. However, on 8th October, while attempting to attack the port of Antofagasta, the Grau found himself trapped between two Chilean squadrons comprising the powerful central battery ironclads Blanco Encalada and Armirante Cochrane, which were equipped with more effective 9-inch Dahlgren guns and armour-piercing shells. The resulting engagement was entirely one-sided and led to the deaths of more than 30 of the Huáscar’s crewmen including Grau, as the ship was mercilessly battered. Prior to their capture, the remaining crew attempted to scuttle the Huáscar, but were thwarted by a Chilean boarding party. The crippled ship was towed to Valparaiso for repairs, and a month later she was back at sea flying the flag of Chile. Soon after, she fought a minor duel with the Manco Cápac, a monitor of similar dimensions acquired from the US at the end of the American Civil War, and took part in the final blockade of Callao, which led to the scuttling of the remaining units of the Peruvian navy in January 1881. A prize of war, the Huáscar remains afloat to this day at the Chilean anchorage of Talcahuano.
Both of the above paintings are the work of Yorkshire-born Thomas Somerscales, who’d started his career as a naval schoolmaster. In 1869, while aboard ship in the eastern Pacific, he caught malaria and was put ashore at Valparaiso to recuperate. Valparaiso was home to a sizable British community and would become the artist’s home for the next 20 years. Somerscales had had no formal training before he took up sketching. A key moment in his development as a naval artist was when he witnessed a violent storm in the port in 1875. At the height of the storm, the Esmeralda lost her anchor chain and was only prevented from being wrecked by the exertions of her executive officer, the aforementioned Arturo Prat. Somerscales finally returned to his home port of Hull in 1892. Although initially unknown as an artist in the UK, his work was eventually exhibited at the Royal Academy, and one of his most famous oils, Off Valparaiso, now hangs in the Tate. The artist’s bias for his adopted homeland is evident in his paintings of the Pacific War, in the contrasting use of dark and light, and in the presence or absence of people. In The Battle of Iquique, Huáscar is depicted as a mechanical brute, the Esmeralda a redoubt of glorious resistance.
[1] Coles would achieve notoriety as the designer of HMS Captain, a low-freeboard turret ship which foundered off Spain in 1870, drowning him and 480 sailors.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 