The guns were loaded, and two ironclads—one American, one Spanish—faced off in a potentially deadly game of brinksmanship on the South American coast.
In March 1866—more than 30 years before the Spanish-American War—the United States and the Spanish Empire came perilously close to a naval clash of arms off the thriving Chilean port city of Valparaiso. Since the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the possibility of such a showdown had been imminent in the waters of the Western Hemisphere.
