The Huascar, an iron-clad, single-turret ram built in England in 1865 for the Peruvian government, took part in nearly every significant Latin American naval campaign in the last quarter of the 19th century. She had a displacement of 1,130 tons and a maximum speed of 11 knots. Her main armament consisted of two 10-inch Armstrong-rifled muzzle-loaders mounted on a closed turret amidships. The turret, designed by Captain Cowper Coles of the British Navy, moved by hand-operated gears, and had 7-inch armor forward of the guns and 5-inch armor behind them, with a 14-inch teak backing. Huascar also carried two 40-pounders on either side of the quarter deck, and one 12-pounder under the poop. Her side plating was 5.5 inches thick amidships, and tapered to 2.5 inches at the bow and stern. The backing was similar to that in the turret. The hull was divided into five watertight sections, and the turret chamber, boiler, and engine rooms were protected against raking fire by 4.5-inch bulkheads.
The first action of interest in which Huascar took part was a duel with the British cruisers Shah and Amethyst, on 29 May 1877, at Ilo, a small port on the southern coast of Peru. Shah was one of Britain’s newest, largest, and fastest unarmored iron vessels, built in 1873. She had a complement of 602 officers and men and could make 16 knots. Her main armament consisted of two 9-inch muzzle-loaders, 16 7-inch guns, eight 64-pounders, and two carriages for launching torpedoes. The smaller, unarmored Amethyst displaced 1,970 tons and carried 14 64-pounders.
The British admiral demanded the surrender of Huascar, which had been taken over by revolutionaries, had been molesting British steamers, and had been disowned by the Peruvian government. In the ensuing gun-duel, Shah, with a speed five knots greater than that of her adversary, could have easily closed the range, but did not choose to do so, partly because of her draft and partly because of fear of Huascar's ram. The indecisive duel ended at sunset.
All told, Huascar was hit 70 times, mostly by the small guns of Amethyst, which hardly dented her armor. In short, two ships with 800 highly trained men and 40 guns had been unable to do any serious damage, after three hours of battle, to a small armored monitor with 200 men and five guns.
This encounter went far toward making the unarmored cruiser obsolete. The British realized that Shah survived only because of the poor gunnery of her adversary. When they laid down Comus, a few months later, she was planned as a protected cruiser, and it can be assumed that the Huascar-Shah duel had its influence.
Another lesson learned from this battle was that the penetration effects of projectiles measured in the testing grounds were considerably different from those that could reasonably be expected under battle conditions at sea. The British 9-inch muzzle-loaders simply could not penetrate the 5.5-inch armor of Huascar, although they were supposed to penetrate 8.4-inch armor at 2,000 yards according to design specifications.
Two years after this battle, in April 1879, Chile declared war on Peru, and Huascar saw action again. On 21 May off the port of Iquique, she rammed and sank the Chilean Wooden sloop-of-war Esmeralda. Despite a 4-knot speed superiority, further increased to six knots by a boiler room explosion in Esmeralda early in the battle, Huascar only succeeded in ramming at the third attempt. This Was a clear illustration of the limitations of the ram, a weapon whose importance at the time was much overestimated by most naval officers, due mainly to its spectacular success at the battle of Lissa in 1866. The ineffectiveness of the ram was further illustrated at the battle of Angamos, where Huascar engaged two larger and more powerful Chilean ironclads, Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada. These 3,560-ton, casemated rams had been built in England only five years before. Each of them carried six 9-inch muzzle-loading Armstrong rifles. Their armor consisted of two strakes, the lower one eight inches thick and the upper one six inches thick forward and 4.5 inches aft. Their speed was 12.8 knots.
Despite the odds against her, Huascar fought a spirited battle and never surrendered.* Four officers took command of the ship in succession, as their seniors perished under enemy gunfire. With the ship no longer under control and many of the crew killed, the order was given to scuttle the ship, but a Chilean boat crew managed to board the monitor and close the valves before she sank. After the battle, Huascar was repaired by the Chileans and incorporated into their fleet.
This battle was the first action in which projectiles exploded after having gone through armor. Henceforth, a 5.5-inch armor such as Huascar had, and which had served her so well in her struggle with Shah was hardly considered adequate armor protection.
As mentioned, this battle increased distrust of the ram as an effective weapon. Although Huascar was out of control and at reduced speed for at least the last half hour of the engagement, two powerful and fast ships, under full control, were unable to ram her and, in fact, were at times in danger of being rammed themselves.
One more important action remains. In 1891, the Chilean Navy rebelled against the government, accusing President Balmaceda of intending to establish a dictatorship.
Two torpedo gunboats, Lynch and Condell remained loyal to the government of President Balmaceda. These vessels were of modern design, built in England, and equipped with one torpedo tube on the bow and two on either side. They displaced 750 tons and could steam at 21 knots. Their armament consisted of three 14-pounder quick-firers, four 3-pounders, and two 1-inch Nordenfelts.
Shortly after midnight, on 23 April 1891, Condell and Lynch stole into Caldera Bay, where the ironclad Blanco Encalada was at anchor. No precautions against torpedo attack had been taken aboard Blanco Encalada; no net or boom had been laid, and no boat or launch had been assigned to patrol the entrance to the harbor. Only part of the crew was on board and of these the majority were raw recruits. The captain was ashore. It was a dark night, and the torpedo boats were not sighted until they were at close range. The ironclad then opened fire, but without effect.
Condell’s torpedoes missed, but the second torpedo from Lynch struck Blanco Encalada on the starboard side, near the dynamo room. Every light in the ship was extinguished, one of the 8-inch guns was thrown off its trunnions, and a number of men were killed. It is almost certain that her watertight doors had not been closed. The torpedo blew a hole 15 feet long and seven feet broad, and the ironclad sank in two minutes. The worst damage that the torpedo boats suffered was self-inflicted—the firing of their own 14-pounders burst several boiler tubes.
Although this was a surprise attack against an unwary vessel, it showed the torpedo to be a potent weapon, for it was the first clear case of an armored battleship being sunk by a Whitehead torpedo. It was significant that an armored vessel of 3,499 tons had been sunk in a matter of minutes by two craft of 750 tons each, both of which were intact after the operation.
William Laird Clowes, in a prize-winning essay, “Torpedo Boats: Their Organization and Conduct,” published in 1892 in the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, had the following to say:
I have heard it said over and over again that the sinking of the Blanco Encalada teaches no lessons, and I have as often disagreed. It is, I submit, in some respects the most significant leading case we have. . . . Torpedo practice and gun-fire seem to have been alike execrable.
This is an action in which Huascar did not take part, yet her name appears in the official battle report. Captain Moraga, of Lynch, states, “Behind the afterpart of the ironclad I distinguished another vessel, which from her outline I took to be the Huascar. . . .”
A few years later, in the Brazilian civil war of 1894–95, Aquidaban, a second-class battleship of 5,000 tons, was attacked at night, while she lay at anchor in Santa Catarina Bay, by four torpedo boats, one of which succeeded in making a hit, which blew a hole 20 feet long and 7 feet broad. The crew managed to steam her into shallow water before abandoning ship, thus preventing her sinking. Here, again, the state of unpreparedness undoubtedly contributed to the success of the torpedo boats, but the lesson was nevertheless significant, especially since it came only three years after the sinking of Blanco Encalada.
Since this incident, Latin American naval campaigns have been few and have had no appreciable influence on the design of warships. But it does appear that, in the period from 1875 to 1900, the naval campaigns of Latin America did influence warship design, and that this influence was much more important, in fact, than the sizes of the navies involved would lead one to believe.
A graduate of the Peruvian Naval Academy in 1943 and also of the U. S. Naval Academy in the Class of 1946, Commander Jimenez served in the U. S. cruisers Fargo and Denver before returning to Peru. He attended M.I.T. and graduated as a Naval Engineer in the Class of 1956-G. He was a member of the staff of Rear Admiral Torres Matos, Peruvian CNO, when Admiral Torres Matos visited the United States a year ago. Commander Jimenez is now on duty with the Peruvian Bureau of Ships, Navy Department, at Lima.
*A vivid account of this action appeared in the January 1932 Proceedings, pages 18–24.