Battle of Angamos, 1879: the end of the Huáscar and Admiral Grau

The War of the Pacific, fought by Chile against Peru and Bolivia from 1879, was fought along a desert coast where armies depended on ships. On 21 May 1879, at Iquique, the Peruvian monitor Huáscar under Miguel Grau rammed the Chilean corvette Esmeralda, commanded by Arturo Prat, a day that made heroes of both men. From then on the Huáscar, the most dangerous ship of the Peruvian navy, was the Chilean fleet's main target.²

The trap

In the autumn the Chilean navy set out to catch her. According to the report of the Huáscar's surviving officer, published in El Peruano on 3 November 1879, the monitor and the corvette Unión were steaming along the coast when at dawn on 8 October they sighted the ironclad Blanco Encalada, the gunboat Covadonga and the transport Matías Cousiño about six miles away. The Blanco and the Covadonga gave chase.³

At 7:15 three more columns of smoke rose to the northwest: the ironclad Cochrane, the corvette O'Higgins and the transport Loa, steering to cut across the Peruvians' bows. Grau ordered full steam. The faster Unión crossed to the Huáscar's other side and escaped north; the monitor could not. Her chief engineer, Samuel Mac Mahon, wrote that with her fouled bottom the ship could make no more than 11 knots, where with a clean hull she might have made 12 or more.⁴

The shell in the conning tower

At 9:40, with the encounter now unavoidable, the Huáscar secured her flag and opened fire from her turret on the Cochrane at about 1,000 meters. The Cochrane, the faster ship, did not answer at once. She closed to about 200 meters before firing. Her first shells pierced the armor of the turret section a foot above the waterline, putting twelve men out of action, and cut the steering gear, so that the Huáscar had to be steered with tackles.⁵

About ten minutes later came the decisive hit. A shell struck the conning tower, pierced it and burst inside, killing Rear Admiral Grau, who commanded the ship, and mortally wounding his aide, Lieutenant Diego Ferré. The second in command, Commander Elías Aguirre, was killed too, as was Lieutenant José Melitón Rodríguez, and Commander Manuel Melitón Carbajal was wounded, so that the ship was finally fought by Lieutenant Pedro Gárezon.⁶

Unable to keep a steady course, the Huáscar lost the advantage of her speed, and the Blanco Encalada and the Covadonga closed to 200 meters on her starboard quarter. Gárezon's report says the monitor turned to ram the Blanco, which easily avoided her, leaving the Peruvian ship at the mercy of the Chilean gunners. Her steering was shot away a third time, shells started fires in the officers' cabins, the engine room and the bow, and one after another her guns were silenced.⁷

Scuttled, and saved by the enemy

With no way left to hurt the enemy, Gárezon and the three remaining combat officers decided to sink the ship rather than let her be taken, and sent Ensign Ricardo Herrera to tell the engineers to open the valves. The Chilean guns fell silent at 10:10. The Huáscar was already settling by the stern, but stopping the engines to flood her let the Chilean boats come alongside. The boarders forced the engineers at gunpoint to close the valves when there were already four feet of water in the bilge, put out the fires and took the prisoners, including the wounded, aboard the ironclads. Gárezon insisted that the flag had not been struck: when the boarders arrived it lay on the deck because its chain halyard had been shot through.⁸

The prize was taken to Mejillones. The Chilean historian Rafael Mellafe told La Tercera that she was then repaired at Valparaíso through November, December and January, and that her armament was strengthened with two Armstrong breech-loaders.⁹

Aftermath

With the Huáscar in Chilean hands, the Chilean navy could blockade the Peruvian coast. By the end of 1879 Chile had taken the Bolivian coastal province with Antofagasta and the Peruvian department of Tarapacá. The Huáscar herself now fought under the Chilean flag: on 27 February 1880, off Arica, she was hit by the Peruvian monitor Manco Cápac and her new captain, Manuel Thomson, was killed, and in April she took part in the blockade and bombardment of Callao.¹⁰ › Battle of Arica, 1880

The Peruvian officers who survived closed their report by writing of the profound grief caused by the death of the brave rear admiral and of the subordinates they had seen fall doing their duty to the last.¹¹