In an earlier blog I told of what was possibly the most
ferocious single ship action fought in the age of sail – the engagement between
the frigates HMS Quebec and the
French Surveillante. I’m now writing
about another such action, almost a hundred years later, which, though
it was inconclusive, was of enormous significance for future naval warfare. Quite amazingly one of the ships involved can still be seen today.
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| The Shah vs. Husacar action 29th May 1877 |
In early 1877 a failed revolution in Peru resulted in the
leader of the defeated party, one Nicholas de Pierola, being lucky enough to
suffer nothing more than being banished from the country. Though he lacked
further support on shore in Peru he did have adherents in the Peruvian navy. Two officers of the small iron-clad the ship Huascar - brothers named Carrasco – seized
her as she lay in the port of Callao and secured the support of her crew.
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| The Huascar in Peruvian service |
Though small, the Huascar
was most formidable vessel in the
Peruvian navy. Built at Birkenhead by Laird Brothers in 1865 on a displacement of
1130 tons, she could make at maximum some 10 knots, and she carried two 10-in.
Armstrong rifled muzzle loading cannon (RMLs) in a closed turret amidships, these
throwing a 300-lb. projectile. She also had two 40-pounderrifled pieces mounted
one on each side of the quarter-deck, plus a 12-pounder under the poop.
Huascar’s armouring
was also impressive – her turret wall was 5.5-inch thick, with a 14 - in. teak
backing. The maximum thickness of her side plating was 4.5-inch, tapering to 2.5-inch
at the bow and stern, backed like the turret with teak. She was brig-rigged
with a tripod foremast, and had a freeboard of 4.5 ft. Her bows were designed
for ramming.
As such Huascar
was represented an example of what was to be a very profitable export for British
French and Italian shipyards in the coming decades – the sale of modern warships
to South American countries that could not afford them and had little if any
need for them.
After seizing the Huascar
the insurgents sailed to a Bolivian port (Bolivia still had a small coast at
the time) where Pierola himself boarded. She then steamed up and down the
Peruvian coast, bombarding such towns as refused to pay ransom, The rest of the
Peruvian navy – another small iron-clad, a corvette, and a gunboat – put to sea
and fought her for an hour and a half. The encounter resulted in no great harm being
done on either side.
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| HMS Shah |
The British Commander-in-Chief
on the Pacific Station, Rear Admiral Algernon de Horsey, received an urgent
summons one day from Britain’s chargé d’affairs at
Lima, who informed him that the Huascar
had stopped two British mail-steamers and had forcibly taken coal and stores from
them. The offence to the British flag and prestige was intolerable. A formal
complaint was made to the Peruvian Government, but it disclaimed all responsibility.
It did however the Huascar to be a
pirate and offered a reward for her capture.
de Horsey now put to sea in his flag-ship, the Shah, with the small wooden corvette Amethyst in company, he now started the
search for the Huascar.
HMS Shah was an unarmoured
ship of 6250 tons, with a speed of some 15 knots maximum. She was very unhandy,
and had a huge turning circle. Her armament consisted of two 12-ton guns, throwing
a 250-lb. projectile, with a nominal penetration of 8.4-in of wrought iron at
2000 yards; sixteen 6.5 ton guns, with eight on each broadside, throwing a 112-1b.
shot, theoretically capable of penetrating 5.5- in. of iron at, 2000 yards; and
eight 64-pounders. Her company numbered 602 officers and men, and she was
ship-rigged with heavy masts and spars. The Amethyst
carried nothing bigger than a 64-pounder, and had little or no fighting value.
She was to play no significant part in what was to follow, which was
essentially to be a duel between Shah
and Huascar.
The Huascar was
discovered lying off the small town of Ylo, in the afternoon of the 29th May.
The admiral immediately sent a boat with a message to Pierola that if his flag
was not hauled down within the hour the Shah
would open fire. The boat returned without an answer. The Shah then fired a blank charge and getting no response, followed
with a shot across the Huascar's
bows. The Huascar replied with a
shell from her turret, and got under way, steaming slowly to and fro before the
town, thus considerably disadvantaging the Shah's
gunners, who had repeatedly to cease firing to avoid the risk of hitting
civilian buildings on shore.
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| Huascar in the foreground, HMS Shah beyond |
Ylo Bay is cramped, with numerous rocks and shoals, and the Shah, with her greater draught – 21 feet,
to the other ship's 19 – had to be handled with the utmost care, and could not
get within 1500 yards of her opponent. Most of the firing took place at a range
of about 2000 yards –a range at which the Shah's
heavy and numerous artillery ought theoretically to have riddled the little
turret-ship through and through. Through the afternoon however the Huascar steamed back and forth while the
Shah tried to conform to her movements,
firing steadily as she did. The Peruvian gunners proved quite inept: several of
her 300-lb. projectiles splashed water over the Shah’s deck, and went over her on the ricochet, but her hull was
untouched. An eyewitness on the Shah described
the chief incident of the battle as follows:
“About five o'cIock, the Huascar
being then clear of the shoals, we seized the opportunity to close. The enemy
likewise closed, with evident signs of ramming, firing shells from her
40-pounder. Our Gatling gun began firing from the foretop, causing the men on
her upper-deck to desert their guns. Our port guns immediately commenced
independent firing.”
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| Shah's Gatling-gunners in action from a fighting top |
The Huascar drove
on towards the Shah but at 400 yards separation
her captain's nerve failed and he turned tail. As she went about the Shah fired a Whitehead self-propelled torpedo
at her from one of her deck-mounted tubes, but as the torpedo's speed was only nine
knots, and the Huascar was teaming at least ten in the same direction, no hit was
scored. The event was however of great historic significance as is interesting, however, as it was the first time that that a self-propelled torpedo
was fired in anger. The track of bubbles
gave evidence that the shot was a straight one, and had the Huascar been stationary her fate should
certainly have been sealed.
.jpg) |
| Whitehead torpedo of the 1870s - the domed warhead had not yet appeared |
The Huascar now
had had enough of it, and steamed close in under the town as darkness fell. The Shah
ceased fire and steamed out of range. She had one last card to play. Several
hours later she sent in her steam pinnace, armed with a spar torpedo in her
bows and towing a whaler which had a Whitehead torpedo alongside. This attack might well have proved successful
but Pierola and the Huascar had slipped away into the darkness. Two days afterwards
he surrendered the ship to the Peruvian Government.
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| Another view: Amethyst to the left, Huascar in cdentre. Shah to the right |
The action was not particularly creditable to the Royal Navy’s
gunnery. The Huascar had been struck
by only one shell from the Shah's
12-ton guns. It had hit the ship's armour plating on the starboard side about
50 feet from the stern, penetrating the iron and bursting in the backing, but
damaging nothing material. Two 112-Ib. projectiles had dented the side armour
but failed to penetrate, though theoretically they should have done so; and one
had hit the turret a direct blow but remained sticking in the armour. These
four hits were the only ones recognisable as having being made by the Shah's heavy guns. The Huascar's boats, funnel, bridge, and
upper works had been hit by numerous projectiles from the 64-pounders of the Shah and Amethyst, but the little ship
was in every degree as sea- and battle-worthy at the end of the fight, which
lasted nearly three hours, as at the beginning. She one man killed and two or
three wounded. The Shah would have been doomed if Huascar been able to
hit back effectively with her big turret guns.
In extenuation of the Shah's
performance it may be said that the small Huascar
was not an easy target. The dark background of the sloping shore behind her made
it difficult to estimate the range correctly. Nevertheless, given her that she carried
so much heavy metal, the Shah might
have been expected to do better, especially since it was obvious after the
first half hour of the engagement that there was nothing to fear from the enemy
gunners. It does not appear, however, that any one was much struck with the
poor results produced by the Shah's
heavy guns or that any officer was censured.
The Huascar’s
career was far from over. She fought Chilean forces in the War of the Pacific
(1879-84) and was captured by them. Se thereafter played a role in the 1891
Chilean War and was later preserved as a national treasure. Today the Huascar is berthed at Talcahuano, Chile.
Though the Naval Base and Shipyards there were damaged by the 2010 Chile earthquake
and the resulting tsunami the Huascar survived unscathed. They certainly built
them tough at Lairds in Birkenhead in the 1860s!
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| The Huascar - now Chilean - as she is preserved today |
Britannia’s Shark by Antoine Vanner
1881 and the power of the British Empire seems unchallengeable.
But now a group of revolutionaries threaten the economic basis of that power. Their weapon is the invention of a naïve genius, their sense of grievance is implacable and their leader is already proven in the crucible of war. Protected by powerful political and business interests, conventional British military or naval power cannot touch them. A daring act of piracy draws the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, and his wife into this deadly maelstrom. Amid the wealth and squalor of America’s Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny success – and survival –will demand making some very strange alliances...
Britannia’s Shark brings historic naval fiction into the dawn of the Submarine Age.
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