Monitors Manco Cápac and Atahualpa
The Manco Cápac and Atahualpa monitors were two monitors or warships of the Canonicus class, acquired by the Government of Peru from the United States of America in 1867. They were originally called Oneota and Catawba and served during the Civil War. The acquisition by Peru was carried out at the request of the dictatorship of Mariano Ignacio Prado (then concerned about arming itself as a result of the war against Spain). They were ships designed for river navigation, to which was added the fact that they were already used, so that, for all practical purposes, they turned out to be bad business for Peru. They were taken in tow from New Orleans to Callao, using the Strait of Magellan route. They arrived in Peru in 1870, already under the government of José Balta. It was a very long and risky trip, which lasted 15 months, being carried out successfully by Peruvian sailors, which is why it is considered a feat of the world navy.
History
Participation in the Civil War
The type of ship called a monitor is the brainchild of the Swede John Ericsson. The first monitor was built in the United States: the Monitor, intended to counter the armored Confederate Virginia (ex Merrimack). The Monitor was the first to use the armored turret with guns. Later Ericsson monitors used a turret invented by Ericsson, which was the only thing protruding from the water and therefore visible and were made of iron; the deck was flat and rose a few inches from the water, fitted with ventilation pipes and a chimney for the boiler of the steam engine.
In all, Ericson and his engineers, throughout the war, developed six classes of coastal defense and river monitors. These were: Passaic, Canonicus, Milwaukee, Casco, Miantonomoh, and Kalamazoo. Of the Canonicus class, nine ships were built in different shipyards: Canonicus, Saugus, Tecumseh, Mannhatan, Mahopac, Wyandotte, Ajax, Catawba and Oneota. The Canonicus model had improvements with respect to the previous Passaic, among them, greater armor, uniform batteries and the reinforcement of the armor of the base of the turret. They displaced 2,100 tons, a 350-horsepower engine and a theoretical speed of 8 knots, which they never reached. Her armor thickness varied from 3 inches to 5 inches on vital parts of the ship. They were armed with two 15-inch Dahlgren guns, mounted within a turret with 10-inch-thick armor. They embarked 100 crew members.
Five of the nine Canonicus saw combat during the Civil War; the other four were never commissioned.
The Catawba and the Oneota were built by the company Alex Swift & Co and Niles Works in Cincinnati, Ohio, in September 1862 for the United States Navy. The Catawba was launched on April 13, 1864 and the Oneota on May 21 of the same year. Both were completed on June 10, 1865, but they were assigned to the reserve without providing any service and finally decommissioned. The US government resold them to Alex Swift & Co and Niles Works, a company that offered them to interested governments; being that of Peru the one that accepted.
Purchase from Peru
Already in 1862, the Peruvian government, eager to strengthen its navy and informed of the battle of Hampton Roads between the armored Virginia (Confederate) and Monitor (of the Union), instructed his minister in Washington, Federico Barreda, to initiate contacts with the Swedish engineer John Ericsson, to show him the Peruvian government's interest in buying two ships of his design. On May 29 of that year, Ericsson answered from New York:
“In acceptance of your request, I must tell you that I am willing to build for your government two steam-iron armoured with rotating towers of the Monitor system. These ships will be similar to the six ships of this kind that I am currently building for the U.S. government. The main dimensions are the following: long on the platform, 200 feet, thickness, 45 feet. Agreement to complete the armoured, ready for service in all respects, with the exception of cannons, ammunition, coal and deposits, in the amount of $400 thousand each. I also agree to have the boats ready in this port in six months counted from the receipt of the order of your government.”Engineer John Ericsson, May 29, 1862#GGC11C
The government of Abraham Lincoln, at war with the Confederate States of America, prohibited the sale of arms to third countries, so the transaction with Ericsson was frustrated. In June and July 1866, the Peruvian government (the dictatorship of Mariano Ignacio Prado) once again tried to acquire some monitors from the United States, to strengthen the Peruvian squadron, which, after the victory of Dos de Mayo, was enthusiastic and was getting ready to continue the war with Spain. Indeed, Prado planned to liberate Cuba and the Philippines, then held by Spain, and hoped to turn the allied Peruvian-Chilean squadron into a "liberating squadron" (but the plan never came to fruition).
The purchase contract for the ships was signed in Lima on October 4, 1867, between Alexander Swift y Cía and the Minister of War of Peru Mariano Pío Cornejo. Peru paid two million pesos. Swift y Cía obtained a profit of 750,000 pesos in the transaction. A commission of the United States Congress investigated the matter, discovering irregularities in the sale.
Peru had always been very careful in the selection of its warships, most of which were new and technically modern, built expressly for its navy. For this reason, it is not understood why it was decided to acquire used monitors, and that to top it off they were designed for fluvial navigation, never to be used at sea, knowing of an event that occurred during the Civil War, when two monitors capsized when attempting to execute passes across open oceans. It is suspected that the Peruvian negotiators received payments in their favor, which would configure the criminal figure of bribery and that President Prado himself could be among the beneficiaries, but naturally there is no corroborating evidence.
The trip to Peru
To carry out the transfer of the monitors to Peru, Peruvian crews under the command of Commanders Camilo N. Carrillo and Juan Guillermo More Ruiz arrived in New Orleans. Two tugboats were purchased, which were renamed Marañón and Reyes (the latter in homage to Lieutenant Commander Mariano J. Reyes, who died on board the América during the tsunami of Arica in 1868). The Peruvian sailors refused to accept the help of American sailors and experts; finally, they accepted the help of American pilots, until leaving the waters of the Caribbean. But the command was reserved exclusively for Peruvian officers.
On January 12, 1869, the river monitors ex Oneota renamed Manco Cápac and ex Catawba renamed Atahualpa, which are the names of the first and last Inca of the Tawantinsuyu, respectively. The expedition was commanded first by Leandro Mariátegui, and then by Manuel Ferreyros. The Atahualpa was commanded by Juan Guillermo More Ruiz and the Manco Cápac commanded by Camilo N. Carrillo.
A New York newspaper, aware of the event, wrote: "There go the Peruvians, in their iron coffins.", their decks were barely twelve inches above the water level.
The ships left towed by the transports Marañón and Reyes; they never sailed with their own engines. The Reyes was wrecked en route and was replaced by the Pachitea. The convoy was hit in Rio de Janeiro by the corvette Unión and in Punta Arenas by the transport Chalaco.
The trip to Peru lasted 15 months. The commanders and their crews on board later recognized that it was the riskiest voyage of their entire naval career. It was, indeed, the longest and most dangerous tow in the naval history of the world, which the Peruvian sailors successfully carried out.
The ships arrived in Callao on June 11, 1870 and were assigned to the Peruvian fleet in the Pacific. President José Balta was then ruling in Peru (to whom some have mistakenly attributed the purchase of the monitors, when in reality it was made by the dictatorship of Mariano Ignacio Prado of 1866-1867).
Service during the Pacific War
The acquisition of these monitors was clearly a mistake because they deteriorated in a few years and when the Pacific War was declared, they were useless: the Atahualpa could not move and the Manco Cápac, reached the very limited speed of 3.5 knots. They were then used as pontoons or floating batteries, to protect the coast. Despite their low seaworthiness, they were fearsome with their 453-pound muzzles.
When the war broke out with Chile, the transfer of the two monitors to Arica was ordered, as part of the III naval division, in May 1879. The Atahualpa, after having stopped a few kilometers del Callao in front of San Lorenzo Island, when its engines collapsed, it was immobilized in the port of Chalaco. While the Manco Cápac continued the journey in trailer towards Arica.
On February 27, 1880, Arica was attacked by Chilean warships: the monitor Huáscar (the captured, rebuilt and armed Peruvian monitor) and the corvette Magallanes. The Manco Cápac, together with the torpedo boat Alianza, left the pier to fight the Huáscar. Both armored vehicles engaged in a fierce artillery duel at ranges as short as 200 meters. A projectile from the Manco Cápac struck the Huáscar command tower, causing a terrible explosion and killing its commanding officer, frigate captain Manuel Thomson Porto Mariño. and several crew members.
On June 6, 1880, the Chilean army bombarded Arica. The Manco Cápac returned fire and one of his projectiles hit the armored Almirante Cochrane , causing severe damage and some casualties. Another grenade from the Peruvian monitor hit the Covadonga squarely, causing damage to her waterline, forcing her to withdraw from combat. The next day, after the Battle of Arica, the Chilean infantry took Arica and the commander of the Peruvian ship, captain José Sánchez Lagomarsino, to prevent it from falling into Chilean hands, sank the Manco Cápac, whose hull still remains at the bottom of the port.
A few months later, in January 1881, the Peruvians also sank the Atahualpa together with the rest of the fleet that remained in Callao, after the battles of San Juan and Miraflores, on the 16th January 1881, the Peruvian Squad disappeared, until almost the end of the XIX century. The historian Andrew Toppan assures that that same year the Atahualpa was raised by the Chileans, using it as a pontoon, to finally be decommissioned and dismantled in 1910.