Chilean corvette Abtao (1866)

Chilean corvette Abtao
History
Chile
Name:	Abtao
Namesake:	Battle of Abtao
Ordered:	by the Confederate States Navy
Builder:	Dennis Brothers, Scotland
Launched:	29 October 1863
Commissioned:	1 June 1867
Decommissioned:	1922
Renamed:	Texas, Cyclone, and Pampero
Honours and awards:	Naval Campaign of the War of the Pacific
General characteristics
Displacement:	1600 t
Length:	211 ft 6 in (64.47 m)
Beam:	12.7 m (42 ft)
Draft:	8 ft (2.4 m)
Installed power:	800 ihp (600 kW)
Speed:	10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Crew:	200
Armament:	1 × 5.8" and 4 × 4.7" guns

The corvette Abtao was a wooden ship built in Scotland during 1864 of 1.600 tons and 800 IHP. She fought in the War of the Pacific and was in service for the Chilean Navy until 1922.

During the Chincha Islands War, the Chilean Government sent her agent in Belgium Manuel Carvallo to British shipyards in search of unsold warships originally laid down for the Confederate States Navy; He found in Glasgow and Greenock, at the River Clyde the hulls of the 1600-ton commerce-raider Texas (not the ironclad CSS Texas) and the 1200-ton Pampero. In order to conceal the true owner of the ship and to elude the Foreign Enlistment Act, several names were used for the ships. Both ships used the name Pampero but the 1600-ton Texas was also named Cyclone and finally Abtao and the 1200-ton true original Pampero was also named Canton and finally Tornado under Spanish command.

The 1600-ton hull was christened Pampero by a Mrs. Galbraith and launched on 29 October 1863. Through the efforts of the American counsul in Glasgow, Warner Underwood, she was placed under a 24-hour scrutiny by British customs officers and as late as January 1865 she was still considered to be Confederate property, and apparently remained so until the end of the American Civil War. She was purchased by Chile for £75,000 through Isaac Campbell & Co.in January or February 1866.

Robert Winthrop Simpson in behalf of the Chilean Government ordered both ships, Pampero and Texas to be manned in Hamburg and later to the Faroe Islands.