Huáscar (ironclad)
Huáscar in Peruvian service before her foremast was removed in June 1879
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| History | |
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.svg){kind=small} Peru
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| Name: | Huáscar |
| Ordered: | 4 August 1864 |
| Builder: | Laird Brothers, Birkenhead, England |
| Launched: | 6 October 1865 |
| Commissioned: | 8 November 1866 |
| Captured: | Captured by Chile at the Battle of Angamos, 8 October 1879 |
 Chile
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| Acquired: | 8 October 1879 |
| Decommissioned: | 1897 |
| Reinstated: | 1934 |
| Status: | Museum ship |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Ironclad turret ship |
| Displacement: | 1,870 long tons (1,900 t) |
| Length: | 66.9 m (219 ft) |
| Beam: | 10.9 m (35.8 ft) |
| Draught: | 5.7 m (18.7 ft) |
| Installed power: | |
| Propulsion: | 1 × screw; 1 × Horizontal-return connecting rod-steam engine |
| Sail plan: | Brig-rigged |
| Speed: | 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Complement: | 170 |
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Huáscar is an ironclad turret ship built in Britain for Peru in the 1860s. Her price was a bit more than £81,000 pounds sterling. She was the flagship of the Peruvian Navy and participated in the Battle of Pacocha and the War of the Pacific of 1879–1883 before being captured and commissioned into the Chilean Navy. Today she is one of the few surviving ships of her type. The ship has been restored and is currently commissioned as a memorial ship. She is named after the 16th-century Inca emperor, Huáscar.
Captain Cowper Coles, about his masterpiece, Huáscar, wrote:
...as a sea-going vessel of 1,100 tons, 300-horse power, and a speed of 12 1/4 knots. Her foremast is fitted with tripods; she carries two 300-pounders in one turret.
...the "Huascar" class of 1865 fitted with a hurricane deck; she was one of six different classes designed and built by Messrs. Laird Brothers, to whom the credit for their great success is due. She can fire right ahead from her 300-pounders, and aft within 15 degrees of the line of keel, but would have a stern chaser either on or under her poop.
The British magazine Engineering, 4 July 1879, page 11, on the Peruvian ironclad turret ship Huáscar writes:
She is an armour-clad monitor built by Messrs. Laird Brothers, of Birkenhead, in 1866...... She is 190 ft. in length between perpendiculars, 35 ft. in extreme breadth, and 19 ft. 9 in. in depth of hold. Her builder's tonnage is 1101, and indicated horse power 1500. Her draught of water is 15 ft. 6 in., and her maximum speed is said to be 12 knots when her boilers are in good condition, and the bottom is clean. Her usual speed under good working conditions is probably not more than 10 1/2 to 11 knots. She is propelled by a single screw. The Huascar is a rigged two-masted vessel, the foremast being upon Captain Cole's tripod principle. Her freeboard, or height of deck above water, is about 5 ft. She carries two 300-pounder Armstrong guns in one turret, which is protected by 5 1/2-in. armour plating upon a teak backing of 14 in. The sides are protected by armour plating 4 1/2 in. thick amidships, tapering to 2 1/2 in. at the extremities, which is also worked upon a teak backing of 14 in. There is an armoured pilot tower of hexagonal form abaft the turret from which the ship is worked in action; and the openings in the deck are protected by 2-in. iron plates that are shipped in the openings for skylights or hatchways. The Huascar is an iron-built vessel, and at the time she was built was most perfect in all the appliances of defence, and in her internal arrangements.
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Wikipedia