The Forgotten Night the Chilean Squadron Bombed Iquique During the War of the Pacific

The question from the British consul in Iquique was directly and bluntly addressed to Admiral Juan Williams Rebolledo, leader of the Chilean squadron blockading the then Peruvian port in the early months of the Pacific War. “Are you going to bomb the population? she threw at him with the usual English phlegm. But the old sailor, perhaps conditioned by the military maxim of not disclosing his movements, answered in turn with a question: “What is the state of food in the city?”

“The consul would inform him that in his opinion Iquique would never surrender due to the shortages, because at the time of the lifting of the blockade, a large quantity of food had been brought, thanks to the daily arrival of official transports and racing steamers,” explains historian Carlos Donoso Rojas in the book A rich, fertile and abandoned region: economy, culture and society in Tarapacá (16th-20th centuries). The Englishman was referring to the days following the naval battle of Iquique, when the sinking of the Esmeralda and the withdrawal of the damaged Covadonga to the port of Antofagasta facilitated the renewal of provisions in the town.

It was July 1879 and the consultation of the British representative was not fanciful . The Chilean squadron had blocked the Peruvian port since the beginning of the conflict, in April of the same year, but their situation had become very complicated. The local population made no secret of its hostility towards the Chilean sailors and the possibility of sneaky torpedo attacks was latent.

From the start of the blockade, the Peruvian authorities offered a reward to those who succeeded in sinking or torpedoing the Chilean ships. “The suspicion of an attack kept the fleet in a state of extreme alert: on the night of June 7, a huge bulge that looked like a boat was seen on the side of the Abtao. Suspecting that it could be one of the announced torpedoes, they fired on it without being able to sink it. The sound of gunfire alerted the rest of the squadron anchored at the edge of the bay, which approached the object, firing without much success. A reconnaissance boat was sent, and it was found that it was just drifting sargassum,” explains Donoso.

Therefore, in its interior Williams Rebolledo had previously assessed the possibility of bombing the city as a sort of punitive operation . And he wasn’t just thinking about reasons of military strategy. Until then, with the exception of Carlos Condell’s feat at Punta Gruesa, his management in charge of the team did not show major triumphs and public opinion was already impatient. In fact, his plan to attack the Peruvian squadron at Callao had been a complete fiasco and had indirectly set the stage for the fight on 21 May.

“His public image conditioned by the results of the blockade, and faced with the impossibility of invading the city, the idea of ​​bombing her in retaliation for the sinking of the Esmeralda didn’t seem so far-fetched he didn’t seem to have any detractors either,” says Donoso.

His fears were confirmed when he noticed strange ground movements. “On June 9, Abtao surveillance boats detected riveting work near the Tarapacá smelter, while In Cavancha, more than forty boats were seen in a row, ready to be launched into the sea. . The northern part was fortified with sandbags, also observing that the bulk of the forces were garrisoned in the northern part of the city,” Donoso points out.

Worse still, in July of that year the Peruvian monitor Huáscar succeeded in attacking the port, where he eventually engaged in combat with the gunboat Magallanes, and only the timely arrival of the armored Cochrane forced him to fall back to Arica. Thus, the blockade was shown to be not only useless, but also vulnerable . Therefore, he decided to write to the government to express the need to stop the measure.

“When the Admiral, already disillusioned by the tiring and sterile operation, asked permission to end it, he was daily threatened by torpedoes capable of blowing up one or more armored vehicles. In addition, the continuous movement in which the ships had to be kept due to the new type of warfare adopted by Peru, He had the crews exhausted, and the machines still on they could not be cleaned”, details Gonzalo Bulnes in his classic Pacific War. Surprisingly, since Santiago, the government of Aníbal Pinto did not accede to the Admiral’s request, at least at first.

He was doing so, in the midst of an exchange of letters with the government, when a second incursion by Huáscar, albeit from a greater distance this time, accelerated Williams’ plans. Thus, he decided without further delay to carry out the bombardment maneuver he had been mulling over for several weeks. The action was fixed for the night of July 16, 1879.Williams ordered the start of the bombardment of the city, which would last three hours time in which 45 bombs and 14 bullets of different calibers were thrown, destroying part of the customs building, water tanks, warehouses, the gasworks and an unknown number of houses”.

Reports from the time detail what happened. The province’s sub-prefect, Francisco Layo, wrote: “Yesterday evening at 7:10 p.m. heavy rifle fire was felt on board the Chilean ships, preceded by a cannon shot, which in my opinion did not was only gunpowder, the cause of which no one could guess. A quarter of an hour later, the first cannon shot fired at the city sounded, followed by forty-four others, scattered in all directions. the fact that the ships were deployed along the entire length of the bay”.

It was unclear how many dead and injured the Chilean bombardment left . Reports speak of a Bolivian soldier from the Tarapacá column being killed by one of the projectiles while at customs. In addition, civilians were injured and even maimed as a result of the shootings. But depending on the sources, the number varies from 4 to 5 dead in the Chilean texts, to more than 20 in the Peruvian reports.

The action could have had another consequence. Williams Rebolledo was aware of the situation of the survivors of the Esmeralda (among the officers and the crew), held prisoner in the city. “They were in the customs building, one of their main targets of attack. Treated with dignity, according to a report made by the British consul, they were victims of the troops from the beginning of the bombardments. Several officers and soldiers would have asked to avenge the attack by killing the captives, avoiding their execution only thanks to the intervention of superior officers”, underlines Donoso.

The latter adds that although the Chilean government has not issued an official statement on what happened, in private ministers like Antonio Varas and Domingo Santa María have questioned the action in harsh terms.

But the squad’s situation only got worse when one of the Abato ship’s machines was damaged. Without the possibility of repairing it, and with the first attempts at mutiny among the exhausted sailors, On 2 August, an exhausted and sick Williams Rebolledo ordered the squadron to set sail under her own power. direction Antofagasta where he tendered his resignation. He did not inform the government or the authorities in Iquique.

Williams Rebolledo’s decision to break the blockade without government permission has sparked anger in La Moneda. “The news has infuriated some members of the cabinet” , says Bulnes (who does not devote a single line to the bombardment of Iquique in his book). Thus, the veteran sailor was called upon to explain to Santiago in a brief but conclusive telegram. For him, the war was over.