Torpedo cruisers were also procured early by a South American navy. The Chilean Navy ordered at the end of the 1880s, in the shipyard Laird Brothers, the first ships of this type, the that were the torpedo ships and . These two ships would have a notable military success during Chilean Civil War of 1891, when they attacked and sunk the ironclad . Then in 1896 she acquired . The United States Navy was perhaps the only world navy which did not acquire any torpedo cruisers during this period - their procurement process for "Torpedo Cruiser No. 1" faltered due to unrealistically ambitious demands for high performance at low cost.