The Portland daily press., 1892-03-30

,sS/ xSWA f<hN Ill d UOlkU WILL
NJ 4 enemy. With the
glory won by Paul
Jones, Hull and Laurence, by Foote, Far
ragut, Gushing and Winslow in its keep
ing, it doesn't know whether that glory
shall be upheld when assailed or not. And
it would have been no child's play to
tackle the armament Of the lilliputian re-
public Chill has worldwide fame behind
her pretensions, although she is rated be-
low second class as a naval power. She
has the blood of old Britannia in her sail
ors, too, strain quite as legitimate as our
own and fully as likely to give good ac-
count of itself
The list of her naval heroes reads like a
page from English or American records,
with it's Pratt, Condell, Williams, Ed
wards, Leighton, Thompson, Cox, Warner,
Rogers, Lynch, Wilson, Smith and Wood.
Her crack vessels bear names known to
both worlds and hailing from somewhere
between LANDS End and John O'Groat's."
There are the Condell, the Lynch, the
Cochrane, the O'Higgins and the new
masterpiece whose completion was watched
with such anxiety during the late war
scare, the Pratt, which is an English word
with it's fifth" taken away. Should the
Pratt, or Pratt, prove worthy the name it
carries, our Yorktown, Baltimore, Philar
delphia and Chicago might well look to
their laurels. Chill celebrates "Prat Day"
in honor of one who in a small way stands
for her Nelson. The little republic has her
Trafalgar at Iquique, where the naval
pride of her great rival, Peru, was taken
down several pegs and the man of the hour
was Capt. Arthur Pratt, or Arturo Pratt,
who went down as did Nelson at Trafal
gar, leaving to his followers memory as
the incentive to do their duty. Pratt's ex.
plot has been duly honored by the scien-
tific world, but his personal heroism is
little known outside of South America.
When the war broke out between Chill
aud Peru in April, 1879, the former had the
advantage in numbers and strenth of ships,
but was handicapped by having to maintain
a blockade. Her first move was to Gloss
Iquique, a port in dispute, against the
enemy. All her navy lay in the harbor for
some days, but on the 10Th of May, there
being no Peruvian flags in sight, the adj
miral, one Williams, with long Spanish
handle to his name, took notion to sail
away northward in search of adventure.
He left Capt. Pratt to blockade IQuique
with an old wooden corvette manned with
twelve 40-peunders and a wooden gunboat
carrying two 70-pounders and three small
guns. Pratt's own vessel was the corvette,
Esmeralda. The gunboat, Covadonga, had
a commander with the Saxon name of Con-
dell
Now it happened that the same day that
Williams sailed northward, bearing well
out to sea to avoid the eyes of his enemies on
the Bolivian and Peruvian shores, the Peru
Wan feet set sail southwark, hugging the
coast and escaping the eyes of the CHILEAN
lookouts. The Peruvians had all the eyes
on the coast and in Iquique in their favor,
and soon learned that there was nothing
between them and the coveted port and
town except a couple of old wooden hulks,
so their crack vessels, the famous Huascar,
a modern armored turret ship built by the
English Lairds in 1866, and the ironclad La
dependencia, also of English make, started
out to make an early morning scoop of all
Chill held dear in the harbor of Iquique.
The Huascar is 200 feet long, with 300
horse power engines and carried then two
10-inch 300-pounders and two 40-pound
Whitworth guns. The Independence was
215 feet long, with $50 horse power engines,
and armed with twelve 70-pounders, two
150-pounders, four 32-pounders and four
9-pounders. There were twenty-siX guns
wooden ones and the same odds all around.
The Peruvians stood off Iquique all
hight the Goth, and at daylight the 21st
steered for the CHILEAN vessels in the har-
bor The Huascar singled out the Esme-
ralda and the Independence looked after
the Covadonga. To the establishment OF
his enemies af1oat and ashore Pratt hoisted
the signal for fight. There was no es-
cape, for his vessels had a low rate Of
speed. 1t would not have been dishonor-
able to have destroyed his ships and sur
rendered officers and crews, or to have
made a feint with few shots and then
surrendered all.
But Pratt had memory or tradition
of Nelson in his makeup wherever he got
it. He was thirty-one years old and had
just been promoted to the command of the
gallant fleet of two antiquated vessels, one
of which, the Covadonga, he had helped
to capture from the Spaniards when he
was lad of seventeen. On announcing his
purpose to fight for the supremacy at
Iquique, he said "Chilians! The odds are
against US. Our flag has never been lowered
in the presence of an enemy; hope it will
not be today AS long as I live that flag
shall fly in its place, and if die my officers
will know how to do their duty"
The fight opened at s a. m. by shot
from the Huascar between the Gillian
ships. Pratt answered by a broadside and
retired to shoal water, getting between
the Huascar and the town SO as to make
the Peruvians cautious about firing ON
their friends inland. The Independence
steamed toward the Covadonga, which
also ran to shoal water. A duel took place
for two hours between the Huasoar and
the Esmeralda. The former did not rush
to close quarters, however, as her com.
mander, Capt. Grau, suspected that the
Esmeralda lay in nest of submarine tor
pedoes. Opportunity for Grau, some Pc
ruvian soldiers on shore hauled battery
of 9-pound field guns to the beach and
opened on the Esmeralda, forcing her out
into the bay A S00-pound shell from the
Huascar passed into the Esmeralda's en-
CINE room and exploded, wrecking the en-
gines and killing all the engineers. The
Esmeralda's 40-pound shots had but little
effect on the finch plating of her opponent,
L l. G,