The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-03-22

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 assaulted 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 &C
count of itself
The list OF her naval heroes reads like a
page from English or American records.
with its 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 j Ohm 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 its fifth taken away. Should the
Pratt, or Pratt, prove worthy the name it
carries, our Yorktown, Baltimore, Phils-
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 a 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 1872 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 closs
Iquique, port in dispute, against the
enemy. All her navy lay in the harbor for
some days, but on the 18th of May, there
being no Peruvian flags in sight, the adj
miral, one Williams, with long Spanish
handle to his name, took a notion TO sail
away northward in search of adventure
lie left Capt. Pratt to blockade Iquique
with an old wooden corvette manned with
twelve 40pounders and wooden gunboat
carrying two 70pOunders and three small
guns. Pratt's own vessel was the corvette,
Esmeralda. The gunboat, Covadonga had
Il 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 Chilian
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 couple of old wooden hulks,
so their crack vessels, the famous Huascar,
q modern armored turret ship built by the
English Lairds in 1866, and the ironclad To-
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
2l5 feet long, with $50 horse power engines,
and armed with twelve 70-pounders, two
150-pounders, four 32-pounders and four
9pounders. There were twenty-six guns
against Pratt : seventeen, iron sides against
wooden ones and the same odds all around.