page_title: Fortress of Humaitá
section_title: Defective weaponry
hierarchical_section_title: Fortress of Humaitá / Weaknesses / Defective weaponry
caption_attribution_description: English: The last remaining Paraguayan artillery pieces at Humaitá collected for distribution between the Allies as war booty.
context_page_description: The Fortress of Humaitá, known metaphorically as the Gibraltar of South America, was a Paraguayan military installation near the mouth of the River Paraguay. A strategic site without equal in the region, "a fortress the likes of which had never been seen in South America", it was "the key to Paraguay and the upper rivers". It played a crucial role in the deadliest conflict in the continent's history – the Paraguayan War – of which it was the principal theatre of operations.
  The site was a sharp horseshoe bend in the river; practically all vessels wishing to enter the Republic of Paraguay – and indeed to steam onwards to the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso – were forced to navigate it. The bend was commanded by a 6,000-foot line of artillery batteries, at the end of which was a chain boom which, when raised, detained the shipping under the guns. The navigable channel was only 200 yards wide and ran in easy reach of the artillery.
context_section_description: Although Paraguay could and did manufacture large artillery guns, there was nevertheless a shortage—partly because guns had to be taken to reinforce the landward artillery –  and not all of the guns at Humaitá were of acceptable standard. When Burton inspected them (August 1868) he noted that many had been thrown into deep water but the remainder were poor:
  
  The guns barely deserve the name; some of them were so honeycombed that they must have been used as street posts...  Not the worst of them were made at Asunción or Ibicuy, whose furnaces and air chimneys could melt four tons per diem.  Some had been converted, but it was a mere patchwork.  A few rifled 12-pounders had been cast at Asunción.  There were sundry old tubes bearing the arms of Spain; two hailed from Seville, the San Gabriel (A.D. 1671) and the San Juan de Dios (1684).
  However, Burton may well have been underestimating the Paraguayan artillery at its zenith: according to both Thompson and Jourdan, some guns had already been evacuated to the Chaco side by the Paraguayans when abandoning the fortress.  The gunboat HMS Dotterel, while anchored at Humaitá for three hours in June 1865, from the river counted 116 guns, a number far greater than was recorded by Burton or Jourdan when inspecting the captured fortress.
caption: The last remaining Paraguayan artillery pieces at Humaitá collected for distribution between the Allies as war booty.  "There were sundry old tubes bearing the arms of Spain; two hailed from Seville, the San Gabriel (A.D. 1671) and the San Juan de Dios (1684)".[165]
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