Chilean torpedo gunboat Almirante Simpson

Almirante Simpson was a unique design of torpedo gunboat, built by the British shipyard Laird Brothers. Acquired by the Chilean Navy in 1895, during construction. The ship had a brief service in Chile, being transferred to the Ecuadorian Navy in 1907 and renamed Libertador Bolívar. She was the first Ecuadorian warship of the 20th century and had an important participation in the Ecuadorian Civil War of 1913–1916. After the war, the ship was retired and then sank in 1928.

For other ships with the same name, see Chilean ship Almirante Simpson.
Almirante Simpson in 1904
History
Chile
Name: Almirante Simpson
Namesake: Robert Winthrop Simpson
Builder: Laird Brothers, Birkenhead, UK
Cost: £67,000[1]
Laid down: 1895
Launched: 1896
Commissioned: 1897
Decommissioned: 1907
Fate: Transferred to Ecuador in 1907
Ecuador
Renamed: Libertador Bolívar
Namesake: Simón Bolívar
Acquired: 1907
Commissioned: 1907
Out of service: 1917
Fate: Sank in the Guayas River in 1928 due to poor condition
General characteristics
Type: Torpedo gunboat
Displacement: 800 t / 858 t
Length: 73.15 m (240 ft) w/l
Beam: 8.38 m (27.5 ft)
Draught: 4.27 m (14.0 ft)
Depth: 4.6 m (15 ft)
Installed power:
  • 4 boilers
  • 4,500 ihp (3,400 kW)
Propulsion: 2 × triple-expansion steam engines
Speed: 21.5 knots (24.7 mph; 39.8 km/h)
Complement:
  • 128 (peacetime)
  • 166 (wartime)
Armament:
Armour:
  • Bridge - bunkers: 25.4 mm (1.00 in)
  • Engines - boilers: 25 mm (0.98 in)
  • Guns: 114.3 mm (4.50 in)

Acquisition

After Chilean Civil War of 1891, the government of President Jorge Montt (1891–1896) carried out a naval acquisitions project to repower the Chilean Navy. The government ordered the construction of cruisers, destroyers, torpedo gunboats and a training ship in the United Kingdom.[2] These ships were ordered in the context of the Argentine–Chilean naval arms race.[3]

In 1895, construction began at the British shipyard Laird Brothers, in Birkenhead, of a torpedo gunboat for the Royal Navy to be called HMS Lion.[4] But on 30 August of that year, during construction, the ship was bought by the Chilean government, as part of the new naval acquisitions, being renamed Almirante Simpson.[5]

Design and description

Type

This ship belongs to the first generation of destroyers of the late 19th century, designed to hunt down and destroy torpedo boats. These were the torpedo gunboats. But this ship is sometimes considered a torpedo cruiser.[6]

The shipyard Laird Brothers, was one of the British shipyards that worked on the design and construction of the first British destroyers.[7] He was also hired to build the first ships of this type for the Chilean Navy in 1889, the two torpedo gunboats of the Almirante Lynch class.[8] These two ships carried out the first successful attack with self-propelled torpedoes in the Chilean Civil War of 1891 by sinking the ironclad Blanco Encalada, demonstrating to the world that this type of ships was not only capable of destroying torpedo boats, but also battleships.[9]

Characteristics

This steel-hulled torpedo gunboat was 73.15 m (240 ft) long overall, a beam of 8.38 m (27.5 ft), a max draft of 4.27 m (14.0 ft)[10] and depth of 4.6 m (15 ft).[4] She displaced 800[10] or 858[4] tons, being slightly higher in tonnage than the first destroyers.[11] She had a ram bow, a raised forecastle and poop, two masts and two funnels set very close together.[12] The crew was 128 men in peacetime and 166 men in wartime.[4]

Her propulsion system consisted of two triple-expansion steam engines, powered by two screw propellers.[1] She had four Normand-type watertube boilers.[10] The ship could steam at a top speed of 21.5 knots (24.7 mph; 39.8 km/h) from 4,500 ihp (3,400 kW).[12] Although at the time of the transfer to Ecuador, she cannot make more than 19 knots and during World War I about 17 knots.[13] She had a storage capacity for 100 tons of coal.[1]

The ship's armament consisted of two 120 mm Armstrong QF guns, one mounted in the forecastle and one in the poop, and four 47 mm Hotchkiss QF guns.[12] Also, three 18-inch torpedo tubes; one was fixed in the bow, the other was in a trainable mounting ahead of the funnels to starboard, and the third in a trainable mounting abaft the funnels to port.[10]

His armor was made of Harvey steel.[1] The bridge and the bunkers had a protection of 25.4 mm (1.00 in). There was 25 mm (0.98 in) steel plating over the engine and boiler rooms,[12] and the guns had a protection of 114.3 mm (4.50 in).[1]

Service history

Career in Chile

On 22 March 1897, she sailed from Plymouth to Chile, as part of the great fleet of new ships acquired by the Chilean government, which was under Admiral Luis A. Goñi.[upper-alpha 1] Due to the large number of ships that the Chilean Navy had at this time, the fleet was organized into three divisions, with Almirante Simpson integrating the first division. During the year 1898 she participated in the intense period of naval training with the rest of the fleet, due to the situation of maximum tension between Chile and Argentina.[3]

After a decade of service in the navy, on 12 September 1907, through Law No. 2,018, the Chilean government authorized the sale of the ship to an allied country. The sale included the two ships of the Almirante Lynch-class, but for various reasons the sale failed. Finally, an agreement was successfully negotiated with the government of Ecuador.[15]

Career in Ecuador

On 5 November of that year, the governments of Chile and Ecuador reached an agreement for the exchange of ships, in which the first transferred torpedo ship Almirante Simpson and the second the training ship Marañón, ex-Chilean ship previously sold.[15] The torpedo ship was acquired as part of an effort by the government of President Eloy Alfaro to restore the navy, becoming the most important ship acquired at that time. Also acquired in the context of the arrival in Ecuador of the Chilean Naval Mission (1905–1916), which had the function of organizing the navy and turning it into a professional institution.[16]

In that month the torpedo ship arrived in Guayaquil and, upon being received by the naval commander of the Guayas District, she was renamed Libertador Bolívar by decree of President Alfaro.[4] This was the first proper warship of the Ecuadorian Navy in the 20th century.[4] The ship's first commander was Captain Rubén Morales Perón, a Chilean officer in the service of Ecuador.[upper-alpha 2] After the acquisition, the Naval Academy Course operated on this ship, and the cadets had to learn to use their modern armament and engines.[18]

In 1909, Libertador Bolívar helped in the transfer of artillery from Guayaquil to Punta de Piedra, to fortify the area.[19] In 1910, during the military tension between Ecuador and Peru, she was enlisted for war and embarked President Alfaro to the conflict zone in the El Oro Province.[19] He also had to guard the maritime border with the aviso ship Tarqui, while that the auxiliary cruiser Cotopaxi and the ships of public and private transport mobilized troops and other military elements.[20] In that same year, after the military tension with Peru, she sailed for Chile to attend the celebrations of the centenary of Chilean independence.[21]

In 1913 a Naval Engineers Course was created on board the ship, but it was later eliminated due to the political and economic situation in the country.[20] In that year the Ecuadorian Civil War of 1913–1916 broke out, so the government of Leónidas Plaza prepared the ship to leave for the conflict zone in the Esmeraldas Province, where the rebel forces led by Carlos Concha were located. During the war, the support of the naval forces was relevant. The rebels conspired to seize the ship, but failed. Libertador Bolívar was initially commanded by Chilean Captain Roberto Stone and later by Ecuadorian Lieutenant Luis F. Auz. She had an important role in the transport of troops, the blockade of the coast, in the two bombardments carried out at the port of Esmeraldas in 1913 and 1914, in the amphibious landings, among other military actions.[22]

After the war, the navy ships were in terrible shape. Libertador Bolívar was the most deteriorated of the navy ships and needed urgent repairs.[23] But the country's economic situation indefinitely postponed the repair of the ship. In 1917, she was disarmed, being out of service.[24] In July 1826 a commission of navy officers was formed to analyze the advisability of rebuilding the ship, concluding that she was irreparable.[25] In 1928 the ship sank in the Guayas River due to the poor condition it had reached, for the time that she was without maintenance or necessary repairs.[26] Libertador Bolívar was only replaced in 1935 by a new ship called Presidente Alfaro, of a lower technical level than the torpedo ship, since it was only a yacht or pleasure vessel converted into a training ship.[27]

See also

Footnotes

Notes
  1. This fleet of new ships that sailed from Plymouth, in addition to Almirante Simpson, was made up of the cruisers Esmeralda and Ministro Zenteno, the destroyers Muñoz Gamero, Orella, Serrano and Riquelme, and torpedo gunboats Hyatt and Videla. Although the torpedo gunboats had to return to the United Kingdom due to technical problems and then sailed for Chile with four more torpedo gunboats that were acquired.[14]
  2. Upon the arrival of the Chilean Naval Mission in Ecuador, several Chilean officers occupied positions in the naval institution. In the Libertador Bolívar, in addition to the captain, there were several Chilean officers and engineers.[17]

Citations
  1. "Cazatorpedero "Almirante Simpson" 2°", Unidades Navales.
  2. Fuenzalida Bade, Rodrigo (1979). "El vicealmirante don Jorge Montt Álvarez" (PDF) (in Spanish). 96 (732). Viña del Mar, Chile: Revista de Marina: 598. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. Castagneto Garviso, Piero (2018). "De la Guerra del Pacífico hasta fines del siglo XIX". Escuadra Nacional 1818-2018 (in Spanish). Armada de Chile. p. 149.
  4. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 166.
  5. "El vicealmirante Roberto Simpson Winthrop" (PDF) (in Spanish). 110 (812). Viña del Mar, Chile: Revista de Marina. 1993: 5. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Brassey, Thomas, ed. (1913). "List of British and Foreign Ships". Portsmouth, UK: The Naval Annual, J. Griffin and Co.: 281. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. López Urrutia 1986, p. 2.
  8. López Urrutia 1986, p. 2–3.
  9. López Urrutia 1986, p. 3–4.
  10. Gardiner 1979, p. 414.
  11. López Urrutia 1986, p. 4.
  12. "Almirante Simpson torpedo gunboat (1896)", Fighting ships of the World.
  13. "Libertador Bolívar torpedo gunboat (1896/1907)". Fighting ships of the World. Navypedia. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  14. López Urrutia, Carlos (2007). Historia de la Marina de Chile (in Spanish) (2 ed.). Santiago, Chile: El Ciprés Editores. p. 459. ISBN 978-0-6151-8574-3.
  15. Bravo Valdivieso, Germán (2018). "La trágica historia del transporte Casma" (PDF) (in Spanish). 135 (963). Viña del Mar, Chile: Revista de Marina: 83. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  16. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 165–171.
  17. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 166, 175.
  18. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 184.
  19. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 168.
  20. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 185.
  21. Estrada Ycaza, Julio (1972). El puerto de Guayaquil (in Spanish). I. Ecuador: Archivo Histórico del Guayas. p. 202.
  22. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 172, 177–182.
  23. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 191.
  24. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 200.
  25. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 198.
  26. Historia marítima del Ecuador: Época Contemporánea (in Spanish). Armada del Ecuador, Instituto de Historia Marítima. 1997. p. 71.
  27. Vargas Molina 2014, p. 199.

References
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