With the assumption of the Peruvian presidency by Nicolás de Piérola, W. R. Grace & Co. continued to act as a purchasing agent of munitions but W. R. Grace withdrew from active involvement. Charles Flint corresponded with John Ericsson regarding his torpedo designs.
In 1861 John Ericsson built the Monitor that fought the Confederate Merrimac during the Civil War. Ericcson worked previously with the Peruvians in May of 1862, when he was asked to build two boats similar to the Monitor. (Yábar, 2001, pg. 410) Ericsson also invented two other innovative weapons, one a torpedo cannon that could fire projectiles and also the Destroyer, a boat with a cannon mounted in its prow.
Flint and Ericsson tested dummy projectiles on the North River. Gullermo Bogardus, the agent for Peru, and Flint inspected the original Destroyer then in the port of New York and negotiated the purchase and a delivery date. It is possible that Peru succeeded in acquiring the torpedo cannon, but there is no indication that they were able to acquire the Destroyer. (Yábar, 2001, 411-413)
Realizing that the ports of Peru would be blockaded by Chile, the Grace firm shipped a cartridge factory to Peru which began turning out cartridges soon after its arrival.
Resources:
Yábar Acuña, Francisco. 2001. Las Fuerzas Sutiles y la defensa de costa durante la Guerra del Pacifico. Lima: Dirección de Intereses Marítimos. 650 pp.
W.R. Grace Continues Shipping Munitions
The Torpedo Men
In August 1879, the Chilean consul in Panama again protested the departure of the Limeña with torpedos for Peru. Chilean spies worked for the Panama railroad. It was almost impossible to secretly ship arms, because the Chileans knew when they would arrive on the other side of the isthmus.
By August, there were three groups of torpedo men from the U.S. in Peru: the Lay, the U.S. Torpedo Co., and the Herreshoff men. A "rowdy, hard-drinking lot", they drew their pay in gold, and consorted with ladies at the Callao waterfront.
On the 15th, the Chileans detained an armored torpedo boat leaving Pisagua for Iquique with four crew members under orders of Peru. The Chileans arrested them and placed them on board an armored ship the same day. The crew included William Alfred Scott, 41, the British commander of the vessel who had contracted the other members, Abraham Johnson of Jamaica, Cosem Espiro, 31, a Greek,and John Shertzer. a U.S. engineer. Before they were arrested, they threw overboard two booms 15 feet in length, each one with a torpedo full of dynamite. The government of Peru was paying them ten soles daily with the promise of paying them 10,000 soles for each armored Chilean ship that they sunk with their torpedos, through Casa Grace. They had made four large torpedos, capable of holding 200 pounds of dynamite, as well has two 90 pounds ones and four smaller ones of four pounds. They were also to earn 5000 soles for any wood boats they were able to sink. Their contract was time-limited, and extended two months from the time they left Callao. (Lopez, 1930, pg. 307, 308)
On the 20th, Charles W. Read, an ex-confederate recruited by Charles Flint, sailed for Peru. During the Civil War, Read commanded a Confederate torpedo squadron on the Mississippi River. Read brought with him an engineer, John H. Smith. After previously testing torpedos in Narragansett Bay, they followed the munitions down and across the isthmus and to Peru. The Peruvian Navy commissioned Read as a commander and offered him a substantial amount of prize money if they sunk the principal Chilean war ships.
A dispute arose amongst the Peruvian officers, when they heard that a prize would be awarded to Read for sinking the Chilean ships. The naval commandant at Callao told Read that no prize money would be forthcoming, so Read headed back to the United States. W. R. Grace was disgusted with this handling of affairs and felt the torpedo men had made a poor use of the weapons.
Resources
Lopez, Jacinto. 1930. Historia de la Guerra del Guano y el Salitre o Guerra del Pacifico entre Chile, Bolivia y El Peru. New York: De Laisne & Rossboro.
Arms Shipments Under U.S. Neutrality
The World Book of 1952 said that "no important problems in foreign relations arose" during the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes. He and his Secretary of State, William Evarts, are said to have maintained an outwardly neutral stance toward the war. Some said that the Europeans welcomed the war, as they had endured a long period without seeing any return on their capital nor interest in their debt. Their interests were more aligned with Chile, also a debtor, but not to the extent that Peru had reached.
After the Civil War, American military forces were downsized and ex-military officers looked for new opportunities. Peru sought foreign expertise and munitions developed during that war. A young Union naval engineer named John Louis Lay made what is known as a spar torpedo, an explosive charge on the end of a pole twenty or thirty feet long. After the war, Lay became a torpedo manufacturer and developed a new torpedo that could be sent against a target a mile away. The United States Torpedo Co. manufactured a somewhat similar instrument.
For use with these torpedos, Navy officers preferred a small boat made by the shipbuilding firm of Herreshoff of Bristol, Rhode Island. Grace took a ride on one in Long Island Sound. He decided that the only thing to save Peru was torpedo launches, and bought it for $18,500, billing the craft to the Compañía Cargadora del Perú, guano dealers of Callao.
The boat was 50 foot in length. It was difficult to disguise, so delivery to Peru was problematic. It is implied that the purchase of two steamers by the Peruvian government from the Pacific Steam Navigation Co. was required to effect the delivery of this boat and five others. Herreshoff boats were shipped in sections as "carriages" all ready to bolt and put back together. The first launch arrived in Peru in August of 1879.
Grace, acting as an agent of Peru, sent several torpedos and torpedo boats to Peru along with experts from the two companies. W.W. Rowley of the Lay Company went down to direct the proposed plan, traveling under the name of H. J. Patchen.
Meanwhile, Charles Flint wrapped torpedos in oil cloth and sent a thousand rifles masquerading as agricultural equipment to Peru. Flint decided that by shipping through Colombia, they could avoid having to cross Panama, where there was likelihood that the munitions would fall into the hands of the Chileans. Ten dirigible torpedos from Pratt and Whitney were slipped into the center of ten cases of oil-cloth.
Flint determined that oilcloth shipped by itself weighed about the same as two layers of oilcloth with a torpedo inside. "Peru did a surprisingly large business in oilcloth during those days" Cartridges surrounded by lard were sent in lard barrels. (Flint, 1923)
Resources
Flint, Charles R. 1923. Memories of an active life: men and ships and sealing wax. Putnam. 349 pp.
Struggle for Control of the Nitrate Fields
Political unrest continued in Peru. In October of 1878, rumors again surfaced of a Pierolist revolutionary plot in Arequipa, but the leaders were arrested. On November 16 Manuel Pardo, now the ex-president, was assassinated by a disgruntled office seeker. The wife of Nicolás de Piérola was arrested on the same day that Don Manuel Pardo was assassinated, but was released for lack of evidence
In November of 1878 Chile’s President Anibal Pinto Garmendia protested a tax increase on the mining and export of nitrates by the Chilean mining companies in Bolivia. The Chilean manager at Antofagasta refused to pay the tax. He was arrested and the Chilean Nitrate Company fell into the hands of the Bolivians. W. R. Grace wrote to President Pardo, promising to work towards mediating the quarrel between Peru and Chile.
In an effort to monopolize the nitrate industry, a corporation was formed known as the Nitrate Company. In 1879, William Grace secured the rights to be the sole agency of this firm for shipping Peruvian nitrate of soda for four years, with distribution in Europe by the Baring Brothers and in the United States by W. R. Grace & Co. The Grace house stood to clear more than $1 million during the life of the four-year contract. This was detrimental to the nitrate producers and merchants of Chile, and Charles Flint claims that this was a factor that led up to the War of the Pacific. (Flint, 1923)
On February 14th, 1879, Chileans landed troops on Bolivian soil at Antofagasta to take possession of the nitrate grounds, in response to confiscation of the English-owned Chilean Nitrate Company there. When mediation failed, Grace helped in the search for some means to make a quick and crippling blow to the Chilean navy.
Charles Flint was serving as Consul for Chile in New York, entrusted with the conduct of the Chilean Legation, while at the same time his firm was the financial agent for Peru. After receiving cables from Peru to ship munitions to Callao, he resigned as Chilean Consul. The Baring Brothers helped Grace secure Krupp and Armstrong guns for use by Peru against Chile.
Resources:
Flint, Charles R. 1923. Memories of an active life: men and ships and sealing wax. Putnam. 349 pp
Charles R. Flint
Charles R. Flint was born in Maine, and was early drawn to the sea by his father Benjamin Flint Chapman, a partner in a shipbuilding company. He eventually moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York where, after attending school, he sought work.
As secretary for Jose Antonio Garcia y Garcia, the Minister of Peru to the United States, he helped buy and fit out three transports and two monitors (later christened the Atahualpa and the Manco Capac) (Flint, 1923) Captain Gilchrest escorted the monitors on their trip from New York to Peru in the steamship, the Maranon, arriving after many long sea miles at Callao in the fall of 1869. (Clayton, 1985)
Charles soon met and joined the firm of W.R. Grace, making two long trips to South America in 1874 and 1876. Assessing the value of various trade goods such as lard, canned goods, crackers, brooms, tobacco and nails, he identified Great Britain as a principal competitor. Charles grew to have a 25% interest in the W.R. Grace Company. This was later increased to 35%.
By 1879 he was serving as the Chilean consul in New York, still a partner in W.R. Grace and Co. (Flint, 1923) So when war came, he found himself on both sides of the war.
Resources:
Clayton, Lawrence. 1985. Grace: W.R. Grace & Co. The formative years 1850-1930. Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson. 403 pp.
Flint, Charles R. 1923. Memories of an active life: men and ships and sealing wax. Putnam. 349 pp.
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