On June 7th, the Chileans stormed Arica's fortifications. The Peruvians fought to the death, and among those lost were Francisco Bolognesi and Alfonso Ugarte.
In June or early July, 1880 several of a new torpedo, developed by the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Captain John Ericsson, were being shipped via Panama to Peru. (Panama Star Herald, Oct. 2, 1880)
Also in June, Paul Boyton paddled down the Delaware from Philadelphia to Ship John's light.
On June 28th in New York, W. R. Grace, his wife and two daughters boarded the ferry, the Sewanhaka, that carried passengers from Manhattan across Long Island Sound. While near Hell's Gate, passengers heard a rumble and saw a fire. Passengers cut off by the fire from escape jumped into the sea and drowned. Fifty people died. W. R. Grace helped calm passengers and helped them make their escape from the burning ship. The next day he emerged as a hero. The Democrats, looking for a strong candidate and successful businessman, asked him to run for Mayor of New York. (Grace, 1953) (Clayton, 1985)
Resources:
Clayton, Lawrence. 1985. Grace: W.R. Grace & Co. The formative years 1850-1930. Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson. 403 pp.
Grace, J. Peter Jr. 1953. W. R. Grace (1932-1904) and the enterprises he created. New York, Newcomen Society, 1953. 28 pp.
1880 June
W.R. Grace Continues Shipping Munitions
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 Seeks Torpedo Experts
W.R. Grace contacted a Civil War veteran, Captain Griffin. The Captain agreed to sink the Almirante Cochrane or the Blanco Encalada for one million dollars. With Griffin not willing to lower his price, Grace said he would contact men of the Navy or on the Confederate side. He suggested that his brother in Peru, Michael Grace, contact American torpedo men there and also William H. Cilley. Cilley had been the superintendent of the Oroya railroad, and was still in Peru trying to salvage the Henry Meigg's fortunes. On June 21, 1879 William Alfred Scott of England and John Shertzer, both long time residents of Peru, were engaged to build floating torpedos in Iquique.
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
Casa Grace in Peru
Another company with strong ties to the United States had a vested interest in the growing conflict between Bolivia, Peru, and Chile.The Grace Company was one of Meigg's chief sources for supplies for building the railroads. In the late 1800s, the Grace Company built a wide ranging trade with Peru, in paper, chemicals, and mining and dealt in consumer goods as kerosene, furniture, lumber, lard, fish, canned goods, crackers, textiles, billiard tables, and Singer sewing machines.
At 19 years old, William Russell Grace arrived in Peru in 1851 on the Louisa with his father and 180 other passengers. Seeking relief from the Irish potato famine, many of them had been brought from Ireland to be laborers on a sugar plantation. Soon after arrival, W.R. Grace found work as a clerk for John Bryce, a merchant in Callao.
Grace built a profitable business supplying goods to the guano fleet anchored off the Chincha Islands, 100 miles south of Callao. He stocked an old barge and lived aboard the vessel, thus providing the guano miners convenient access to needed items. In 1859, he married the daughter of Captain George Gilchrest.
Grace left Peru in 1860, settling in New York in 1865, where he later served two terms as Mayor of New York. He maintained his business interests in the western coast of South America. By then he had formed a partnership with Bryce called Bryce, Grace and Company. The company made transportation arrangements and secured ships, mainly between Peru and Europe.
The partnership between the families Bryce and Grace ended in 1876, to be replaced in Peru with the Grace Brothers Company, or Casa Grace. Michael Grace, his brother, handled company affairs in Peru, along with other agents, Charles R. Flint and W.R. Graces's nephew, Ned Eyre. W.R. Grace expanded his company's business into the ownership of Peruvian sugar plantations, as well as the shipping and distribution of nitrates in the United States. Grace Brothers transported 75 Chinese laborers from California to work in his grape and cotton plantations.
In New York, Grace set up an allied company, W.R. Grace and Company, from capital built during his short time in Peru. Some of his business clients included Henry Meiggs and the major French trader in guano, Dreyfus Brothers. Grace's company helped stock the Dreyfus ships before their trips to Europe.
In 1953, Peter Grace would describe his grandfather, William R. Grace, thusly:
"His was the business philosphy of optimism, and faith in fair dealings; of the
joy and satisfaction of constructive work; of courage in adversity and zest for
the game. It was the philosophy of business diversification, of constantly
thinking decades ahead, yet not hobbling foresight with mere dreaming; it was
belief in the men on his team and backing them to the hilt, with supreme
confidence that a job well done would win the day. He believed in
boundless industry but never to the point where work was not fun. He was
dedicated to practical Pan-Americanism. He firmly acknowledged his duty to serve
and love his God and Country." (Grace, 1953, p. 9)
Financing of the company moved from Peru to New York, in part due to the participation of the British firm, Baring Brothers. With the growth of railroads in the U.S., W. R. Grace was able to take advantage of shipping from either coast to build his supply routes to both coasts of Latin America.
As of 1953, the W.R. Grace company operated shipping services along South America's west coast, owned Peruvian textile mills, Chilean nitrate businesses, sugar plantations, and Brazilian rubber industries. His company continued to ship agricultural and electrical equipment to South America, and built a banking capability. W.R. Grace promoted the building of the Panama Canal, and was a close associate of key leaders in Peru and the United States. (Grace, 1953)
Resources:
Clayton, Lawrence. 1985. Grace: W.R. Grace & Co. The formative years 1850-1930. Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson. 403 pp.
Grace, J. Peter Jr. 1953. W. R. Grace (1932-1904) and the enterprises he created. New York, Newcomen Society, 1953. 28 pp.
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