Battle of Callao, 1866: Spain's fleet against the guns of Peru

At midday on 2 May 1866 the guns of the Spanish ironclad Numancia opened fire on Callao, and within minutes the whole bay was lost in smoke. Ashore, gunners and soldiers, helped by crowds of volunteers from Lima and Callao, manned the batteries they had been building for weeks. Afloat, seven Spanish ships fought to restore the honor of a squadron whose shelling of an undefended city had stained its name. When the firing stopped five hours later, each side was sure it had won.¹

Background: a war of islands and honor

The war grew out of a quarrel between Spain and its former colony. In 1864, in a dispute with the Peruvian government, a Spanish squadron seized Peru's Chincha Islands. A treaty of January 1865 seemed to end the crisis, but it was bitterly resented in Peru. When the war resumed, Chile, then Peru, then Ecuador and Bolivia joined against Spain.²

On 31 March 1866 the Spanish Pacific squadron, now under Casto Méndez Núñez, bombarded Valparaíso, Chile's great port, which had no defenses. It was one of the most controversial episodes of the war, and Spanish officers felt the honor of their navy had been stained. They resolved to prove themselves against the strongest place on the coast: Callao, the port of Lima. Méndez Núñez chose 2 May for the attack, the anniversary of the rising of Madrid against Napoleon's troops in 1808.³ › 2 May in military history

Armies and commanders

The Spanish squadron numbered six frigates and a schooner: the ironclad Numancia, the only armored ship, with the wooden frigates Blanca, Resolución, Berenguela, Villa de Madrid and Almansa and the schooner Vencedora. The Chilean navy's study counts about 251 guns in all, ABC 270. Méndez Núñez had taken over the squadron as captain of the Numancia, which he left under the command of Juan Bautista Antequera.⁴

Peru had spent the months since the seizure of the Chinchas turning Callao into a fortress. The Spanish naval journal Revista General de Marina describes two armored towers, two forts and six battery positions, with nine heavy guns among them, a small flotilla of two monitors and three steamers, a minefield fired from the shore and spar torpedoes. ABC counts 56 guns ashore and 13 afloat. The defense was organized by the minister of war and navy, José Gálvez, who took post in the armored tower of La Merced. Gálvez was not a professional soldier but a lawyer and politician, given the rank of colonel by Mariano Ignacio Prado, whose revolution of 1865 had brought him to power; at a ceremony in 2015 Peru's defense minister remembered him as a modernizer of the state.⁵

Peru's own new warships were not there. The seizure of the Chinchas had made the purchase of ships abroad urgent, and two of them, the frigate Independencia and the monitor Huáscar, built in Britain, were still on their way and arrived only after the battle. So Callao would be defended from the shore, by guns, mines and the handful of small vessels in the harbor.⁶

The people of Lima and Callao poured into the port to help. One heavy gun, brought up and mounted at the last moment by volunteers, became known as the Cañón del Pueblo, the People's Gun: the Chilean study says more than 3,000 volunteers hauled it into place in under a day.⁷

The battle in phases

The approach. Late in the morning the squadron left its anchorage off San Lorenzo island and stood in toward the port. Méndez Núñez divided it into three groups and sent them against the batteries all at once, at close range, rather than concentrating his fire on one sector at a time; the Revista General de Marina notes that most later students of the battle think concentration would have been wiser.⁸

The opening exchange. At about noon the Numancia fired the first shot, and the batteries answered. The flagship drew the heaviest fire, and early in the action Méndez Núñez was struck down and wounded on her bridge, while Antequera fought the ship on.⁹

The Merced tower. Early in the battle a Spanish shell exploded inside the Merced tower. The blast killed Gálvez and many of the men around him. Peru remembers him as the hero of the day: the Peruvian presidency honors him as the colonel who died in the tower directing the fight.¹⁰

Ships in distress. The Spanish ships suffered badly too. A shell set the Almansa on fire close to her magazine, and only the determination of her captain saved the ship. The Blanca, fighting close inshore to improve her aim, took heavy fire and in the end ran out of ammunition and had to haul off.¹¹

The end of the day. As the afternoon wore on the fire slackened on both sides. Toward five o'clock the Spanish ships still in action drew off toward San Lorenzo. By the Spanish account only three Peruvian guns were still answering; the Chilean study agrees that three guns were still firing as the squadron withdrew, and takes that as proof the batteries were never silenced.¹²

Turning point: who won?

The verdicts have never been reconciled. Spain held that the squadron had silenced the batteries and saved its honor. In Peru the day is a national holiday, and many Peruvians see it as the moment their independence was finally secured. The Revista General de Marina notes that the battle was celebrated as a victory in Spain and in Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia alike.¹³

Historians have looked for a middle way. The Chilean study quotes José Ramón García, who judged the truth to lie between two subjective versions: the Peruvian guns were not silenced, no Peruvian ship was taken or sunk and the port works survived, but the defenders sank no Spanish ship either. The Peruvian naval historian Jorge Ortiz Sotelo, as reported by the Revista General de Marina, thinks the result favored Peru in the north of the bay, Spain in the south, and was even in the center.¹⁴

Aftermath

The squadron spent several days at San Lorenzo repairing damage, tending its wounded and burying its dead, 43 men by all three Spanish and Chilean counts. Guard boats watched for Peruvian explosive craft, but the canoes and spar torpedoes achieved nothing, in the battle or in the attack on the anchored ships a few nights later. Then the Spanish left the Pacific. Part of the squadron, with Méndez Núñez, sailed round Cape Horn for the South Atlantic; the Numancia and the rest went west by way of the Philippines. When the Numancia reached Cádiz on 20 September 1867 she had become the first ironclad to sail around the world.¹⁵

Peace came slowly. Only in 1879, by a treaty signed in Paris, did Spain recognize Peru's independence and agree to exchange diplomats.¹⁶ › Battle of Angamos, 1879

Legacy and memory

In Peru, 2 May is remembered as a victory of soldiers and civilians together. The presidency marks the anniversary, and the Ministry of Defense has held its ceremony at the Cañón del Pueblo in Callao. The original Blakely gun of the People's Gun was rediscovered by construction workers, in 2003 according to the Chilean study and in 2004 according to the Revista General de Marina, and after restoration it fires a salute at the anniversary ceremonies.¹⁷

In Spain the battle is remembered as a victory and a feat of the navy: ABC still calls it the exploit of a fragile squadron. The Spanish naval historian and admiral Julio Guillén Tato, quoted by ABC, was harsher on the whole war, which he called stupid for the errors of both sides.¹⁸

Visiting Callao today

The waterfront of Callao keeps the memory of the battle in the open air. Replicas of the Merced tower and of the People's Gun stand on the seafront promenade, close to where the originals were placed in 1866, and the old Real Felipe fortress, where the Peruvian command post stood, still dominates the port.¹⁹