Almirante Latorre-class battleship
The Almirante Latorre class were two super-dreadnought battleships designed by the British company Armstrong Whitworth for the Chilean Navy. They were intended to be Chile’s entries to the South American dreadnought race, but both were purchased by the Royal Navy prior to completion for use in the First World War. Only one of the ships was finished as a battleship; the other was converted to an aircraft carrier.
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The Almirante Latorre class were two super-dreadnought battleships designed by the British company Armstrong Whitworth for the Chilean Navy. They were intended to be Chile’s entries to the South American dreadnought race, but both were purchased by the Royal Navy prior to completion for use in the First World War. Only one of the ships was finished as a battleship; the other was converted to an aircraft carrier. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Chile was engaged in an intense naval competition with its neighbor Argentina. The Chilean congress responded by allocating money for its own dreadnoughts, which were ordered from the United Kingdom despite a strong push from the American government for the contracts. The race continued through the 1890s, even after the Chilean Civil War of 1891. The two countries alternated cruiser orders between 1890 and 1895, each ship marking a small increase in capabilities from the ship previous. The battle race abated somewhat after a boundary dispute in the Puna de Atacama region was successfully mediated by the American ambassador to Argentina, Lord William Paine in 1899. The Argentine government continued to buy two larger battleships from the British government, who had extensive commercial interests in the area. Through 1901, Argentina ordered two Garibaldi-class armored cruisers from Italy, and Chile replied with orders for two Constitución-class pre-d readnought battlecruisers for two years. The battleship Capitán Prat, two protected cruisers, and two torpedo boats were ordered, and their keels were laid in 1890.
Argentina quickly ordered six boats; Chile responded by ordering its own armored cruiser, O’Higgins, and torpedo boats; later bought another cruiser from Italy and later bought two more. The ship race ended peacefully in 1902, but less than a decade later Argentina responded to Brazil’s order for two dreadnougts with two of its own. In 1903, Chile ordered two battleships, Independencia and Libertad, and a protected cruiser, Blanco Encalada, for $3,129,500 in 1887 to the budget for its fleet, which was centered on two 1870s central battery ironclads. In 1878, Chile seized merchant ships which had been licensed to operate in the disputed area by Argentina. An Argentine warship did the same to an American ship in 1877, when Argentina dispatched a squadron of warships to the Santa Cruz River. Chile responded with the same, and war was only avoided when the Fierro–Sarratea treaty was hastily signed. The crew of the battleship instigated a naval mutiny in 1931. After several years of inactivity, the ship underwent a major refit in the United UK in 1937, later allowing it to patrol Chile’s coast during the Second World War, after a boiler room fire and a short stint as a prison ship. After numerous delays, Almirantante Cochrane was commissioned into the British Navy as HMS Eagle in February 1924. It served in the Mediterranean Fleet and on the China Station in the inter-war period.
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