Some months afterwards the Wyndham frigate of 44 guns anchored at Valparaiso. She belonged to the East India Company, and at the suggestion of Alvarez Condarco, then in London, had been sent there for sale. Guido raised a loan among the merchants of Valparaiso, and gave the guarantee of the Argentine Government for 50,000 dollars, so that the Government of Chile, in spite of the exhausted state of the treasury just before Maipó, purchased the ship for 180,000 dollars, and named her the Lautaro. She shipped a crew of 100 sailors of various nationalities, and 250 Chilians, soldiers, boatmen, and fishermen. The marines were placed under the command of Captain Miller, an Englishman, and command of the ship was given to Captain O’Brien,[13] who had served in the English navy, with Turner as lieutenant. All the officers were either English or North Americans, except Miller; not one of them could give orders in Spanish. “Nevertheless,” says Miller, in his Memoirs, “ten hours after sailing she fought and fought well.”
The Spanish Pacific squadron at this time consisted of 17 ships, mounting 331 guns. After the victory of Maipó, O’Higgins ordered his two ships to put to sea in search of the Spanish ships which had been blockading Valparaiso. They sailed on the afternoon of the 26th April. At daybreak on the 27th the Lautaro sighted the 44-gun frigate Esmeralda making for the port, followed at some miles distance by the 18-gun brig Pezuela. O’Brien hoisted the English flag and sailed straight for her, till off her quarter and to windward, when he hauled down the English flag, hoisted the Chilian, and ran into her, exchanging a broadside. Followed by thirty or forty men, he then leaped on board, driving the Spaniards from the upper deck, and hauling down her flag. A shot from the lower deck killed him, and he fell, shouting, “Stick to her, boys! The ship’s ours.”
But while the fighting went on the ships had separated. Turner, thinking the enemy was captured, sent off a boat with eighteen men to assist, and sailed off in the Lautaro against the Pezuela, which hauled down her flag without firing a shot. Meantime Coig, commander of the Esmeralda, had rallied his men, recaptured the upper deck, drove the rest of the assailants overboard, and on the return of the Lautaro made off, accompanied by the Pezuela, for Talcahuano, both of them being swifter ships than the Lautaro. On their way back to port the Chilian vessels captured a Spanish brig, whose value more than covered the cost of the Lautaro.
Government then bought an American privateer mounting 20 guns, and named her the Chacabuco. Soon afterwards an American brig mounting 16 guns was purchased, and named the Araucano. In August the ship Cumberland, purchased by Condarco in London, arrived, and was named the San Martin.
Chile had thus rapidly acquired a small fleet of her own, and, looking about for an admiral, she chose Don Manuel Blanco Encalada, a young officer of artillery. Born in Buenos Ayres of a Chilian mother, Encalada had adopted Chile as his country; he had held a separate command before the disaster of Rancagua, was among the Patriot prisoners rescued by the Pueyrredon from the island of Juan Fernandez, was present at Cancha-Rayada, and had distinguished himself at Maipó. He had previously served in the Spanish navy as a junior officer, and was at this time twenty-eight years of age.
On the 21st May a Spanish expedition of eleven transports, two of which were armed vessels, under convoy of the 50-gun ship Maria Isabel, sailed from Cadiz for the Pacific, carrying two battalions of the regiment of Cantabria, 1,600 strong, a regiment of cavalry of 300 sabres, 180 artillerymen and pioneers, with 8,000 spare muskets. One of the transports was in such bad condition that they were forced to leave her at Teneriffe, and distribute her men among the other ships. Five degrees north of the equator the convoy was dispersed by adverse winds. On the 25th July the British brig Lady Warren reached Buenos Ayres, and reported having seen them about a month before. In consequence of this information the Argentine Government sent off the brig Lucy, flying the Chilian flag, and the brig Intrepido, flying the Argentine flag, each carrying 18 guns, with orders to double Cape Horn and join the Chilian squadron. At the same time word was sent to San Martin to invite the Chilian Government to despatch all their squadron against the expedition.
On the 26th August one of the transports named the Trinidad, with 180 soldiers on board, cast anchor at Ensenada, a port on the River Plate, some forty miles to the south of Buenos Ayres. She had separated from the convoy to the north of the equator, when the troops, headed by two sergeants and a corporal, had mutinied, shot their officers, and had compelled the master to sail for Buenos Ayres. The Argentine Government thus came to know the signals and the point of reunion of the expedition, which information they at once sent on to Chile.
Soon after this the 36-gun frigate Horacio, which had been purchased in the United States by Aguirre, the Argentine commissioner, reached Buenos Ayres, and announced that she was followed by the Curacio of the same armament.
On the 19th October the San Martin, Captain Wilkinson, the Lautaro, Captain Wooster, the Chacabuco, Captain Diaz, and the Araucano, Lieutenant Morris, sailed from Valparaiso. The squadron mounted 142 guns, and was manned by 1,100 men, most of whom were Chilians. The officers were nearly all English or North Americans. As O’Higgins, who had gone to the port to hurry on their departure, rode up the hill on his return to Santiago, he looked upon the four ships spreading their sails to a fresh sou’-wester, while the Chilian flag fluttered in the breeze from their mast-heads, and exclaimed,—
“Four ships gave the western continent to Spain; these four will take it from her.”