There is a small town on the Portuguese coast, Sesimbra, in which a good part of its neighbors are of Spanish descent. “Numantinos” is what they call the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the 32 sailors who, after being rescued from the water, ended up getting married in the town.
The name comes from the Numancia, which ran aground there on December 17, 1916. A legendary ship with a shocking history.
The Numancia was the first armored frigate to circumnavigate the planet, and, if we add to this a scurvy epidemic, 52 hits received without major consequences, the trip that brought a new king to Spain, a kidnapping and escape during the cantonal rebellion of 1874 and an attempted republican revolution on board, we have a mythical ship. But, more than all this, what is important is that she marked a milestone in naval warfare, giving the finishing touch to ships of the line (the wooden, square-rigged ships of the 18th century).
It all began with the Crimean War (1853-1856), a conflict in which the French learned the hard way that, faced with the new howitzers (explosive-charged bullets), wooden ships sank or caught fire with the first impact. .
His response was to launch La Glorie (1859), the first ship built with metal armor covering the hull. Seeing this, and that the English were already manufacturing the HMS Warrior, the Liberal Union government decided that renewing the fleet was not only a necessity, but an opportunity to recover part of the maritime force that had been lost decades ago. Thanks, above all, to the initiative of Mariano Roca de Togores, Minister of the Navy, the construction of 13 sail and propeller frigates and six armored frigates was approved, two of them with iron hulls.
La Numancia was the first of these last two. Launched in 1863 by the French shipyard Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, a year later she was already in Cartagena. She was a sensational boat, 96.08 meters long, 17.34 meters wide and 8.7 meters deep (internal height). Her armor, which weighed 1,355 tons, consisted of iron plates bolted to the hull – which was still made of wood – and which covered from the upper deck to 2.3 meters below the waterline.
In terms of offense, it did not differ too much from its 18th century predecessors, with batteries of smoothbore cannons (without rifling on the inside) on the port and starboard sides. For propulsion, it combined a steam engine of 3,700 indicated horsepower (theoretical, not counting friction) with a three-mast rig for sailing.
As soon as she arrived in Cartagena, the Ministry of the Navy sent her to lead the squadron that was already stationed in the Pacific, off the coast of Chile. For the French and British it was a surprise, because, due to the little experience they had with this type of ships, they had come to the conclusion that they were unsuitable for navigation on the high seas. The very high consumption of coal recommended not moving them too far from the port, and the armor made them vulnerable to storms and flooding in the event of drilling.
Spain, on the other hand, sent the only one it had to the other side of the Atlantic. As explained by historian Manuel Alfonso Gutiérrez González, an expert in naval affairs, because here the paradigm was different. We had been trying for centuries to maintain overseas provinces that were always difficult to access, so the Navy had the idea ingrained in it that a powerful ship was of no use if it could not send it where it was needed.
Captained by Casto Méndez Núñez, the famous sailor from Vigo, the Numancia left for Montevideo on February 4, 1865. Thanks to a book of memoirs by the naval engineer Eduardo Iriondo, who was on board with the rank of lieutenant, we know well what it was like. that trip. Indeed, the ship was suffering under rough seas, and yes, the coal thing was a problem. Upon arriving in Montevideo, before heading towards the Strait of Magellan to reach the American Pacific coast, she had to be joined by the paddle steamer Marqués de la Victoria, which would serve as a floating service station.
The Spanish squad was there to try to recover the influence lost after the independence of America. On paper, the expedition ordered in 1862 by the government of Leopoldo O’Donnell had a purely scientific interest, but what the Government intended was to gain, manu militari, commercial hegemony in that region.
Of course, in Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia, the press took advantage to incite fear of a second Hispanic invasion. This, resentment over the conquest, some unpaid debts – a Spanish colonist had been murdered by a Peruvian landowner in 1864 – and the clumsiness of the diplomats did the rest.
When the Numancia arrived at the port of Callao, in Peru, war drums were already sounding. That country, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador closed their ports to the supply of coal for Spanish ships, and in September 1865 Chile declared war on Madrid (Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador would do so a few weeks later).
After the suicide of Commander José Manuel Pareja, who could not bear having his gunboat Covadonga seized by a country with almost no navy –Chile–, Captain Méndez Núñez took command of the squadron. In March 1866 he directed the frigates Villa de Madrid, Blanca, Reolucion, Vencedora and Numancia towards Valparaíso, a port without any kind of defense.
Seeing this, he gave the inhabitants a few hours of time to retreat to the mountains and mark where the hospitals, schools and orphanages were. On March 31, at eight in the morning, the Numancia launched a salvo to warn of the start of the cannonade. It was the only shot she fired that day, since Méndez Núñez said that he could not inaugurate a ship like that “offending without being offended.” Otherwise, that was a bullseye. Civilians, from the mountains, helplessly watched the destruction of their homes and farms.
Then it was the turn of the port of Callao, in Peru, where they had done their homework. President Mariano Ignacio Prado had ordered the evacuation of all non-military personnel, and 69 brand-new English-made cannons were pointed towards the sea.
The frigate demonstrated its robustness that day, receiving 52 shots without any managing to pierce the hull. Of course, on deck, a piece of shrapnel burst the captain’s arm. In order not to affect the morale of his people, he refused to retreat, but they had to take him away when he collapsed due to blood loss. On the other ships things were much worse.
When at five in the afternoon Méndez Núñez ordered the withdrawal, miraculously all his ships were still floating. They buried the victims on the island of San Lorenzo, burned the captured ships and prepared to leave for Rio de Janeiro, as Madrid had ordered.
The fastest route was to skirt the Southern Cone, but, due to the poor state of the sea, the damage received and the lack of coal, the Berenguela, the Vencedora, the Numancia and a string of support ships took the route towards the Philippines. more accessible, having the Pacific breeze at the stern.
Once again the poor navigability of the flagship was demonstrated, which even with all its sails deployed forced the others to wait for it. They did so until scurvy began to take over La Berenguela and La Vencedora, who had to go ahead.
They waited on the island of Otaiti – an anchorage in the middle of the Pacific – until May 22, the date on which the straggler appeared, with 110 cases of scurvy on board. Since they had to be there for a few days to rest and eat, they took the opportunity to clean the bottom of the ships, at which time they discovered some cables wrapped around the propeller of the Numancia. They were part of a device of underwater mines, which had providentially been cut during the Battle of Callao.
In September they arrived in Manila, in April of the following year to the Cape of Good Hope – at the southern tip of Africa – and in May to Rio de Janeiro. Despite what it had cost to arrive, the order came almost immediately for the Numancia to return to Cádiz, where she docked on September 20, 1867.
In two years, seven months and six days it had sailed around the world, being the first armored vehicle to do so and proving false the suspicions of the French and British towards this type of ship.
It is the only thing that can be made clear about a war that the sailor and historian Julio Guillén Tato described as “stupid”, without object or objectives. For a few weeks the Numancia became the most powerful weapon in the Pacific. It was the direct cause of the development of the cruiser and the armored cruiser, and, indirectly, of the battleships, the floating fortresses of the 20th century.
And, most importantly, the European powers learned that armored ships had to be able to fight anywhere in the world. To do this, and this fit the imperialist mental framework, they needed a network of their own or “friendly” ports on all continents for their ships to coal.
For Spain, however, as Gutiérrez González says, it was a “lost lesson.” If he had built a naval armored base in the Philippines, as was the case with the Russians in Siberia, perhaps he would have managed to retain the archipelago, but he did not.
Essentially, because the state of crisis in nineteenth-century Spain did not allow it. This is how the “second life” of Numancia is written, which was the protagonist of the political turbulence at the end of the century.
On December 30, 1870, the frigate arrived at the port of Cartagena bringing from Italy Amadeo I, a foreign king who was expected to save the situation. When that failed miserably, giving way to the First Republic and the federalist rebellion in Cartagena, the ship ended up in the hands of the rebels.
Without shore or officer support, the rebel sailors were unable to take advantage. When the new government of General Serrano took the city on January 12, 1874, 500 rebels boarded the frigate and, miraculously, escaped the government blockade to go into exile in Oran.
Recovered by the crew of the Vitoria, who had pursued her from Cartagena, she spent the next thirty years without pain or glory, becoming obsolete. Despite this, in 1909 it was still necessary to use it during the Melilla war.
It was not useful in the event of a large-scale war, and that is why since 1900 a decree had weighed on it that dictated that at the first breakdown it would be scrapped. Still, there was time for one more chapter. On August 2, 1911, while serving as a coast guard in Tangier, fourteen members of the crew mutinied and threatened to bomb Malaga, with the intention of provoking a republican uprising. As soon as they were captured, the leader was shot on the deck of the ship.
When it was finally sold to a Bilbao scrapyard in 1912, it was being used as temporary accommodation for Navy orphans. They loaded her with salt, and, after two failed attempts – the condition of the equipment was already terrible –, in 1916 she undertook a trip that ended in Portugal. The people of Sesimbra took what they could, but the submerged part is still on that beach. Its silhouette is still visible from the air, like a rusty testimony of what Spain could have been again in the 19th century, but was not: a naval power.
