Numancia was a Spanish Navy armored frigate in commission from 1864 to 1912. Her long and active career included stints with the Spanish Royal Navy (), the navy of the First Spanish Republic, and several months of operations in support of the Canton of Cartagena. She saw combat in the Chincha Islands War in 1865–1866, the Cantonal Rebellion in 1873–1874, the First Melillan campaign in 1893–1894, and the Second Melillan campaign in 1909. Between 1864 and 1867 she made the first circumnavigation of the Earth by an ironclad warship,Pastor y Fernandez de Checa, pp. 3–4 and in 1877 she became one of the first two Spanish Navy ships to be electrified. Converted into a coastal defense ship between 1896 and 1898, she was decommissioned in 1912 and was wrecked in 1916 on her way to the shipbreakers for scrapping.
Numancia was named for the Siege of Numantia of 134–133 BC, the culminating event of the Numantine War, in which the native population of Hispania Citerior on the Iberian Peninsula resisted the forces of the Roman Republic.
Design and description
Numancia was long at the waterline, had a beam of and a draft of .de Saint Humber, p. 23 She displaced and was fitted with a ram bow.Silverstone, p. 388 Her crew consisted of 561 officers and enlisted men. She had a steam-driven mechanical ventilation system and a drinking water distillation system.
The ship was fitted with a pair of horizontal-return connecting-rod steam engines from her builder that drove one propeller shaft using steam provided by eight cylindrical boilers.de Saint Hubert, pp. 22–23 The engines were rated at a total of 1,000 nominal horsepower (746 kW) or and gave Numancia a speed of ; according to one source, she made on trials with her propeller turning at 54 revolutions per minute, but during normal operations did not exceed . She carried a maximum of of coal,Lyon, p. 380 giving her a range of at . She was fitted with a three-masted ship rig with a sail area of .de Saint Hubert, pp. 22, 24 Her rudder had a servomotor and her bilge pumps were steam-powered.
The frigate's main battery initially consisted of forty smoothbore guns mounted on the broadside, but her armament was changed around 1867 to six and three 200 mm Armstrong-Whitworth guns, and eight Trubia guns, all of which were rifled muzzle-loading (RML) weapons. The 229 mm and 160 mm guns were situated on the gun deck while the 200 mm guns were positioned on the main deck. In 1883 Numancia was rearmed with eight Armstrong-Whitworth RML guns and seven 200 mm RMLs. When the ship was refitted in France in 1896–1898, her armament was changed to six Hontoria 160 mm and eight Canet (real caliber 138.6 mm) rifled breech-loading guns and a pair of torpedo tubes.de Saint Hubert, p. 27 According to other sources, her main battery consisted of 164.7 mm (6.5-inch) guns.
Numancia had 1,355 tons of armor. She had a complete wrought iron waterline belt of armor plates which extended to below the waterline. Above the belt, the guns were protected by a strake of armor that extended the length of the ship. She had two armored conning towers for her commanding officer and helmsman, each with thick iron armor plate backed by a solid wood structure. The deck was unarmored.
Construction and commissioning In 1859, the Spanish Cortes Generales voted an extraordinary credit, increased in 1861 to 175 million pesetas, for the construction of 12 sailing frigates and steam frigates and two armoured frigates, Numancia and . The Kingdom of Spain signed a contract in Madrid with the French company Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée on 15 April 1862 to construct Numancia. The engineer Verloque designed Numancia, and her keel was laid on 19 September 1862 at a shipyard at La Seyne-sur-Mer, France. She was launched on 19 November 1863 and commissioned on 17 December 1864. Her construction cost was 8,322,252 pesetas.
Service history 1864–1865 After commissioning, Numancia made her delivery voyage from Toulon, France, to Cartagena, Spain, in December 1864, testing her navigation capabilities and armament along the way. At the Arsenal de Cartagena, her guns were fitted and her full crew reported aboard. On 24 December 1864 Capitán de navío (Ship-of-the-line captain) Casto Méndez Núñez, a future contralmirante (counter admiral), became Numancia′s commanding officer and Capitán de fragata (Frigate captain) Juan Bautista Antequera y Bobadilla, a future vicealmirante (vice admiral) and Minister of the Navy, became her second-in-command.
Assigned to the Pacific Squadron amid growing tensions between Spain and its former colonies Chile and Peru, Numancia got underway from Cartagena on 8 January 1865 and arrived at Cádiz on the morning of 11 January. At Cádiz, she prepared for a lengthy deployment, and was overloaded with as much coal and gunpowder and as many projectiles and provisions as she could carry. This increased her draft to at the stern and at the bow, and her displacement rose to 7,700 tons.
Numancia resumed her voyage on the afternoon of 4 February 1865, departing Cádiz at 16:00 with four boilers lit and with provisions for six months, 1,160 tons of coal, gunpowder and projectiles, and a crew of 590 men aboard. The pilot disembarked at 18:00 and she set course for the Cape Verde Islands in good weather with a fresh northwesterly breeze. As she neared the islands, she encountered a storm on 12 February with high waves that struck her broadside, causing her to roll up to 53 degrees, from gunwale to gunwale, submerging her freeboard. She nonetheless weathered the storm without great difficulty and arrived safely at São Vicente in the Cape Verde Islands on 13 February. Ironclad warships were new in the navies of the world in the 1860s, and French and British ironclads had experienced great difficulty when encountering bad weather; foreign navies took note of Méndez Núñez's seamanship in what they viewed as an historic demonstration of the seaworthiness of armoured warships.
After refilling her coal bunkers, Numancia got back underway on 16 February 1865 to begin a transatlantic voyage, initially encountering calm weather in which she made under sail in light winds after turning off her engine. On 13 March 1865 she arrived at Montevideo, Uruguay, where she met the brigantine , the screw corvette , and the transport steamer Marqués de la Victoria. Numancia and Marqués de la Victoria got underway from Montevideo on 2 April 1865, Numancia exchanging 13-gun salutes with foreign warships in the harbor, and proceeded in company to the Strait of Magellan, on the northern shore of which they anchored at Puerto del Hambre so that Numancia could replenish her coal from Marqués de la Victoria. They resumed their voyage on the morning of 19 April, and at 10:00 passed Santa Agueda Hill at the southernmost tip of the mainland of South America and of the Andes. After they anchored for the night at Fortescue Bay, a warship flying no flag approached, and, given the political tensions in the area, Numancia prepared for action, her crew manning battle stations and loading her guns. The arriving warship hoisted the Peruvian flag and the Spaniards recognized her as the Peruvian Navy corvette , which was making her delivery voyage from the United Kingdom to Peru as Peru armed itself for a possible war with Spain. America passed close to Numancia′s bow and anchored off her starboard beam.
America weighed anchor and departed very early on the morning of 20 April 1865, Numancia following at 07:00 and proceeding at full speed with eight boilers lit in company with Marqués de la Victoria. She sighted Cape Pilares at the western end of the Strait of Magellan at 17:00, and by 18:00 was in the Pacific Ocean, having completed a transit of the strait in ten days. She sighted America trailing behind her, but America soon had to move farther out to sea to avoid excessive rolling. Numancia had no such problems, and on 21 April she turned off her engine and proceeded under sail the rest of the way to Valparaíso, Chile, which she and Marqués de la Victoria reached on 28 April 1865. After Méndez Núñez gathered information from the commanding officer of the screw corvette , learning that Spain had reached an agreement with Peru to avoid war and that the Pacific Squadron was at Callao, Peru, Numancia got back underway and made a seven-day voyage in company with Marqués de la Victoria to Callao, anchoring there at 11:00 on 5 May 1865 after exchanging gun salutes with the Pacific Squadron flagship, the screw frigate . The two ships thus joined the squadron, which was under the overall command of Vicealmirante (Vice Admiral) José Manuel Pareja. Numancia′s voyage from Cádiz to Callao – during which she had spent 60 days at sea and 30 days in port, traveled , consumed 2,800 tons of coal, and suffered only one death, that of a crewman swept overboard and lost – was an unprecedented one for an ironclad warship of any navy, and Méndez Núñez received a promotion to contralmirante (counter admiral) on 20 June 1865.
Chincha Islands War
The political situation in the southeastern Pacific region further deteriorated during 1865 when Pareja steamed to Valparaíso to settle Spanish claims with Chile. When Chile refused to settle, Pareja announced a blockade of Chilean ports, and the Chincha Islands War broke out between Spain and Chile on 24 September 1865. The blockade spread the Pacific Squadron thinly along the Chilean coast, and early setbacks in the war culminated in a humiliating Spanish naval defeat in the Battle of Papudo on 26 November 1865 in which the Chilean Navy screw corvette captured the Spanish Navy schooner . News of the defeat prompted Pareja to commit suicide aboard his flagship, the screw frigate , off Valparaíso, shooting himself in his cabin on 28 November 1865 while lying on his bed wearing his dress uniform. He was buried at sea. Numancia departed Callao with Marqués de la Victoria in tow on 5 December 1865 and rendezvoused with Villa de Madrid and the screw frigate . Méndez Núñez took charge of the Pacific Squadron on 12 December 1865 and transferred to Villa de Madrid.Farcau, p. 17. Antequera took command of Numancia.