Almansa was a Spanish Navy screw frigate in commission from 1865 to 1894. She served in the Chincha Islands War of 1865–1866, seeing combat in the Battle of Callao in 1866, and the Cantonal Rebellion of 1873–1874, briefly serving the Canton of Cartagena before fighting on the central government side in the Battle of Portmán. She was named for Almansa, a city in southeastern Spain.
Characteristics Almansa was a screw frigate with a wooden hull and a ship rig.Conway's, p. 383. She had three masts and a bowsprit. She displaced 3,960 tons. She was long and was in beam, in height, and in draft. She had two John Penn and Sons steam engines of a nominal that generated . She could reach a maximum speed of . She could carry up to 600 tons of coal. Her armament consisted of thirty 68-pounder (31 kg) smoothbore guns, six 32-pounder (14.5 kg) smoothbore guns, eight 32-pounder (14.5 kg) rifled guns, and two guns. She also carried two and two howitzers for disembarkation and use in her boats. She had a crew of 600 men.
Construction and commissioning Almansa was ordered on 4 July 1861 and her keel was laid at Reales Astilleros de Esteiro in Ferrol, Spain, on 29 October 1861. She was launched on 18 July 1864 and commissioned in June 1865. Her construction cost was 4,140,069.58 pesetas.
Service history Chincha Islands War Shortly after Almansa entered service, the Chincha Islands War broke out in the southeastern Pacific Ocean between Spain and Chile in September 1865. Ecuador and Peru joined the war on Chile's side in January 1866, as did Bolivia in March 1866. Assigned to the Spanish Navy's Pacific Squadron, Almansa loaded 300 sailors and Spanish Army soldiers, provisions, ammunition, and other supplies for the rest of the ships in the squadron and departed Cádiz, Spain, in mid-March 1866 to begin a transatlantic voyage. She stopped at Montevideo, Uruguay, where her commanding officer left her due to illness. A new commanding officer, Capitán de fragata (Frigate captain) Victoriano Sánchez Barcáiztegui, who was stationed at the Río de la Plata naval station when Almansa arrived and later would gain fame for his actions during the Chincha Islands War and the Third Carlist War, took command.
Resuming her voyage, Almansa rendezvoused with the rest of the Pacific Squadron off Valparaíso, Chile, on 9 April 1866. The squadron had bombarded Valparaíso on 31 March, and the squadron's commander, Contralmirante (Counter admiral) Casto Méndez Núñez, chose the heavily defended port of Callao, Peru, for his next attack. He divided the squadron into two divisions, the first made up of the armoured frigate , the screw frigates and , the screw corvette , and three auxiliary steamers and the second of Almansa, the screw frigates and , the captured sidewheel paddle steamer , and three transport frigates. After burning prize ships the squadron had captured, the squadron set off on 14 April 1866 for San Lorenzo Island off Callao, the second division getting underway at 09:00 and the first division at 16:00. The first division made the voyage under steam and arrived at San Lorenzo Island on 25 April, while the second division, making the journey under sail and delayed by the low speed of one of the transport frigates, arrived on 27 April. Several days of negotiations began on 26 April, during which Méndez Núñez granted neutral countries a four-day delay in his attack to give them time to salvage their interests in Callao. The Spanish ships used the delay to prepare for the attack: The frigates all lowered their topmasts and main yards and altered their rigging to reduce the likelihood of damage to their masts, set up on-board field hospitals, and painted over the white stripes on their hulls with black paint to reduce the ships' visibility and give Peruvian gunners less of an aiming point. Almansa engaged in a day of target practice to improve the performance of her inexperienced gunners in the upcoming battle.
On the morning of 2 May 1866 the Spanish ships entered Callao Bay, beginning the Battle of Callao, the largest battle of the Chincha Islands War. Vencedora and the auxiliary ships stood off near San Lorenzo Island while the other six Spanish ships attacked Callao, with Numancia (operating as Méndez Núñez's flagship), Almansa, and Resolución assigned to bombard the northern part of the harbor while Reina Blanca, Berenguela, and Villa de Madrid shelled the southern part. Numancia fired the first shot at 11:55, and soon all the Spanish ships were exchanging fire with the Peruvian fortifications. At either 14:30 or 15:00, according to different sources, a Peruvian Blakely shell exploded aboard Almansa and started a fire in the gunpowder storeroom. A disastrous magazine explosion that would have destroyed Almansa appeared imminent and her officers advised Sánchez Barcáiztegui on several occasions to flood the gunpowder storeroom. He did not answer them at first, but on the last occasion they recommended it he explicitly refused, saying: "Today is not the day to wet the gunpowder," a statement that went down in Spanish Navy history. He agreed instead to withdraw from the battle temporarily so that Almansa′s entire crew could fight the fire, which was extinguished quickly. Almansa returned to the battle only 30 minutes after withdrawing. She fired 2,200 rounds and took two large-calibre and 67 smaller-calibre hits, suffering nine men killed in action, 26 wounded by enemy fire, and 16 others injured in other ways. By 16:00, only three Peruvian guns still were firing, and Méndez Núñez ordered Almansa, Numancia, Resolución, and Vencedora to shift fire from the harbor defenses to the city itself, but he rescinded the order after his officers advised him that his squadron had run low on explosive shells and would have to use solid shot, which would be ineffective. Running low on ammunition and with only the last three Peruvian guns still firing, the Spanish squadron ceased fire at 16:40 as dusk fell and fog began to form in the harbor.
Méndez Núñez's squadron spent the next several days at San Lorenzo Island just off Callao, making repairs and tending to casualties. The Chincha Islands War ended in a ceasefire on 9 May 1866. On 10 May 1866, Mendez Núñez's squadron burned and scuttled the steamer Paquete de Maule, which the Spanish frigate Blanca had captured from the Chilean fleet on March 6. Having scuttled Paquete de Maule as they could not take it with them on their return to Spain, Mendez Núñez's squadron departed South American waters. Viewing an eastward passage around Cape Horn in winter as too dangerous for his damaged ships, he decided to steam west across the Pacific Ocean. Méndez Núñez divided the squadron, sending Berenguela, Numancia, Vencedora, and three auxiliary ships to the Philippines for repairs while he led the rest of the ships on a voyage across the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with Villa de Madrid as his flagship.Scheina (page not specified) The ships passed around the Cape of Good Hope in winter and scurvy broke out among Almansa′s crew. By the time the squadron had crossed the South Atlantic Ocean and made port at Rio de Janeiro on either 24 June or the afternoon of 27 June 1866, according to different sources, completing a circumnavigation of the world, Almansa had suffered numerous mechanical breakdowns and a broken rudder, her crew had suffered 10 deaths – four from wounds suffered at Callao, one from tuberculosis, and five from scurvy – and 369 other men had fallen sick.
1866–1872 Almansa and the rest of Méndez Núñez's squadron arrived at the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) on 12 December 1866. After the Ministry of the Navy received word that a combined Chilean Navy-Peruvian Navy squadron planned to cross into the Atlantic Ocean, Méndez Núñez received orders to return to Rio de Janeiro. On 24 December 1866, the Ministry of the Navy ordered Méndez Núñez to move to Havana and prepare to defend the Antilles against attack. These orders reached Méndez Núñez on 1 February 1867. On 20 March 1867 Almansa, Concepción, and Navas de Tolosa arrived at Santiago de Cuba on the southeastern coast of Cuba under Méndez Núñez's overall command. The ships then proceeded to Havana, which they reached on 26 March 1867. The squadron also visited Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies during its Caribbean deployment. After Méndez Núñez received new orders to proceed to Rio de Janeiro, he transferred his flag to Almansa and his squadron got underway, arriving at Rio de Janeiro in August 1867. The squadron again moved to the Rio de la Plata in November 1867.
Almansa returned to Spain in April 1868 and was under repair during the Glorious Revolution of September 1868, in which Queen Isabella II was deposed. Almansa arrived at Cartagena, Spain, in December 1868 and began an assignment to the Mediterranean Squadron, in which she remained in 1869. She was reassigned to the South American squadron in mid-1871, serving as flagship for Contralmirante (Counter Admiral) José Polo de Bernabé y Mordella, who commanded the squadron until February 1872. Almansa operated with Reina Blanca and the screw schooner on the South American station until 1872, defending Spanish interests during conflicts in the region. In September 1872, the screw corvette replaced Almansa, which returned to Spain.
Cantonal Rebellion Cantonal service King Amadeo I abdicated and the First Spanish Republic was proclaimed in February 1873. Amid unrest under the new government, part of Almansa′s crew mutinied on 29 May 1873 while she was at Cartagena. On 12 July 1873 the Canton of Cartagena declared its independence from the republic, beginning the Cantonal Rebellion. The central government regarded the Cantonalists as separatists, and combat broke out between it and the Cantonalists. Almansa was one of the first Spanish Navy ships to side with the Cantonalists. On 20 July 1873, the central government of the First Spanish Republic declared that ships flying the red flag of the Canton were pirates, and other naval powers made similar declarations and sent warships to Spanish waters to protect their interests.
Almansa got underway from Cartagena on the evening of 28 July 1873 with the armoured frigate , which also had joined the Cantonalists, to steam along the coast of Spain to recruit Spaniards to the Cantonalist cause and to raise money for the Canton from coastal cities. The Cantonal squadron lacked naval officers, and the ships were under the command of a cavalry general, Juan Contreras y Román, wo was aboard Vitoria. The two ships arrived off Almería early on the morning of 29 July, and after negotiations between Contreras and local officials that lasted all day, Contreras informed the officials that if they did not pay him US$100,000 and give him the city's books and all the money in its treasury, his ships would destroy the town at daybreak on 30 July. In return, the local authorities informed him that they would not comply and would not allow him to disembark.
At 08:30 on 30 July, a messenger from the ships came ashore to deliver a notice to the city's consular officials that the ships would open fire in an hour, but he was unsuccessful. At 10:00, Almansa provided covering fire for four armed launches attempting to land Cantonalist troops, but rifle fire from shore drove off the launches without a landing, reportedly with eight men killed and 16 wounded aboard the launches. Almansa and Vitoria then fired about a dozen projectiles at the city before hoisting a white flag of truce. When the city's forces hoisted a black flag in response, the ships resumed fire, this time with projectiles. With occasional lulls, the ships continued firing until 16:30. Sometime between 18:30 and 19:00 they weighed anchor and headed west. Almansa and Vitoria next stopped at Motril, where they extorted a payment of US$12,000 to be paid to them at Málaga. They then began a voyage to Málaga.