On April 5, 1879, Chile declared war on Peru, initiating its naval forces operations on the Peruvian coasts and destroying the unguarded guano docks and cargo elements of Pica and Huanillos on April 15 and 16.

On April 17, the Chilean Chacabuco corvette cut the telegraph cable to Iquique and on April 18 it appeared over the port of Pisagua being followed by the armored Blanco Encalada, with the first Chilean corvette trying to repeat the previous operations without prior notice to the port authorities to do so.

Immediately afterwards, Admiral Juan Williams Rebolledo ordered to open fire with naval artillery on the entrenched Peruvian troops, causing the population to burn and numerous deaths among the civilian population.

As a result of the bombardment and fire, the port of Pisagua was almost completely destroyed, a misfortune that Rear Admiral Williams Rebolledo attributed in his official report, "To the situation occupied by the enemy troops on which the shots were fired, which when bouncing and deviating damaged some of the immediate buildings (...) resulting in the almost complete conflagration of the main neighborhoods of the population. "

[4] while according to the American newspaper Chicago Tribune, according to a cable sent by an official of the American ship Cosmopresent in Pisagua, it was a deliberate act in which the British consulate in which a large number of women and children had taken asylum was even bombed and set on fire, and the consular agent Mr. Jeffrey, his wife and wife had to take refuge in the Cosmo with their children.