The first was the frigate Esmeralda captured from the Spanish at Callao, Peru, by Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane of the Chilean Navy, in a bold incursion on the night of 5 November 1820.

Reports from Amnesty International, the US Senate and Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission[2] describe the ship as a kind of floating jail and torture chamber for political prisoners of the Augusto Pinochet regime from 1973 to 1990.

It is claimed that probably over a hundred persons were kept there at times and subjected to hideous treatment,[3] among them British priest Michael Woodward, who later died as a result of torture.

[4] Due to this dark part of its history, the international voyages of the Esmeralda are often highly controversial - especially at the time when Pinochet was still in power but even after the restoration of Chilean democracy.

Such protest actions were recorded, among other places, at Amsterdam,[5][6] Dartmouth,[7] Quebec,[8] Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia,[9] Sydney,[10] Wellington,[11] Piraeus and Haifa,[12] as well as at Santiago in Chile itself.

[13] The Dark Side of the White Lady (El lado obscuro de la dama blanca), a documentary film by Chilean-Canadian filmmaker Patricio Henríquez, portrays this history.