Esmeralda was a wooden-hulled steam corvette of the Chilean Navy, launched in 1855, and sunk by the Huáscar on 21 May 1879 at the Battle of Iquique during the War of the Pacific.

Chilean naval officer Roberto Simpson Winthrop and shipbuilder William Pitcher of Northfleet, England, signed a contract for her construction, at a total cost of £23,000, on 23 October 1854.

[1] The ship was laid down in December 1854, and launched on 26 June 1855 under the name Esmeralda,[1] after the frigate captured by Thomas Cochrane during the Chilean War of Independence.

[3] Esmeralda was commissioned into the Chilean Navy on 18 September 1855,[2] and eventually sailed from Falmouth, Cornwall, under Simpson's command and arrived at Valparaíso on 7 November 1856.

[3] On 26 November 1865, during the Chincha Islands War, while under the command of Juan Williams Rebolledo, she captured the Virgen de Covadonga at the Battle of Papudo.