Maritime history of Chile
[1] In 2007, evidence appeared to have been found that suggested pre-Columbian contact between Polynesians from the western Pacific and the Mapuche people.
[4] In December 2007, several human skulls with Polynesian features, such as a pentagonal shape when viewed from behind, were found lying on a shelf in a museum in Concepción.
[7] In the 18th century the shipbuilding industry in Valdivia, one of the city's main economic activities, reached its peak building numerous ships including frigates.
[8][10] During the later stages of Chile's independence war it was conceived that the country needed a navy to bring under Chilean control areas that could not be reached by land like Chiloé Archipelago and Valdivia.
These explorations where fueled by several factors including the establishment of Chilean rule in the Strait of Magellan, the increased trade with Europe and border disputes with Argentina in Patagonia.
When the War of the Pacific between Chile and the Bolivia-Peru alliance broke out the few roads and railroad lines, the disputed and nearly waterless and largely unpopulated Atacama Desert turned out to be difficult to occupy.
[19] In March 1885 Colombia thinned its military presence in Panama by sending troops stationed there to fight rebels in Cartagena.
[20] > In response to the American intervention, Chile sent the protected cruiser Esmeralda to Panama City, arriving on April 28.
[25][A] Nonetheless, the first stage of the country's expansionism into the Pacific began only a decade later, in 1851, when—in response to an American incursion into the Juan Fernández Islands—Chile's government formally organized the islands into a subdelegation of Valparaíso.
[27] That same year, Chile's economic interest in the Pacific were renewed after its merchant fleet briefly succeeded in creating an agricultural goods exchange market that connected the Californian port of San Francisco with Australia.
[28] By 1861, Chile had established a lucrative enterprise across the Pacific, its national currency abundantly circulating throughout Polynesia and its merchants trading in the markets of Tahiti, New Zealand, Tasmania, Shanghai; negotiations were also made with the Spanish Philippines, and altercations reportedly occurred between Chilean and American whalers in the Sea of Japan.This period ended as a result of the Chilean merchant fleet's destruction by Spanish forces in 1866, during the Chincha Islands War.
[30] During this period, the Chilean intellectual and politician Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna (who served as senator in the National Congress from 1876 to 1885) was an influential voice in favor of Chilean expansionism into the Pacific—he considered that Spain's discoveries in the Pacific had been stolen by the British, and envisioned that Chile's duty was to create an empire in the Pacific that would reach Asia.
[23] By 1900 nearly all Oceania islands were in control of Britain, France, United States, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Ecuador and Chile.
[32] In Valdivia River and Corral Bay several vessels wrecked due to the earthquake among them Argentina, Canelos, Carlos Haverbeck, Melita and the salvaged remnants of Penco.
Canelos was anchored at Corral and filling a cargo of wood and other products destined to northern Chile when the quake struck.
