Military Model Scene

Title: Warships in the War of the Pacific 1879-83
Author: Angus Konstam
Publisher: Osprey
ISBN: 978-1-4728-6124-5

'South America's ironclad naval campaign', number 328 in the New Vanguard series from Osprey. A 48-page soft-cover book.
This one opens as ever with an Introduction to set the scene and a basic chronology of events. It is a war involving Chile, Peru and Bolivia, along the west coast of South America. Rather than a land war, this was very much a naval war, and all about control of natural resources which made up the most significant export income from the region. The Bolivian involvement was limited, making it essentially a war between Chile and Peru. The warships used by both sides are well described, and it does have sections detailing the fleets of each side. These are not huge fleets, and the ships were mostly quite small ones. The most significant vessels are described in more detail, especially the turreted Huascar. This old ironclad is also apparently still in one piece, maintained now as a museum ship. A mix of steel and wooden hull vessels, and steam powered. They are interesting though as despite having steam engines, these ships retained their masts and sails. This is also a book with some marvellous artwork, illustrating these ships, from illustrator Paul Wright. Three particular clashes are used to illustrate events, those at Iquique (1879), Angamos (1879) and Arica (1880).
I'm sure I won't be the only one who knew nothing about this conflict beforehand, but I found this really interesting reading. This was combat experience of new technology, when wooden warships were changing to steel hull, and steam power was replacing sail. If that wasn't enough, there is also the use of new rifled guns, of a turret and armoured casemates to protect them, plus belts of armour protection. No wonder then that other nations would have looked on to see how these new ideas performed. Even early self-propelled torpedoes were used. Old fashioned Blockade tactics were in play and both long range and close range gunnery. One I learned a lot from.
Thanks to Osprey for the review copy.

Robin