Berenguela (English: Berengaria) was a screw frigate of the Spanish Navy commissioned in 1857, the first screw frigate to enter service in the Spanish Navy. She took part in the multinational intervention in Mexico in 1861–1862, several actions during the Chincha Islands War of 1865–1866, and the Spanish-Moro conflict in the early 1870s and was the first Spanish Navy ship to transit the Suez Canal. She was disarmed in 1875 and decommissioned in 1877.
Berenguela was named for Berengaria of Castile (1179 or 1180–1246), who was Queen consort of León from 1197 to 1204 and Queen of Castile from June to August 1217.
Construction and commissioning Berenguela′s construction was authorized along with that of the screw frigates and by a royal order of either 8 or 9Boletín oficial del Ministerio de Fomento, Volumen 8 Ministerio de Fomento (in Spanish) October 1853 (sources disagree). She was laid down at the in Ferrol, Spain, on either 16 October 1854González-Llanos. or 4 April 1855Lledó Calabuig. (sources disagree) as a wooden-hulled screw frigate with mixed sail and steam propulsion. She was launched on 24 February 1857, and after fitting out she was commissioned in September 1857, the first screw frigate to enter service in the Spanish Navy. Her total construction cost was 3,082,909 pesetas.
Service history Early service
After commissioning, Berenguela was assigned to service in the Caribbean, based at Havana in the Captaincy General of Cuba. In mid-November 1860, she arrived at New York City, anchoring in New York Harbor off The Battery in Manhattan. After the United States Navy screw frigate was floated out of drydock at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York, Berenguela entered the drydock for an overhaul of her machinery. On the evening of 6 December 1860 two "medium-sized" shells lying on deck were ignited by sparks from a cigar and exploded. Two sailors jumped or were blown overboard and landed in the drydock, suffering fatal injuries, and the explosion also injured four others. A fire started, which the navy yard's firefighters quickly extinguished. Fortunately for Berenguela and her crew, two shells lying near the explosion and fire did not explode.
Under the command of Capitán de navío (Ship-of-the-line captain) José Ignacio Rodríguez de Arias y Villavicencio, Berenguela took part in 1861 in a naval demonstration off Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by a squadron commanded by Joaquín Gutierrez de Rubalcava. She then participated in a mulitnational intervention in Mexico to settle damage claims in 1861–1862, again as part of a squadron under Gutierrez de Rubalcava.de las Torres, p. 14. The Spanish ships seized Veracruz on 14 December 1861 and French and British forces arrived in January 1862. Spanish and British forces withdrew from Mexico in 1862 when it became apparent that France intended to seize control of Mexico, and Berenguela returned to Cuba.
Chincha Islands War Amid tensions between Spain, Chile, and Peru, Berenguela was reassigned to the Pacific Squadron in 1864. Getting underway from Havana under the command of Capitán de navío (Ship-of-the-Line Captain) Manuel de la Pezuela y Lobo, she moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, where she and the screw frigate rendezvoused with the screw frigate . The three ships passed through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific Ocean and Berenguela reached Pisco, Peru, on 11 December 1864, then joined the Pacific Squadron in the Chincha Islands on 30 December 1864. Villa de Madrid became the flagship of the squadron's commander, Vicealmirante (Vice admiral) José Manuel Pareja, whose predecessor Luis Hernández-Pinzón Álvarez had seized the Chincha Islands from Peru in April 1864. On 27 January 1865 Pareja and a Peruvian government representative, Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco, signed the Preliminary Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Spain and Peru, known informally as the Vivanco–Pareja Treaty, aboard Villa de Madrid in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to settle claims between the two countries that instead sparked the outbreak of the Peruvian Civil War of 1865.
The political situation in the region further deteriorated during 1865 when Pareja steamed to Valparaíso, Chile, to settle Spanish claims. When Chile refused to settle, Pareja announced a blockade of Chilean ports, with Berenguela assigned to the blockade of Valparaíso. As a result of the blockade, the Chincha Islands War broke out between Spain and Chile on 24 September 1865. When the Chilean Navy corvettes and departed Valparaíso, Pareja reassigned Berenguela to join Reina Blanca in blockading Caldera. While on blockade duty, Berenguela captured the steamer , which was making a voyage from Lota to Lota Alto, Chile, with a cargo of coal. On 27 November 1865, a group of Chilean gunboats attacked Berenguela off Caldera, and Berenguela drove off the attackers with gunfire. The blockade spread the Pacific Squadron thinly along the Chilean coast, and early setbacks in the war culminated in a humiliating Spanish naval defeat in the Battle of Papudo on 26 November 1865 in which Esmeralda captured the Spanish Navy schooner . News of the defeat prompted Pareja to commit suicide aboard Villa de Madrid off Valparaíso, shooting himself in his cabin on 28 November 1865 while lying on his bed wearing his dress uniform. He was buried at sea.Farcau, p. 17.
Arriving from Callao, Peru, the armoured frigate rendezvoused with Berenguela and Villa de Madrid at Caldera, Chile, on 12 December 1865. Learning of Pareja's death, Numancia′s commanding officer, Contralmirante (Counter admiral) Casto Méndez Núñez, took charge of the Pacific Squadron that day and transferred to Villa de Madrid. By 19 December he had concentrated the Pacific Squadron off Valparaíso. A few days later, he limited the blockade to Valparaíso and Caldera.
After bringing aboard supplies from a newly arrived Spanish frigate, Méndez Núñez's squadron began operations to find and recapture Virgen de Covadonga. The squadron first searched the Juan Fernández Islands and then Puerto Inglés on Chiloé Island in the Chiloé Archipelago off Chile without finding her. At Puerto Inglés, however, a boarding party from Berenguela inspected a steamer which Berenguela sank after finding that she lacked documentation. Rifle fire from shore harassed the boarding party's boat, so Berenguela returned fire, bombarding the coastline until the rifle fire stopped.
Peru and Ecuador joined the war on Chile's side in January 1866. Méndez Núñez's attempts during February and March 1866 to bring the combined Chilean-Peruvian squadron to action failed. Bolivia joined the war against Spain on 22 March 1866, closing all the Pacific ports of South America south of Colombia to Spanish ships. Under orders to take punitive action against South American ports, Méndez Núñez selected undefended Valparaíso as his target,Scheina, page not specified. although he found the idea of attacking an undefended port repugnant. On the morning of 31 March 1866 his squadron arrived at Valparaíso. Numancia fired two shots at 08:00 to signal the rest of the squadron to open fire, then withdrew to an offshore position and took no further part in the bombardment, instead standing by to intervene if foreign warships which had gathered at the harbor's entrance attempted to interfere. The foreign ships remained passive observers and, facing no opposition, Reina Blanca, Villa de Madrid, the screw frigate Resolución, and the screw corvette opened fire at 09:00 and conducted a three-hour bombardment of Valparaíso while Berenguela and the sidewheel paddle steamer Paquete de Maule stood by offshore to guard against any attempt at escape by Chilean merchant ships. By the time it ended at 12:00, the bombardment had killed two people, injured 10, and sunk 33 merchant ships in the harbor, destroying Chile's merchant fleet.New York Times staff, 6 May 1866. It inflicted US$10 million (equivalent to about US$224 million in 2011) in damage.
Méndez Núñez chose the heavily defended port of Callao for his next attack. He divided the squadron into two divisions, the first made up of Berenguela, Numancia, Reina Blanca, Vencedora, and three auxiliary steamers and the second of Villa de Madrid, Resolución, the screw frigate , Paquete de Maule, and three transport frigates and, after burning prize ships his squadron had captured, set off on 14 April 1866 for San Lorenzo Island off Callao, the second division getting underway at 09:00 and the first division at 16:00. The first division made the voyage under steam and arrived at San Lorenzo Island on 25 April, while the second division, making the journey under sail and delayed by the low speed of one of the transport frigates, arrived on 27 April 1866. Several days of negotiations began on 26 April, during which Méndez Núñez granted neutral countries a four-day delay in his attack to give them time to salvage their interests in Callao. The Spanish ships used the delay to prepare for the attack: The frigates all lowered their topmasts and main yards and altered their rigging to reduce the likelihood of damage to their masts, set up on-board field hospitals, and painted over the white stripes on their hulls with black paint to reduce the ships' visibility and give Peruvian gunners less of an aiming point.
On the morning of 2 May 1866 the Spanish ships entered Callao Bay, beginning the Battle of Callao, the largest battle of the Chincha Islands War. Vencedora and the auxiliary ships stood off near San Lorenzo Island while the other six Spanish ships attacked Callao, with Numancia, Almansa, and Resolución assigned to bombard the northern part of the harbor while Reina Blanca, Berenguela, and Villa de Madrid shelled the southern part. Numancia fired the first shot at 11:55, and soon all the Spanish ships were exchanging fire with the Peruvian fortifications. Berenguela suffered heavy damage: A Blakely shell penetrated her side, passed through her battery, and exited below the waterline on her opposite side, killing 13 men and opening a hole in her hull, and another shell seriously damaged her deck and started a fire in her coal bunker near her gunpowder store. She developed a list to port and pulled out of the firing line to withdraw to San Lorenzo Island. Running low on ammunition, the Spanish squadron ceased fire entirely at 16:40 as dusk fell and fog began to form in the harbor; by then all but three guns of the harbor defenses had been silenced.
Méndez Núñez's squadron spent the next several days at San Lorenzo Island, making repairs and tending to casualties. Berenuela′s crew dismantled a house on the island to use its wood to make repairs to the ship. On the night of 5 May 1866, a Peruvian steamboat armed with a torpedo attacked Berenguela, but the attack failed when Berenuela opened fire and captured the steamboat.
The Chincha Islands War ended in a ceasefire on 9 May 1866, and on 10 May 1866, Mendez Núñez's squadron burned and scuttled Paquete de Maule near San Lorenzo Island and departed South American waters. Deeming an eastward passage around Cape Horn in winter too dangerous for his damaged ships, Méndez Núñez led most of the squadron on a voyage across the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with Villa de Madrid as his flagship. However, Berenguela′s and Numancia′s temporary repairs at San Lorenzo Island were deemed inadequate for them to make the entire voyage safely, and Numancia also had exhausted her coal supply, so Méndez Núñez formed a separate division made up of Berenguela, Numancia, Vencedora, the steamers Marqués de la Victoria and Uncle Sam, and the sailing transport Matauara to proceed westward under sail to the Philippines, where Berenguela and Numancia could undergo permanent repairs.