Juan Williams Rebolledo

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Juan Williams Rebolledo
(portrait from 1879)
Contemporary caricature from Peru that makes fun of the hysteria in Chile about the omnipresent threat posed by the ironclad Huáscar . The public excitement in Chile contributed to the dismissal of Juan Williams Rebolledo as fleet chief in the winter of 1879.

Juan Williams Rebolledo (* 1825 in Curacaví ; † June 24, 1910 in Santiago de Chile ) was a Chilean naval commander and vice admiral .

He was born in Curacaví around 1825 as the son of John Williams Wilson (alias Juan Guillermos), a British frigate captain in the Chilean Navy , and his Spanish wife Gertrudis Micaela Rebolledo Sanhueza.

In May 1844 he joined the Navy. In October 1844 he took part in supply trips for the colony Fuerte Bulnes founded by his father the year before at Puerto del Hambre on the Strait of Magellan . In 1849 he and Bernhard Philippi took part in the exploration of Lake Llanquihue and Lake Nahuelhuapi , the aim of which was to prepare for the settlement of German colonists.

From 1850 he commanded various naval ships, including in the suppression of the revolutionary movement of 1851 and in 1852 in the restoration of order after the uprising of José Miguel Cambiaso in Magallanes. In 1854 he was appointed corvette captain and carried out missions on the Atacama coast. As a frigate captain , he married the 20-year-old merchant's daughter Clara Josefina Naegelé, born in Rio de Janeiro , whose father came from Alsace (or from Baden ) and whose mother was a French-Italian who grew up in Poland and whose beauty she had inherited. He had five children with Clara, who spoke seven languages ​​and was a popular salon musician.

With his ship Esmeralda , Juan Williams Rebolledo fought against the Spanish fleet in 1865. In the sea battle off Papudo on November 26, 1865, he captured the Spanish warship Virgen de Covadonga in the Spanish-South American War . He was then promoted to sea captain.

In 1877 he achieved the rank of rear admiral and became commander in chief of the Chilean navy in the saltpeter war . In this role he played a key role in the conquest of the cities of Tocopilla and Cobija on March 27, 1879 on his flagship, the modern armored frigate Blanco Escalada . Williams tenaciously resisted the plan of the Chilean Minister of War Rafael Sotomayor Baeza to attack the Peruvian fleet lying in Callao and not yet ready for combat directly in its home port, because this would have meant too great a risk due to the limited range of the Chilean fleet. Instead, he ordered the sea blockade of the then still Peruvian port of Iquique with older Chilean ships. The outdated Esmeralda was lost in the sea ​​battles off Iquique and Punta Gruesa , but the Peruvian Navy lost its strongest ship, the Independencia armored frigate . Subsequently, despite its superiority, the Chilean Navy did not succeed in preventing the disruption of the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar , which, under the command of the Peruvian Admiral Miguel Grau, very effectively disrupted the Chilean supply routes for months and made the continuation of the land operations impossible. The Huáscar raids caused great unrest in the Chilean public and led to allegations against the fleet command. When the Huáscar captured the Chilean transport ship Rímac on July 23, 1879 , which was en route to Antofagasta with 300 soldiers, horses, ammunition and military equipment , Williams Rebolledo, who was politically weakened by his ongoing conflict with the Minister of War and also in poor health, had to act as Resign fleet commander. It was not until October 1879 that his successor, Galvarino Riveros Cárdenas, succeeded in confronting and eliminating the Huáscar in the Angamos naval battle with a strong chase fleet.

In 1886 Williams was appointed General Commander of Valparaíso .

In March 1890 he was reappointed Commander in Chief of the Navy. At the outbreak of the Chilean civil war of 1891 , when the entire fleet rose up on the side of the Chilean Congress against the increasingly tyrannical ruling President Balmaceda , he resigned from his post and remained loyal to the president. His son Juan Williams Naegelé was killed in the Chilean civil war in the battle of Placilla (near Valparaíso) on August 28, 1891.

In 1894 he became chairman of the Partido Liberal Democrático . In 1902 he published the book Contienda de Chile y Perú contra España , in which he treated the Spanish-South American War.

In 1908, Juan Williams Rebolledo was named Vice Admiral by law. He died on June 24, 1910 in Santiago de Chile .

The city of Puerto Williams was named after him in 1956.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Williams Rebolledo, Juan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chilean Vice-Admiral
DATE OF BIRTH 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Curacaví
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1910
Place of death Santiago de Chile