"He had carried out a remarkable action by breaking the blockade, by facing combat without detriment to the landing operations of his cargo and, above all, by successfully carrying out the second break of the blockade", says the historian Jorge Basadre.
On March 17, 1880, the corvette Union, a Peruvian Navy ship that "survived" the Angamos battle, achieved a double feat against the Chilean fleet:breaking the blockade of the port of Arica in less eight hours. At that time, the Peruvian city of Arica was facing a maritime blockade by the armored frigate Cochrane, the Amazonas and Matías Cousiño transports, and the Huáscar monitor, flying the Chilean flag. The corvette Unión had set sail on March 12, 1880 from Callao together with the steamer Talismán carrying supplies for the Peruvian troops in the south of the country that were preparing for the Chilean invasion. The Peruvian commander of the Union, Manuel Antonio Villavicencio, loaded the ship with 37 boxes of shoes, 39 bales of white canvas, 1 box with 190 buttons, 5 boxes with 2 full machine guns, 100 boxes with 100,000 shots for Remington rifles. and the Alianza torpedo boat.
UNION CORVETTE The Union in the memory of Peruvians "He entered Arica with the lights out, recklessly sailing close to the coast and surprising not only the adversaries but also the defenders of the port. The Cochrane and the Amazonas joined the Huáscar and opened fire on the corvette and also on the monitor Manco Cápac during the morning until after two in the afternoon. Both ships answered and were helped by the Morro battery and those from the north. It is almost impossible for the Union to go out to sea. The head of the Cochrane, Juan José Latorre, called the commanders of the Huáscar and the Amazonas in order to discuss "the best way to take position at night (according to his report) to try to reach a definitive result with respect to the Union". In those same moments, after five o'clock in the afternoon, the corvette dropped its moorings and set sail at full force not heading north and as his adversaries believed, but heading south "in the midst of the cheers and enthusiastic acclamations of the multitude of people that crowned the Morro and other nearby places whose surroundings I needed to pass when leaving the port, according to what Commander Villavicencio. The Chilean ships undertook the pursuit to abandon it when night came."
THE DATA The Union corvette was a ship built in 1865, with a wooden hull protected with iron and copper. She displaced 2,066.66 t and had 10 Voruz muzzle-loading rifled guns of 70 lb as main armament, in the battery, 6 per side. It also had 2 Armstrong 70-lb. guns in the bow and 2 Parrott 30-lb. guns. Its propulsion system was also mixed, with a propeller, being capable of reaching a maximum speed of 13 kN
Jorge Basadre, "History of the Republic of Peru", volume IX