[Admiral John Randolph Tucker ex Confederate officer who served in the Peruvian squadron during the last months of the war with Spain.

Ex CSN Commander David McCorkle and ex CSN Lieutenant Walter Raleigh Butt, under Mr. Tucker's request, were also commissioned into Peru's Navy, the first one as Inspector General and Chief Ordinance Officer of the allied forces and the second as Corvette Captain and Signal Officer of the fleet.

Captain Hunter Davidson (ex CSN), an expert in torpedo warfare, was asked by Admiral Tucker to be commissioned in the Peruvian Navy and assigned as flag captain of the ironclad Independence. The Peruvian authorities, however, rejected this request. Other two ex Confederate naval officers were also serving in the fellow Chilean fleet: Tucker's son, Engineer John Taleton Tucker and Lieutenant James Norris.

From the beginning there was a positive relationship between the Peruvian authorities and the American mariners. Tucker was hailed as a first class sailor. President Mariano Prado declared that Mr. Tucker was "a complete gentleman, quiet and circumspect, with the best good faith and unlimited enthusiasm for the cause we defend". An impressed Raleigh Butt wrote to his relatives in Virginia "the warmth of our reception impressed us most favorably".

During the Civil War, the Confederate Government ordered the construction of two 1,600-ton beautifully modeled wooden corvettes, armed with several 68-pounder guns, to the Vernes House in Nantes, France. They were going to be commissioned as the CSS Texas and the CSS Georgia. However the U.S. Government impeded the transaction. The French offered the twin ships to a third power, and Peru seized the opportunity, purchasing them immediately. This way, the Texas was commissioned in the Peruvian Navy as the "America" and the Georgia, sarcastically for the Confederates, became the "Union".

When Tucker, McCorkle and Butt arrived in Valparaiso in July 1866 to assume their positions in the allied squadron, they found out that the Peruvian ironclad Independence -Tucker's flagship- was almost identical to the USS "New Ironside", the federal flagship that menaced Charleston, defended by Tucker during the Civil War. Furthermore, Raleigh Butt, who classified the allied fleet as a formidable naval force, discovered that the corvette America was the one meant to become the CSS Texas, a ship that he was supposed to serve as Executive Officer during the war of the secession.

Also, during the preparations for the offensive against Spain, depicted in the previous chapter, some of the technology used in the torpedo-devices of the Peruvian fleet was Confederate.

Due to obvious personal problems with the U.S. Navy, one of the allies to the Chilean-Peruvian expedition against Spain, and internal rejections by some of the Peruvian officers to serve under Tucker. It was obvious that from a domestic and diplomatic point of view the situation was becoming unbearable, and the Admiral could not even command in battle the force he had organized with so much enthusiasm. In order to prevent a further deterioration of relations between Washington and Lima as well as internal divisions, Mr. Tucker resigned his commission. The Peruvian President accepted his resignation with regret on March 1867.

The expedition to the Philippines was aborted, the alliance was de facto broken and the Peruvian squadron lifted anchors from Valparaiso and returned to Callao

Just few weeks after his resignation, Admiral Tucker was appointed by President Prado as President of the "Hydrographic Commission of the Amazon". It was a scientific commission created to explore the unknown Peruvian headwaters of the Amazon Basin and to prepare hydrographic charts of the Amazon system within the limits of the Republic. Tucker, who kept his Peruvian Naval rank, held this post until 1874, when he decided to return to the United States, after providing valuable services to Peru. He died in his native country in June 1883]

Excerpts from Mr. David P. Werlich's "Admiral of the Amazon"

Ocnus.net "American Confederates in the Peruvian Navy"

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David Upton