Navigating Nitrate: The Hazards and Historical Significance of Chilean Cargoes

From the late 19th century nitrate (saltpetre) was highly prized as an agricultural fertiliser, especially as the supply of Peruvian guano was declining. The main source of nitrate was the Atacama desert in Chile (formerly Peru and Bolivia), and it became an increasingly significant cargo because it was also used to manufacture explosives. Nitrate cargoes were difficult – they were very heavy and could make vessels unstable; they were highly susceptible to fires; conditions round Cape Horn could be brutal; and the exposed nitrate ports on the west coast of South America were hazardous.

For centuries saltpetre was a key element of gunpowder and an invaluable agricultural fertiliser. It was actually potassium nitrate, a crystalline salt with the chemical formula KNO_3, and in Europe much saltpetre came from India, though from the 16th century it was produced using animal manure and urine. Guano from Peru was in demand as a fertiliser from the 1840s, but three decades later the supply was diminishing. At this time the mining of sodium nitrate deposits was expanding in the harsh Atacama desert, within Peru’s remote province of Tarapacá and Bolivia’s province of Antofogasta. Sodium nitrate, NaNO₃, was also commonly referred to as saltpetre or Chile saltpetre, and it was valued as a fertiliser by farmers in North America and in Europe, especially France and Germany, where it was used as a top dressing for crops. It was also utilised by other industries, including the manufacture of gunpowder and explosives. 1

The imposition of nitrate taxes by Bolivia was the catalyst that led to Chile declaring war on the allies Peru and Bolivia, a conflict known as the War of the Pacific (1879–83), in which Chile annexed much of the nitrate-producing territory, including ports such as Iquique and Pisagua. During that war, shipments of nitrate were interrupted, but Chile subsequently became the world’s most important source of nitrate. 2 During the First World War much nitrate was exported from Chile to Britain and the United States for explosives in shells. Being cut off from supplies, Germany developed a new industrial technique to produce nitrate artificially as ammonium nitrate, NH₄NO₃, for agricultural use and, critically, explosives. In time this new industry ended Chile’s monopoly, and their nitrate exports diminished. 3

The arid Atacama desert, 1,000 miles long, is located between two mountain chains (the Chilean Coast Range and the western Andes) and is rich in minerals, including sodium nitrate. The virtually rainless landscape is so harsh and barren that it has proved suitable for testing expeditions to Mars. The nitrate ore deposits, known as caliche, are just below the surface, and working in immense heat, the labourers broke up the rocks with explosives. They then split the rocks into smaller chunks, which were loaded into carts and taken to oficinas (industrial plants). The processing involved crushers, boiling tanks, settling tanks, cooling and drying. Water had to be brought in, and most of the equipment was also imported, from steam railway engines to jute bags or sacks into which the refined sodium nitrate was put. The coarse, strong bags were variously referred to as sacking, jute, hessian and burlap, and many were made at Dundee. 4

The filled bags were transported by mule or railway to one of the Pacific coast nitrate ports, notably (from north to south) Pisagua, Junin, Caleta Buena, Iquique (the main nitrate port), Tocopilla, Mejillones, Antofogasta and Taltal. In July 1835 HMS Beagle anchored at Iquique, and Charles Darwin recorded: ‘The town contains about a thousand inhabitants, and stands on a little plain of sand at the foot of a great wall of rock, 2000 feet in height, which here forms the coast. The whole is utterly desert.’ Nearly seven decades later Claude Woollard had a similar impression of Caleta Buena, which in his view was one of the smallest and most dismal nitrate ports, with only a few shacks, huts and a small, insignificant pier: ‘The shore, from the ship, appeared to be absolutely bleak and lifeless with its yellow sun-scorched hills stretching right back to the Andes Mountains with their distant snow peaks glittering in the sun.’ He was an apprentice on board the Penrhyn Castle, a three-masted steel barque rated ✠100A1 at Lloyd’s Register,5 and they had anchored at Caleta Buena in February 1901 to load nitrate. 6

The industry was largely controlled by foreign companies, including Antony Gibbs & Sons, who had enjoyed a virtual monopoly exporting guano from Peru. The often controversial figure John Thomas North, known as ‘The Nitrate King’, dominated the lucrative nitrate trade, with investments in oficinas, railways, water supply, coal mining and shipping. He even invited William Howard Russell, a former correspondent for The Times, to observe how the nitrate industry operated in Chile. When Russell arrived at Iquique in May 1889, half a century after Darwin, he was surprised at the bustling scene and imposing sea frontage, while in the roadstead he noted ‘a number of large ships, lying in regular tiers, full rigged barques, three-masted schooners, one large four-master. Steam tugs plying with lighters in tow between the shore and the ships.’7

Nitrate from the west coast of South America was carried by wooden, iron and steel sailing ships, some of which were built specifically for the trade. They usually made complex voyages, such as sailing in ballast from Britain to Australia, where they loaded with coal, crossing the Pacific to a Chilean port, and returning to Europe round Cape Horn with nitrate. Two companies came to dominate the trade, using substantial vessels – the German Laeisz company (the ‘Flying P line’, owing to the names of its vessels starting with P, such as Pamir, Passat, Potosi and Preussen) and the French A D Bordes company. Their vessels included four- and even five-masters. Many other ships were British, carrying coal from Britain or from Newcastle, New South Wales, to the West Coast and then heading with nitrate to Queenstown (Ireland) or Falmouth (Cornwall) ‘for orders’, which were usually for delivery to ports on the Continent. 8

Vessels sailing from the Atlantic had to round Cape Horn or risk the Straits of Magellan shortcut. The east–west passage round the Horn was often a perilous experience, and many crews were exhausted by the time their destination was reached. The Chilean ports were basic, with few handling facilities, and ships had to anchor in the exposed and crowded roadsteads. Severe and sudden winds, even hurricanes, could cause chaos, and ships were especially at risk from northerly winds, the ‘northers’, as well as coastal fogs. Earthquakes were likewise a hazard.

In 1905 William Jones was an apprentice on board the three-masted steel ship British Isles, built in 1884 and rated ✠100A1 by Lloyd’s Register. 9 She was laden with Welsh coal for Pisagua, Chile’s northernmost nitrate port. On his first visit ashore Jones was struck by the dust from the nitrate of soda filling the air, as well as thousands of bags of nitrate stacked along the shore waiting to be loaded manually into lighters: ‘The jetty was a wooden structure, about 100 yards long, projecting from the shelving beach backed by the barren ground on which the town was built, with the steep and bare hill behind it. The jetty was for lighters to load and discharge cargo to and from the ships in the anchorage.’ 10 A few years earlier, in 1894, Nora Coughlan was on board the three-masted iron barque Leucadia with her father, Captain James William Holmes, loading nitrate at Taltal. She recorded her impressions of this port: ‘Scores of helpless sailing ships lay off this forbidding mountainous coast with no harbour and no hope of anchorage should a big blow sweep in from the sea. Yet while sailing ships remained, they could be found crowded in those dangerous and dreary ports because the barren mountain range was rich in nitrate to fertilise our green and pleasant land.’ 11 

The Nitrate Producers’ Steamship Company Ltd (also known as the Anglo Line) was formed in 1895, with the backing of John Thomas North, and their steamships often took mixed cargoes to Chile, then nitrate to the United States and cotton or other goods to Europe. Even so, sailing ships continued long after steamships were commonplace, and in August 1907 William Jones said that when his ship, the British Isles, arrived at Iquique, ‘we saw about 60 sailing-ships at moorings in the bay’. Steam, he said, had not yet replaced sail for the transportation of coal and nitrate, because the lack of wharves, cranes and other facilities meant a slow turn-around: ‘Not until after the Panama Canal gave easy and quick access from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and better facilities were provided at Iquique and other West Coast ports, were the “Cape Horn windbags” finally ousted from this, their last stronghold rendezvous.’ 12

Sailing ships were loaded with bags of nitrate hoisted up from lighters, a process that took many weeks, and as the bags went into the hold, the temporary ballast was discharged. While he was at Pisagua, William Howard Russell learned that the lighters were unable to use the jetty in rough seas, and so nitrate bags were put on inflated rafts (bolsas or balsas) made from the waterproof skins of two sea lions, inflated and lashed together, which were floated out to the lighters. Because nitrate dissolves easily in water, care had to be taken not to get the cargo wet. Much time was lost to ‘surf days’ when the sea was deemed too dangerous, but even in reasonable conditions, Claude Woollard said that hoisting the bags aboard was not easy, because the ships often ‘rolled uncomfortably with the surf and swell’. 13

Some sailing ships had steam winches powered by donkey boilers that could speed up the loading process. In 1909 the four-masted steel barque Bengairn, built in 1890, was at Iquique, where the captain, James Learmont, was given the option of ‘steamboat dispatch’:

We were well equipped for loading with two steam winches and I had had made special canvas slings to hold eight sacks of nitrate ... We had four stevedores from the shore to stow the cargo and four of our men on the stack ... we loaded about 350 tons each day without other shore labour. In 31 days ... we discharged 1,000 tons of ballast and loaded 3,500 tons of nitrate. 14 

Chilean stevedores skilfully stowed the bags in a pyramid formation in the hold, each bag weighing about two hundredweight (224 pounds), and a stevedore could stow several hundred every day. Woollard described how they were dealt with: ‘A native stevedore always stowed the bags in the hold. These would be lowered on his shoulders and he would then carry them along over the top of wide planks and dexterously drop them neatly in their appointed places, where they would fit perfectly and seldom needed lifting to adjust them.’ Nitrate was a very heavy cargo, making vessels roll unless properly loaded, and one manual on the stowage of ships warned that all, or nearly all, ships with cargoes of nitrate or ores were too stiff. 15 

A nitrate cargo tended to solidify and rarely shifted. When being discharged, it had to be dug out with crowbars and pickaxes. The Juteopolis (later named the Garthpool) was a four-masted steel barque named after the jute-manufacturing port of Dundee where she was built in 1891.16 In early 1914 twenty-year-old Robert Moller from Denmark was a crew member when they sailed from Port Talbot with briquettes to the nitrate port of Mejillones in Chile. It took a long time to unload the cargo and take on bags of nitrate, and the crew soon discovered that the bags solidified rapidly. Just as they were ready to sail, news of the outbreak of the First World War reached them, and because of German links, the entire cargo was unloaded, as Moller explained: ‘It was not an easy job to unload the nitrate because by now the bags seemed to be welded together; we then found out that when nitrate is stored in bags it soon forms into a solid mass and in trying to separate the bags they tore apart and new bags had to be used.’ Another seaman recalled the same episode: ‘It was a heart-breaking job; we used wooden “crowbars” so as not to tear the bags.’ 17

It was traditional for the youngest boy to sit on the last bag of nitrate while it was hauled up to the yardarm, accompanied by cheering, flag waving, bells ringing and shanties, before being lowered into the hold, with every ship in the harbour joining in the festivities. Captains visited from the other ships, and tots of rum were distributed to the crew. That night five hurricane lamps were fixed to a wooden framework in the shape of the Southern Cross constellation and hoisted up, again accompanied by cheering, singing and ringing of bells. 18

On board the Juteopolis Robert Moller said that, on leaving Mejillones, they complied with the old sailor’s tradition of ‘chantying the Southern Cross’:

After dark the cross was hoisted to the main yard as our selected ‘chantyman’ sang a chanty and the rest joined him in the chorus. When the other ships in the harbour noticed the cross and heard the chanty which could be clearly heard across the calm waters of Mejillones Bay for miles, they knew our ship was ready to sail in the morning. Our chantyman hailed each of the other ships, one at a time and the other ships then acknowledged our hail and gave us three cheers. When all ships in the vicinity had been signalled and responded, the cross was lowered to the singing of another chanty. After this ritual, according to sailor tradition, a ship is ready for sea. 19

Fire was a danger for ships loaded with nitrate, not just at sea but also in port. During his 1889 visit William Russell remarked that the town of Iquique was built largely of wood and was prone to fires, especially with the presence of nitrate. He added:

But ships laden with nitrate have taken fire on their way home so frequently that Lloyd’s have been making anxious inquiries about the matter. Several vessels have been burned in harbour, and bags of nitrate have caught fire on shore, notably at Pisagua ... Once the material is well alight, it is scarcely possible to extinguish the fire or save the ship. 20

Nitrate was highly inflammable, and fires could be extinguished only by barrels of water mixed with nitrate, not by water alone. William Jones described the precautions taken: ‘The loading of a cargo of nitrate has many peculiarities. This chemical ... is inflammable, and all smoking or naked lights are forbidden in the hold or near the hatches when loading it.’ Nevertheless, cargoes did catch fire while being loaded, and Woollard observed: ‘The remains of several wrecks of the coast testify to disasters of this nature, and one actually took place at Iquique just about the time we were on the coast. It was the four-masted barque Reliance, and I possess a photograph of her ablaze.’ The Reliance was an iron barque, built in 1884 at Liverpool and rated ✠100A1 by Lloyd’s Register. 21 On 14 September 1901 the Lloyd’s agent at Iquique sent a telegram to the Salvage Association in London about the Reliance: ‘Fire smouldering; lost fore and main masts’ and two days later: ‘Is not worth repairing. Advise sale by auction. Re-bagging, re-shipping expense will be about 2,500l.’ 22

Nitrate-carrying ships lost at sea may, in many instances, have been due to fires. Occasionally survivors were rescued, providing information about such disasters. The Carpathian was a three-masted iron ship built in 1874 at Hull. 23 She left Iquique on 2 October 1891, laden with nitrate, bound for Queenstown or Falmouth for orders. The crew of twenty-seven included John Fisken Halkett Park, a 21-year-old apprentice who was acting third mate. He recounted how he was woken at one in the morning of 24 October by the cry ‘Ship on fire’, when they were sailing in the Pacific, 900 miles from Alejandro Selkirk Island: ‘The second mate and I went down the lazarette, but were driven up by flames and smoke. The captain then ordered the after-hatches to be taken off; but no sooner was this done than a cloud of flame showed us the fire had gained such a strong hold on the ship that nothing could be done to save her.’ The order was given to abandon ship. 24

The crew ended up split between a lifeboat and a gig, with scant provisions. ‘We stood by the ship,’ Park explained, ‘till she blew up and went down, her stern going first: and a sad sight it was to see our gallant ship disappear from our view and the waters close over her.’ He was in the gig with the captain, nine other men and a dog, and after a few days they lost sight of the lifeboat. Park described their state: ‘Constantly soaked with sea water, never once all these weary days and nights able to lie down, with sore and swollen feet, frequent shivering fits, cold, hunger, thirst, and death staring us in the face, we suffered much.’ On the morning of the ninth day a light was spotted, and their cries for help were heard by the crew of the Marion Crosbie, a steel barque heading to the Chilean port of Arica with coal from Newcastle, New South Wales. They were all rescued and a fortnight later were landed at Arica, from where they travelled by steamer to Valparaiso and then by the mail steamer Sorata, arriving at Liverpool on 2 January 1893. The lifeboat was never heard of again. 25

After the First World War, and with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the days of sailing ships were numbered, especially as many were lost to enemy action during the war. There was still a market for nitrate of soda, but steamships gradually took over. In August 1927 the William Mitchell loaded a cargo of nitrate at Tocopilla, but no other sailing ships were present, and when the crew performed the ‘Hoisting the Southern Cross’ ceremony, none of the steamers joined in. It marked the end of an era. 26

Traces of nitrate (a wide-ranging arts resource devoted to the extraction of minerals in Chile and links with Britain)

International Encyclopedia of the First World War, The use of nitrate in the First World War

Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage Centre, Guano: The Perilous Cargo of Flammable and Noxious Fertiliser