Karl Flach (

Villmar Villmar is a market village and municipality in the Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany. The community is the centre for quarrying and processing the so-called Lahn Marble. Geography Location Villmar lies in the Lahn River valley betwe ...

, 15 August 1821 - Bay of Valparaiso, 3 May 1866 ) was a German mechanic and engineer who designed and built the Flach; the first Chilean submarine.

Biography

Born Johann Anton Flach, he was the son of watchmaker Heinrich Flach and his wife Margaretha. According to another version, originated in the studies of one of his great-grandchildren, Guillermo Stegen Ahumada, his birth name was Gottfried Cornelius. He was forced to change his identity to Karl Flach, the name of a deceased man, after his failed participation in the 1848 revolution that tried to overthrow the Kaiser. With his wife and son Heinrich (Enrique) Flach, he traveled on the sailboat Australia from Hamburg to Chile on 3 April 1852, where upon arrival he called himself Karl August Flach. Between 1865 and 1866 Karl Flach designed and built the

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

, powered by the force of the crew members and equipped with two guns. The submarine was 12.5 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, with a displacement of 2 to 3 knots . The crew was made up of Flach and his 16 year old son, two Chileans Adolfo Pulgar and Francisco Rodríguez, five Germans Valentín Baum, Gustavo Maas, Augusto Warmuth, German Schmidt and Luis Grinewinke and two French people, totalling 11 people. The submarine had been commissioned by the Chilean government of

José Joaquín Pérez José Joaquín Pérez Mascayano (; 6 May 1801 – 1 July 1889) was a Chilean political figure. He served as the president of Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the sou ...

who wanted to oppose the Spanish in the

Chincha Islands War The Chincha Islands War, also known as Spanish–South American War ( es, Guerra hispano-sudamericana), was a series of coastal and naval battles between Spain and its former colonies of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia from 1865 to 1879. The ...

following the

Bombardment of Valparaíso The Bombardment of Valparaíso on 31 March 1866 took place during the Chincha Islands War, when a Spanish fleet shelled, burned and destroyed the undefended port of Valparaíso. Background After the humiliating defeat at the Battle of Papudo an ...

. The submarine, with Karl Flach as captain, carried out several successful test and dive trips. On 3 May 1866, the submarine made a dive without warning. The submarine sank in the Bay of Valparaíso with its eleven-member crew. Rescue attempts were unsuccessful. In 2018, the wreck of the submarine was allegedly found.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flach, Karl 1821 births 1866 deaths German emigrants to Chile People who died at sea