ARA ''Libertad'' was a

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

that served in the

Argentine Navy The Argentine Navy (ARA; es, Armada de la República Argentina). This forms the basis for the navy's ship prefix "ARA". is the navy of Argentina. It is one of the three branches of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, together with the ...

between 1892 and 1947, and with the

Argentine Coast Guard The Argentine Naval Prefecture ( es, Prefectura Naval Argentina or PNA) is a service of Argentina's Ministry of Security (Argentina), Security Ministry charged with protecting the country's rivers and maritime territory. It therefore fulfills the ...

as a pilot station ship from 1947 to 1968. It was the seventh Argentine naval ship with this name.

Design

''Libertad'' was a battleship designed mainly for coastal and riverine use, being classified by the Argentine Navy as "Riverine Battleship" (Spanish: ''Acorazado de Río''); in the 1902 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships it was listed as "Coast Service Battleship". The ship was

long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and ...

and between perpendiculars,''The Engineer'' 18 November 1892, p. 427. with a

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

of and a draft of .

Displacement Displacement may refer to: Physical sciences Mathematics and Physics *Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...

was .Chesneau and Kolesnik 1979, p. 402. It had a steel hull subdivided by transverse and longitudinal bulkheads, with a ram at its bow.''The Engineer'' 18 November 1892, p. 428. A thick

armoured belt Belt armor is a layer of heavy metal armor plated onto or within the outer hulls of warships, typically on battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers, and aircraft carriers. The belt armor is designed to prevent projectiles from penetrating to t ...

of compound armour, backed by of teak ran over two-thirds of the ship's length. The belt was deep, with its upper edge just above the waterline. Armoured transverse bulkheads were at the fore and aft end of the belt, with the forward bulkhead being thick and the aft bulkhead . An armoured deck ran the length of the ship, and was thick over the belt and thick at the ends of the ship. The ship's

conning tower A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine, often armored, from which an officer in charge can conn the vessel, controlling movements of the ship by giving orders to those responsible for the ship's engine, rudder, lines, and gro ...

was protected by of armour, while the main guns were protected by thick barbettes topped by a armoured hood. thick gunshields were fitted to the ship's secondary armament. The ship was propelled by two four-cylinder vertical compound steam engines, rated at , fed by steam from four cylindrical boilers. This gave a speed of . The ship had a single mast and funnel. The mast differed slightly from the one in its sister ''Independencia''. As designed, its main battery had two 240mm Krupp guns (one at the bow and the other at the stern) on Vavasseur mountings protected with armoured shields, and two quick-firing 120mm Elswick guns on each side. The secondary battery had four 47 mm quick-firing Nordenfelt/Hotchkiss guns, and two 25mm Nordenfelt guns.

History

In July 1889, the Argentine Naval Commission in London signed a contract with the shipyard

Cammell Laird Cammell Laird is a British shipbuilding company. It was formed from the merger of Laird Brothers of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century. The company also built railway rolling stock until 1929, ...

of Birkenhead ordering the construction of "two twin-shaft, ram-equipped battleships for riverine service" (Spanish: ''dos acorazados de espolón de doble hélice para servicio de ríos'') at a unit cost of £ 176.000; this transaction was approved in September of that year by the Ministry. The first ship, then known as ''Nueve de Julio'' and later renamed ''Libertad'' when a new cruiser was assigned that name, started construction in 1890 and was launched in 1892; its construction was completed that year. After finalizing trials, in November 1892 the ship was formally accepted by the Argentine Navy, under command of Captain Atilio Barilari. It departed Liverpool on December 20, 1892 and arrived at Buenos Aires on January 25, 1893. Brassey1899x4

In mid-1894 the ship participated in the naval exercises as part of the 1st Division; later that year it joined its sister ship, ''Independencia'', and the battleship ''Almirante Brown''. In 1905 it was assigned to the hydrographic survey of the Río de la Plata (English: ''River Plate''); after that it was reassigned to the Training Division. In 1914, ''Libertad'' was assigned to train the crews for the new dreadnought battleships being built in the United States ( ''Rivadavia'' and ''Moreno''). In 1915 the ship was reclassified as a "coast guard ship". In 1918–19 ''Libertad'' was maintained in reserve, and by 1922–23 was assigned as training ship. In 1924-25 the ship was again in reserve, being upgraded to use oil fuel rather than coal. In 1927 ''Libertad'' was reclassified as a gunboat, and was assigned to the Gunboat Division in 1930. In December 1946 ''Libertad'' was discharged from the Argentine Navy (decree 22.556) and in 1947 transferred to the Coast Guard, to be used as station ship for

pilots An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

in the River Plate. In 1968 the ship was discharged from the Argentine Coast Guard.

References

Notes

Bibliography

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External links

Battleship "Libertad" - Histarmar website (Historia y Arqueología Marítima - Acorazado de Rio Libertad)
(''accessed 2015-12-05'') {{DEFAULTSORT:Libertad Battleships of the Argentine Navy 1892 ships Ships built on the River Mersey Coastal defence ships