One of these revivals of political ferment brought the _Huascar_ into prominence, and made her for some years the most famous fighting ship in the world. The interest taken everywhere in the doings of this ship was extraordinary. She was launched in 1865 at Birkenhead, from that yard which has sent so many ships to sea to make history, and if local associations have their influence over ships, and sailors say they have, the records of the _Huascar_ show that she was not false to tradition. Built to the order of the Peruvian Government, she was a turret ship of 1,800 tons displacement and eleven knots speed, and carried a belt of armour on the water-line of from 4½ inches thick at the centre portion to 2½ inches at the ends. Her one turret, which was placed rather forward of amidships, was built on Captain Coles’s design, and given 5½-inch iron plates. In it she carried two 10-inch 12½-ton Armstrong muzzle-loaders; and on her decks were two 40-pounders and one 12-pounder, all three being muzzle-loaders and unprotected. Her lower foremast was on the tripod system, but this was afterwards discarded and she was given an ordinary mast. She had a main- and mizen-mast also, and all three carried topmasts and square sails; when her masts were altered a military top of iron plates was built upon the cap of the mainmast. She had a most exciting career. Her crew mutinied and put to sea in her, and took to freebooting quite in the spirit of the old days of the Spanish Main and the South Eastern Pacific. She was declared a pirate. At the end of May, 1877, the British cruisers _Shah_ and _Amethyst_, which had been ordered to look for her, discovered her off Ilo. These were both light unarmoured cruisers, the latter being much the smaller of the two, and depended largely upon their speed to render attack upon them more difficult, or to avoid it altogether, or to assume the offensive at a time best suited to themselves. Their guns were more modern and powerful than those of the _Huascar_, and also more numerous, so that in gun power the cruisers were superior to the ironclad.