Model of the Frigate O'Higgins shown in the Museo Naval y Marítimo of the Chilean Navy |
|
| Career (Russia) | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Patrikii |
| Builder: | Shipyard in Arkhangelsk |
| Launched: | 3. Jule 1816 |
| Fate: | sold to Spain |
| Career (Spain) | |
| Name: | María Isabel |
| Acquired: | 17. August 1817 |
| Captured: | 20. October 1818 |
| Fate: | captured by Chile in Talcahuano |
| Career (Chile) | |
| Name: | O'Higgins |
| Namesake: | Bernardo O'Higgins |
| Commissioned: | October 1818 |
| Renamed: | María Isabel (1823) |
| Status: | sold to Argentina |
| Career (Argentina) | |
| Name: | Buenos Aires |
| Namesake: | Buenos Aires |
| Commissioned: | 1826 |
| Fate: | sunk in Cape Horn |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Russian Speshniy class frigate |
| Displacement: | 1220 t |
| Length: | 48,6 m |
| Beam: | 12,7m |
| Draft: | 3,9m |
| Propulsion: | sail |
| Crew: | 288-430 men |
| Armament: | 40-50 guns |
O'Higgins was a Chilean frigate famous for her actions under Captain Lord Cochrane.
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The ship was launched in Russia in 1816, as Patrikii and was sold to Spain in 1817 and renamed to María Isabel.
In 1818, still as María Isabel, she sailed under captain Dionisio Capas with a convoy to the coast of Peru but she was captured in Talcahuano by the First Chilean Navy Squadron.
The vessel was afterwards named O'Higgins after Bernardo O'Higgins, the South American Independentist leader and first Chilean head of state.
She was the flagship of Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald naval commander of the Liberating Expedition to Perú and sailed up to Acapulco.
1823, after O'Higgins was deposed by a conservative coup on January 28, the new government (of Ramón Freire) renamed the frigate María Isabel again.[1]
She was sold to Argentina on 1. April 1826 and refittet in Valparaíso, but she never reached Buenos Aires. She sunk rounding Cape Horn.[2]