During the 1890s, the Chilean Navy grappled with a series of complaints concerning maritime communications across the country’s nearly 4,000-mile-long coastline.  In the north, maritime authorities observed that the signaling mast used to announce the arrival of ships at the Arica port had “completely deteriorated with age,” while officials along the central coast requested additional telephone connections, semaphore stations, and a signaling mast in the Valparaíso region. At the extreme southern end, the governor of the Magallanes Territory asserted that the complete absence of telegraphic service in the area meant that the postal service was frequently unprepared for the early or late arrival of mail steamers.   While the country possessed a substantial number of lighthouses, a report characterized the country’s maritime lighting as “not only deficient, but amongst the poorest in the world.”

To address these problems, the Chilean government passed a law creating a new department within the Navy: the Directorate of Maritime Territory.  On August 10, 1898, the agency officially assumed authority over “lighthouses, beacons, telegraphs, semaphore signals, and other coastal communications.”  Naval authorities appointed Captain Arturo Fernández Vial as Director of the new agency.  Almost immediately thereafter, the Directorate submitted to the Navy a comprehensive plan to improve coastal communications by establishing “a network of telegraph lines, submarine cables, and messenger pigeons along the coast.” 

The Chilean Navy had never employed pigeons for coastal communications, but the idea had circulated in journals in the 1890s.  The goal would be ship-to-shore communication; a ship traveling along the Chilean coast would maintain contact with the mainland during the course of a journey by releasing pigeons that had been trained to return to specific naval facilities. But the Directorate encountered an immediate obstacle: a dearth of quality birds and practical know-how.  At that time, the country lacked a sufficient number of pigeon fanciers and Chilean homing pigeons had yet to achieve high flying speeds.  The agency accordingly solicited the services of an expat Englishman, William Tyler. A year-long contract was swiftly executed in August 1898 in which Tyler would serve as an official “Instructor of Messenger Pigeons.” The department then arranged for the shipment of 50 pairs of pigeons from London.  The birds traveled aboard the transport Angamos and arrived in Chile in early October 1898.

Armed with 100 pigeons, the Directorate quickly erected two lofts that same year: one at the Punta Ángeles lighthouse in Valparaíso and the other at Puerto Zenteno, a naval station in the Magallanes. Tyler took command of the Punta Ángeles loft, where he worked on developing instructions for the handling and breeding of pigeons.  These stations would serve as breeding lofts to supply future stations.

Over the next six years, the naval pigeon service expanded to 11 more sites, most of which were lighthouse stations.  Collectively, the naval pigeon stations encompassed the entire coast of Chile.  To the immediate north, near the borders of Peru and Bolivia, was the Iquique station. At the southernmost end was Punta Dungeness, marking the border between Chile and Argentina.  The rest of the stations fell between these points, with one station being located off the mainland, on the Juan Fernández Archipelago. All of these pigeon stations focused on improving maritime communication with the exception of one: a loft set up at the coastal defense facility Fuerte Bueras functioned as a training loft for naval conscripts.  The “more distinguished conscripts” received “[p]igeon instruction consist[ing] of theory and sending messages.”

The initial supply of 100 pigeons ballooned to 403 birds by 1900 and peaked at 693 at the end of 1902.  Overpopulation emerged as an issue as early as 1900—the majority of stations only had room for 40 pigeons.  To solve this problem, the pigeon keepers routinely removed eggs from nests.  Captain Fernández Vial also donated over 50 surplus pigeons to Army garrisons at Copiapó and La Serena. Meanwhile, annual losses were roughly 10% to 20%, owing to training failures, disease, and pests. 

The Directorate aimed to develop pigeon breeds well suited to the varied Chilean maritime climate zones. The thirteen stations traversed four unique zones— a warm zone from Arica to Coquimbo, a temperate zone from Coquimbo to Talcahuano, a rainy zone from Talcahuano to the Gulf of Penas, and a cold zone from the Gulf of Penas southward. The Directorate envisioned that over time, the pigeons would acclimate to their station’s climate and supply other lofts within the same zone.  In practice, the Punta Ángeles loft supplied all stations in the warm, temperate, and rainy zones, while the Puerto Zenteno loft supplied pigeons for the two stations in the cold zone.  The Directorate also explored cross-breeding its pigeons with Army pigeons to produce “a distinctly Chilean breed of pigeon.”  The Army agreed to this experiment and sent ten pairs of its birds to the Directorate, but surviving reports are silent about the outcome of this breeding program. 

A naval employee at each facility took on pigeon keeping as a collateral duty.  To assist the caretakers with their charges, the Directorate empowered Tyler to visit the lofts on inspection tours and give the officials a crash course in pigeon keeping.  Tyler covered topics including care, diseases, breeding techniques, record keeping, loft building, and message preparation and delivery.  He also taught them how to conduct flight training and exercises. Evidently, Tyler’s techniques prepared the keepers so well, they put him out of a job—the Directorate allowed his contract to expire without renewal in August 1900 because it “considered his services unnecessary.”  

Caretakers had to keep detailed records on pigeon numbers, breeding programs, exercise performance, and dispatches sent and received at their stations.  Monthly reports of this information were mailed to the Directorate, which then published a summary in an annual report to the Navy.  To facilitate record keeping, every pigeon was tagged with an aluminum ring around its leg that identified its particular loft with a numerical sequence.  

The Directorate prepared standardized despatch pads, each containing fifty message forms.  Each form measured 10 by 6 centimeters and included fields for the point of departure, date, time, and destination.  Helpfully, the cover of the message booklet provided concise instructions for releasing the birds, together with a drawing of a pigeon’s leg showing how the message was to be wrapped and tied to the ring worn by the bird.

To help the pigeons gain experience flying over water, the Directorate availed itself of civilian steamships passing by stations or adjacent ports. Maritime authorities were instructed to request pigeons from a nearby loft and to place a wicker basket, four pigeons, and food aboard arriving steamers; the birds would be released en route and return to their home station.  The birds were also trained on warships that happened to be performing naval maneuvers in the area. Releases occurred off the decks of the cruisers O’Higgins, Esmeralda, and Ministro Zenteno, as well as various gunboats, cutters, and torpedo boats.

Through these trials, the pigeons attained average speeds of 20 to 25 kilometers per hour.  The results varied by location: At the Iquique station, 20 pigeons were released from naval ships on maneuvers and every single one returned to the loft. The Punta Ángeles birds successfully delivered messages sent by naval conscripts at Fuerte Bueras and the Navy’s firing range at Viña del Mar.  But difficulties emerged the further south one went down the coast. Exercises had to be suspended at the Quellón loft because of hawk and kestrel attacks. At the Puerto Zenteno breeding loft, 44 pigeons were delivered to the cutters Toro and Yáñez for exercises in the spring of 1902 and only 8 returned to the station.  That same season, however, every pigeon released from points three or four miles away on land returned. The Directorate attributed this inconsistency to keepers at the Puerto Zenteno loft understanding their task as breeding pigeons rather than training them for message delivery.

Throughout the existence of the naval pigeon service, the Directorate expressed mixed opinions on its utility, depending upon who was in charge of the agency.  Writing in 1900, a new Director asserted that the advantages offered by the pigeons were “almost nonexistent,” especially in light of training difficulties and expenses. He recommended that the naval pigeon service not be expanded any further.  Captain Fernández Vial, however, was reappointed as Director the following year and sought to utilize the service to its fullest potential.  Under his tenure, the department explored ways to enhance the service’s strain of pigeons and offered to supply other facilities within the Magallanes region with pigeons to sustain communications between isolated outposts.  In the 1902 annual report, he acknowledged that while it was not indispensable at the present, the program’s low annual costs more than justified its existence.  “Until wireless telegraphy can connect us over a distance of 300 miles,” he wrote, “this service will be of great usefulness in wartime over distances of up to 180 miles.”

However, by 1903, a new leader was in charge of the department.  In June and October, he submitted requests to the Navy to disband the pigeon program.  “[I]n view of the existing advances in technology,” the Director wrote, “I consider that pigeon communications have fallen completely out of use.”  The Navy ultimately acceded to this request and issued an order on April 9, 1904, authorizing the sale of the pigeons and their equipment.  A total of 564.07 pesos was obtained through these auctions; the funds were deposited into the government’s treasuries and credited against the national revenue. 

The Directorate’s anticipation of advancements in communication technology was borne out a few months later. On November 25, 1904,  two naval officers transmitted information via wireless between the cruisers Esmeralda and Presidente Errázuriz, at a distance of more than fifty nautical miles apart while both vessels were traveling between Valparaíso and Juan Fernández.  The date is still commemorated as the beginning of telecommunications in Chile.

The Chilean Navy’s pigeon service lasted only six years, but its history offers a glimpse into the challenges of maintaining communications along the country’s sprawling coast. The pigeons’ brief stint in the Chilean Navy nonetheless deserves to be remembered as a compelling moment in the history of naval pigeon communications.

Sources:

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