Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre

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Career United Kingdom

Built at:	Armstrong-Whitworth, Elswick
Laid down:	27 November 1911
Launched:	27 November 1913 as Almirante Latorre
Commissioned:	September 1915
Fate:	April 1920, resold to Chilean Navy
Career Chile
Commissioned:	1921
Decommissioned:	1958
Fate:	Scrapped
General characteristics
Displacement:	25,000 tons standard 32,000 tons full load
Length:	625 ft (190.5 m)
Beam:	92.5 ft (28 m) as built
Draught:	33 ft (10 m) maximum.
Propulsion:	21 Yarrow boilers Low pressure Parsons and High pressure Brown-Curtis turbines
Fuel:	Coal and oil
Speed:	22.75 knots
Power:	37,000 shp (39,247 shp during trials)
Complement:	834 officers and men
Armament: (original)	Ten 14 inch guns in 5 turrets Twelve 6 inch guns Two 3 inch anti-aircraft guns Four 3 pounder guns Four 21 inch Torpedo tubes (submerged)
Armour: (as built)	Belt 9 inch deck 1.5 inch barbette 10 inch Turret 10 inch Conning tower 11 inch

For other ships of the same name, see Almirante Latorre

The Almirante Latorre (named after the Chilean Admiral Juan José Latorre Benavente) was a battleship which served with the Chilean Navy from after World War I through World War II into the late 1950s.

The Latorre was ordered by the Chilean Navy from and built by the British shipyard of Armstrong Whitworth to a design of Armstrongs Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt. At the outbreak of World War I she was purchased by the British for service in the Royal Navy and completed as HMS Canada.

Her sister ship the Almirante Cochrane was less far forward in construction, and was purchased at a lesser price in 1917 to be converted into an aircraft carrier, HMS Eagle. After the war, Latorre was delivered to Chile in 1921 for a price of one million pounds (about half her original cost) after refitting. Eagle was not repurchased. Latorre was well maintained in Chilean service, and after the outbreak of World War II, she even tendered an offer from the United States to purchase her. The offer was declined however. Lack of modernization resulted in the range of the main batteries being poor, and her armor only gave protection roughly equivalent to World War II battlecruisers. Despite this, she was respected internationally, partially due to the reputation of the Chilean Navy.

With the exception of the British cruiser HMS Caroline, she was the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland afloat, until scrapped in Japan in 1958-59. The Chilean Government has granted Japanese request to use parts from this ship to restore the Mikasa, which was in severe state of desrepair since the end of World War II, so many parts from the Almirante Latorre can now be seen aboard the Mikasa.