Note on the second edition: History is like a cold case criminal investigation. You collect all the available evidence and reach a conclusion. However, you know there is more information out there, because you have not closed all the loose ends. You end up at a dead end and publish what is known, hoping that one day you will turn over a rock or find some plan in a dusty museum that will change your conclusion and add some more to the narrative. This book is story so far... Off the western coast of South America, where national prestige and the wish to recover the glories of the past mixed with Island full of bird droppings, the new republics pitted the new technologies against one of the world's powers. The conflict know by some as the Spanish -South American war or the Chincha Island war would set the stage for an even more savage war amongst the nations of South America and would be one of the final nails in the end of the 500 year old Spanish Empire.