Sergio Jarpa Gerhard (co-author). Santiago, Editorial Kactus. 1995.
“The commission of Vice-Admiral Cochrane in the Chilean Navy and the activation of the Fleet to begin its campaigns aimed at extending and consolidating the independence to all the territory that belonged to the so-called Kingdom of Chile, thereby eliminating the Spanish presence in the Viceroyalty of Peru, are major achievements, taking into account the lack of financial resources in a country exhausted by intermittent warfare (initiated in 1812) and which had not inherited significant maritime resources from the colonial period. This is the meritorious work of General Bernardo O’Higgins and his collaborators, José Ignacio Zenteno, Manuel Blanco Encalada, and Luis de la Cruz, to name just a few. Overcoming countless obstacles, they had created a naval power that would contest and then gain the necessary sea control to project military forces ashore to consolidate, permanently, the longed-for independence.
The process described, which ran from 1817 to 1818, is the one that gave rise to the Chilean Navy, because the naval service created in that biennium has continued to this day, with periods of greatness and decline that will be the subject of the next chapters.”