The Lautaro was initially the British East Indiaman Windham of 850 tons built in Perry, Wells & Green

Blackwall Yard

Blackwall Yard was a shipyard on the Thames at Blackwall, London, engaged in ship building and later ship repairs for over 350 years. The yard closed in 1987...

 shipyards for the East India Company

East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 (HEIC) and launched 1800. She made seven voyages to the India and China for the HEIC. In 1809-10, the French captured her twice, and the British recaptured her twice. The Chilean Navy bought her in 1818 and she then served in the Chilean Navy, taking part in several actions. From 1824 she was a training ship before she was broken up in 1828.

East India Company

Windham sailed seven times the route England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 between 31 March 1801 and 25 June 1817. Because she sailed during wartime, she sailed under a letter of marque

Letter of marque

In the days of fighting sail, a Letter of Marque and Reprisal was a government licence authorizing a person to attack and capture enemy vessels, and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale...

, which gave her the right to take enemy vessels as prizes should the opportunity arise. Her first letter of marque was dated 14 January 1801 and gave the name of her captain as Thomas Grantham. With the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 in mid-1803, Grantham received a new letter of marque dated 2 July 1803. She received a third letter on 26 January 1805 that named John Stewart as her captain. Stewart sailed her on her third, fourth and fifth voyages.

It was on Windhams fifth voyage, during the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811

Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811

The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a series of amphibious operations and naval actions fought to determine possession of the French Indian Ocean territories of Île de France and Île Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars...

, that the French Navy captured her in the Action of 18 November 1809

Action of 18 November 1809

The Action of 18 November 1809 was the most significant engagement of a six month cruise by a French frigate squadron in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars. The French commander, Commodore Jacques Hamelin, raided across the Bay of Bengal with his squadron and achieved local superiority,...

. The British frigate HMS Magicienne under Captain Lucius Curtis recaptured her on 29 December.

She was seized for a second time in the Action of 3 July 1810

Action of 3 July 1810

The Action of 3 July 1810 was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, in which a French frigate squadron under Guy-Victor Duperré attacked and defeated a convoy of Honourable East India Company East Indiamen near the Comoros Islands...

. recaptured Windham at the Battle of Grand Port

Battle of Grand Port

The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle between squadrons of frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy. The battle was fought during 20–27 August 1810 over possession of the harbour of Grand Port on Île de France during the Napoleonic Wars...

 on 21 August 1810. She and another recaptured Indiaman, the Ceylon, arrived back in Britain in April 1811. Ceylon brought with her a cargo from Île Bourbon

Réunion

Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...

 and Windham with one from Île de France

Mauritius

Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

.

Her captain for her sixth and last voyage was Joseph Andrews. Because this voyage took place after the end of the Napoleonic Wars she did not have a letter of marque. She left the Downs on 21 April 1816 and reached Penang on and then Malacca on 7 September. She reached Whampoa on 11 October. She left China, crossing the Second Bar on 10 January 1817, reached St Helena on 18 March, and the Downs on 23 May.

The HEIC then her to her Joseph Andrews. José Antonio Álvarez Condarco, agent of the Chilean government in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, arranged the purchase of the ship.The British government generally stipulated that buyers of frigates or larger warships that the Admiralty was selling undertake to break them up within 12 months of the date of purchase or forfeit the bonds they had posted. When the Chileans wanted to create larger warships they had to make do with Indiamen such as Windham. They were permitted to buy the Cruizer-class

Cruizer class brig-sloop

The Cruizer class was an 18-gun class of brig-sloops of the Royal Navy. Brig-sloops were the same as ship-sloops except for their rigging...

 brig-sloop .

Chilean career

Windham arrived to Valparaíso

Valparaíso

Valparaíso is a city and commune of Chile, center of its third largest conurbation and one of the country's most important seaports and an increasing cultural center in the Southwest Pacific hemisphere. The city is the capital of the Valparaíso Province and the Valparaíso Region...

 on 5 March 1818 and the government paid $180,000 for the ship. She was refitted with 44 guns and renamed Lautaro, and given a crew of Chilean and foreign seamen. A month later she went to sea under the command of George O'Brien, a former British Navy officer.

On 26-27. April 1818 she fought against Esmeralda (1791)

Esmeralda (1791)

The Spanish Esmeralda was a 44 gun frigate built in Port Mahón, Balearic Islands in 1791. The First Chilean Navy Squadron under the command of Thomas Cochrane captured her in the night from 5 to 6 November 1820. She was renamed Valdivia in Chilean service...

and the brigantine Pezuela and broke the blockade of Valparaíso.

On 28. October she captured the Spanish frigate Reina María Isabel (later Chilean frigate O'Higgins (1816) ), Perla and San Miguel.

She participated in the Freedom Expedition to Perú and up 1821 she was under Captain Paul Delano

Paul Delano

Captain Paul Delano , born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, was a sea captain and a member of the prominent American Delano family. He moved to Chile as Captain of the Curiacio where he arrived in June 22, 1819 and became an important part of that country's First Chilean Navy Squadron...

. She was also in the blockade of Chiloé.

1824 worked as "Academia Náutica" (Navigation Academy) of the Chilean Navy.

On 27 September 1828 she couldn't be auctioned and was scrapped.