Torture Center
Reports from Amnesty International, the US Senate and Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission describe the ship as a kind of a floating jail and torture chamber for political prisoners of the Augusto Pinochet regime from 1973 to 1980. It is claimed that probably over a hundred persons were kept there at times and subjected to hideous treatment, among them British priest Michael Woodward, who later died as a result of torture.
Due to this dark part of its history, the international voyages of the Esmeralda are often highly controversial - especially at the time when Pinochet was still in power but even after the restoration of Chilean democracy. The ship's arrival in various ports being accompanied by protests and demonstrations by local political groups and Chilean exiles. Such protest actions were recorded, among other places, at Dartmouth, Pearl Harbor, Quebec, Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, Wellington, Pireus and Haifa, as well as at Santiago in Chile itself,
Read more about this topic: Esmeralda (BE-43)
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