Karl Flach ( Villmar, 15 August 1821 - Bay of Valparaiso, 3 May 1866) was a German mechanic and engineer who designed and built the '' Flach'', the first Chilean submarine.

Biography

Born Johann Anton Flach, he was the son of watchmaker Heinrich Flach and his wife Margaretha. According to another version, originated in the studies of one of his great-grandchildren, Guillermo Stegen Ahumada, his birth name was Gottfried Cornelius. He was forced to change his identity to Karl Flach, the name of a deceased man, after his failed participation in the 1848 revolution that tried to overthrow the Kaiser. With his wife and son Heinrich (Enrique) Flach, he traveled on the sailboat ''Australia'' from Hamburg to Chile on 3 April 1852, where upon arrival he called himself Karl August Flach. Between 1865 and 1866 Karl Flach designed and built the submarine ''Flach'', powered by the force of the crew members and equipped with two guns. The submarine was long and wide, with a speed of to . The crew was made up of Flach and his 16-year-old son, two Chileans (Adolfo Pulgar and Francisco Rodríguez), five Germans (Valentín Baum, Gustavo Maas, Augusto Warmuth, German Schmidt and Luis Grinewinke) and two French people, totalling 11 people. The submarine had been commissioned by the Chilean government of

José Joaquín Pérez José Joaquín Pérez Mascayano (; 6 May 1801 – 1 July 1889) was a Chilean lawyer, diplomat, and politician who served as President of Chile from 1861 to 1871. Born in Santiago to an aristocratic family, Pérez studied humanities at the Rea ...

who wanted to oppose the Spanish in the

Chincha Islands War The Chincha Islands War, also known as Spanish–South American War (), was a series of coastal and naval battles between Spain and its former colonies of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia from 1865 to 1879. The conflict began with Spain's seiz ...

following the Bombardment of Valparaíso. The submarine, with Karl Flach as captain, carried out several successful test and dive trips. On 3 May 1866, the submarine made a dive without warning. The submarine sank in the Bay of Valparaíso with its eleven-member crew. Rescue attempts were unsuccessful. In 2018, the wreck of the submarine was allegedly found.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flach, Karl 1821 births 1866 deaths Deaths by drowning in Chile Chilean engineers Chilean inventors Immigrants to Chile Inventors killed by their own invention 19th-century German engineers 19th-century German inventors People from Limburg-Weilburg People who died at sea People from the Duchy of Nassau