Boyton dispatched an officer to Don Nicholas with a request to be sent with his torpedo crew down to Pisco where he expected the Chileans would attempt to laud troops.

The answer he received was "Impatience is a bad counselor.

Wait for orders." If Paul had followed his own instincts, he could have knocked two or three Chilean vessels out of the water, for they landed at Pisco a few days later and no very sharp lookout being kept, he might have put torpedoes under them at night.
As the enemy was gradually closing in by land and sea, Paul was ordered to Callao to take charge of a submarine boat that had been built by a Swiss engineer.

The boat was to be run by compressed air under water and by steam on the surface.

It was a complicated affair and Boyton had but little confidence in it and that confidence was considerably lessened when the inventor himself refused to go down in her.