group of sailors from Baltimore ashore on liberty were attacked by Congressionalists, still angry at the Itata affair. Two of Baltimores sailors were killed and eighteen wounded; thirty-six other American sailors were arrested by the local authorities. Tensions ran high in both Chile and the United States. Yorktown, a part of the United States' response, departed Charlotte Amalie for Valparaíso on 17 October for a six-week, storm-tossed voyage around the South American continent via the Straits of Magellan. Less than two weeks after Yorktowns 30 November arrival, Baltimore departed, leaving American interests in the hands of Evans and Yorktown. Over the ensuing weeks, Chile and the United States came close to war, but cooler heads prevailed. Locally, Evans' patience was "dangerously tested", but it held. One inflammatory incident occurred when Chilean torpedo boats bore down on Evans' ship, turning their helms hard over at the last possible instant to avoid a collision. On another occasion, a group of locals threw rocks at Evans and his gig as it lay at the foot of a jetty. After a month at Valparaíso, Yorktown took on refugees from the American, Spanish, and Italian legations in mid-January 1892. She got underway on the 19th and arrived at Callao, Peru, on the 25th. While Yorktown lay anchored there, tension between the United States and Chile relaxed and the crisis abated, and the Chilean later government provided compensation for the families of the American sailors that were killed. Sealing patrol Yorktown stood out of Callao on 4 March 1892, steamed northward via San Diego and San Francisco, and eventually arrived at the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California. The gunboat subsequently underwent repairs there until late in the following month. Having weathered one diplomatic storm and international incident, Evans and his command soon set sail on another mission that, if handled wrongly, could have caused ill-feeling with the British. That spring, Yorktown—along with two other naval vessels and a trio of revenue cutters—headed toward Arctic waters on 27 April to protect the great herds of seals in the Bering Sea from poachers. Traveling along the west coast of the United States, the gunboat and her crew "braced", in Evans' words, "at the prospect of doing something". As at Valparaíso, Evans faced the possibility of becoming involved in an international incident arising from possible confrontations with Canadian sealers. Operating under the protection of the British crown, the