General Manuel Belgrano (1770-1820), a lawyer turned military and political leader in the Argentinian war of independence from Spanish rule.
A number of vessels in the Argentinian navy were named after Belgrano, most notably the former USS
Phoenix, a 10 000 ton
light cruiser of the
Boise class launched in 1938 and sold to Argentina in 1951. During the
Falklands War of 1982 the
Belgrano, an imposing but completely obsolete ship carrying a crew of 1200 men, was torpedoed and sunk by the British nuclear
attack submarine HMS
Conqueror whilst sailing (as it emerged) away from the "
exclusion zone" announced by the British. The circumstances of the sinking, which was explicitly authorised by the British government, were concealed for some time but revealed after much badgering by the obsessive/maverick Scottish
MP Tam Dalyell.