BAP ''Puno'' (ABH-306) is a

Peruvian Navy The Peruvian Navy ( es, link=no, Marina de Guerra del Perú, abbreviated MGP) is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with surveillance, patrol and defense on lakes, rivers and the Pacific Ocean up to from the Peruvian littoral. Addit ...

hospital ship A hospital ship is a ship designated for primary function as a floating medical treatment facility or hospital. Most are operated by the military forces (mostly navies) of various countries, as they are intended to be used in or near war zones. ...

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; es, Lago Titicaca ; qu, Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By volume of water and by surface area, ...

. Until 1976 she was called ''Yapura''. She is named after the Yapura River (or Caqueta River) that flows into the

Amazon River The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile. The headwaters of t ...

Department of Loreto Loreto () is Peru's northernmost department and region. Covering almost one-third of Peru's territory, Loreto is by far the nation's largest department; it is also one of the most sparsely populated regions due to its remote location in the Amaz ...

, Peru. The Yapura river was the former border between Peru and Colombia in the Amazonia. It was an iron steam ship commissioned (along with her sister ship ''Yavarí'') by the Peruvian government in 1861 for use on the lake by the

. She is one of the oldest operational iron-hulled ships in the world, and is the oldest first-line military ship.

Construction

The Peruvian government led by

Ramón Castilla Ramón Castilla y Marquesado (; 31 August 1797 – 30 May 1867) was a Peruvian ''caudillo'' who served as President of Peru three times as well as the Interim President of Peru (Revolution Self-proclaimed President) in 1863. His earliest pr ...

ordered ''Yapura'' and her

sister ship A sister ship is a ship of the same class or of virtually identical design to another ship. Such vessels share a nearly identical hull and superstructure layout, similar size, and roughly comparable features and equipment. They often share a ...

''Yavari'' in 1861. In 1862 Thames Ironworks on the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...

built the iron-hulled ''Yavari'' and ''Yapura'' under contract to the

James Watt James Watt (; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fun ...

Foundry of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

. The ships were designed as combined cargo, passenger and

gunboat A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies. History Pre-steam ...

s for the

. ''Puno'' has her original two-cylinder steam engine, which is fuelled with dried

llama The llama (; ) (''Lama glama'') is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a List of meat animals, meat and pack animal by Inca empire, Andean cultures since the Pre-Columbian era. Llamas are social animals and live with othe ...

dung. The ships were built in "knock down" form; that is, they were assembled with bolts and nuts at the shipyard, dismantled into thousands of parts small enough to transport, and shipped to their final destination to be assembled with rivets and launched on the lake. The kits for the two ships consisted of a total 2,766 pieces between them. Each piece was no more than 3.5. cwt—what a mule could carry(C. 177 kg)—because the railway from the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

port of

Arica Arica ( ; ) is a Communes of Chile, commune and a port city with a population of 222,619 in the Arica Province of northern Chile's Arica y Parinacota Region. It is Chile's northernmost city, being located only south of the border with Peru. The ...

went only , as far as

Tacna Tacna was known for its mining industry; it had significant deposits of sodium nitrate and other resources. Its economic prosperity attracted a wave of immigrants from Italy. Today, their Italian Peruvian descendants live in the city and many of t ...

. From there pack mules had to carry them the remaining to Puno on the lake. The original British contractor got the parts to Tacna but failed to complete the section of the journey with mules. This was not resumed until 1868 and ''Yapura'' was not launched until 1873. The Peruvian Corporation will carry out two important remodelings to the original ship, between 1927 and 1929 it will operate an elevation of its prop, taking care not to spoil its gauge; and in 1956 he changed his old engine for a Paxman Ricardo of English manufacture (1948) with 12 cylinders in V, with a power of 410 HP allowing him a speed of 10 knots.

Service history

On May 2, 1873, the "Yapurá" sailed for the first time in the Titicaca Lake under the command of corvette captain Manuel Mariano Melgar. Even though peace had already been signed with the

Treaty of Ancón The Treaty of Ancón was a peace treaty signed by Chile and Peru on 20 October 1883, in Ancón District, Ancón, near Lima. It was intended to settle the two nations' remaining territorial differences at the conclusion of their involvement in the ...

between Peru and Chile to end the

War of the Pacific The War of the Pacific ( es, link=no, Guerra del Pacífico), also known as the Saltpeter War ( es, link=no, Guerra del salitre) and by multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought ...

on October 20, 1883, Rear Admiral Lizardo Montero and General César Canevaro resisted in Arequipa. Pursued by Chilean forces, they retreat to Puno and negotiate more support from Bolivia. Upon reaching Puno, on the shore of Titicaca, they boarded with their men the steam gunboats Yavarí and Yapurá, to march towards the lake port of Chililaya, in Bolivia, where General Narciso Campero was waiting for him with two Bolivian battalions to resume hostilities against Chile. However, a Chilean division arrived in Puno on November 4, 1883 and its local authorities immediately handed over the place, declaring themselves in favor of peace and the government of Miguel Iglesias. The Chilean forces transported by rail from the port of Mollendo to Puno the torpedo boat ''Colo Colo'' and launched there into the waters of Lake Titicaca , where it carried out patrolling operations to prevent communications, control the guerrillas and the military use of the lake. The end of the Pacific War came with an impoverished the Peruvian government, so in 1890 UK investors established the

Peruvian Corporation The Peruvian Corporation Ltd. (alternate: Peruvian Corporation of London) was registered under the Companies Act in London on 20 March 1890. Its board of directors included ten members led by Sir Alfred Dent G A Ollard, of Smiles and Co Solicitor ...

which took over the concession to operate Peru's railways and lake ships. In 1975 Peru nationalised the corporation and ''Yavari'' and ''Yapura'' passed to the state railway company ENAFER. In 1976 they were transferred back the Peruvian Navy, and renamed as BAP ''Puno'', the name of the locality of its Base port, and assigning it to passenger and cargo transportation tasks and as a Coast Guard of lake naval force. In 1993, the ''BAP Puno'' was converted into a hospital ship and renamed her BAP ''Puno''.

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Puno

Puno Puno (Aymara and qu, Punu) is a city in southeastern Peru, located on the shore of Lake Titicaca. It is the capital city of the Puno Region and the Puno Province with a population of approximately 140,839 (2015 estimate). The city was establish ...

Ships of the Peruvian Coast Guard