Through the agency of Anthony Gibbs & Sons, the Government commissioned the JAMES WATT FOUNDRY in Birmingham, England (where steam was first harnessed for industrial use) to build the ships that would collect goods from around the lake. Without a rail link to the lake at that time, all cargo had to be carried up on mule back. Therefore, the ships were built in kit form, with no piece weighing more than 3 ˝ cwts, the maximum carrying capacity of a mule.

THE THAMES IRONWORKS AND SHIPBUILDING were sub-icontracted to build the iron hulls of the Yavarí and the Yapura. The ironworks were also founders of Lonidon's Premier League, West Ham United Football Club. Their nickname of "The Hammers" comes from their days of hammering iron plates to make ship's hulls.

On 15th October 1862, the "Mayola", bearing eight British engineers from Lonidon, having rounded the Horn, docked at Arica - a Peruvian port before the War of the Pacific - and discharged the packing case and pieces of the YAVARI and the YAPURA. The Peruvian Navy then faced the daunting task of getting 2,766 pieces and two crankshsafts transported to Lake Titicaca, 12,500 ft (3,810ms) above sea level.

Part II: The Great Trek

From Arica to Tacna 1836 ft (650 ms above sea level), the packing cases travelled the 40 miles (64 kms.) on one of the oldest stretches of railway in South America. In Tacna the 2,766 pieces weighing a total of 210 tons were unpacked and arranged in order of how they should arrive at Puno on the Lake. Local muleteers and porters, who were to carry the crankshafts, competed for the work. The route, though only 350 kms in lenght, would take them across the moonscape of the driest desert in the world, mountain passes higher than the highest European peaks and the sub-zero windswept wastes of the altiplano. Norwithstanding, the winner quoted a delivery date of six months. Buoyed by this prospect, the British engineers who were to help re-assemble the ships, went on ahead to build a jetty, slipway and machine shops in preparation.

Six months later, the contractor, hopelessly defeated by the task, was fired, leaving pieces of ship scattered between Tacna and Puno. Outside events seemed to conspire against the project as grumbling muleteers, an earthquake, a ‘peasants revolt’ and the threat of a second invasion of Peru by the Spanish, brought the expedition to halt Five years on it received fresh impetus. Requests were sent out for more muleteers and 1000 indians to help with the task and by 1st. January 1869 enough pieces had arrived for the keel of the YAVARI to be laid.