Pages

Friday 6 April 2018

An even older Paraguayan River Gunboat!

The Paraguayan Navy's Humaitá-class river gunboats may well be regarded as ancient by most modern standards, but their longevity pales into insignificance when compared to that Navy's Capitán Cabral (ex-Triunfo, ex-Adolfo Riquelme), which was first launched in 1907!


She began life as a river tug, and was purchased and converted into a river gunboat soon after she was launched. She was originally armed with a single 3" gun, but in the late 1980s this was replaced by a 40mm Bofors automatic cannon, two 20mm Oerlikon automatic cannons, and two 0.5" machine guns.



At the same time as she was re-armed, the ship was modernised. Her original steam engines were replaced with new diesel ones, and her superstructure was completely re-modelled. She was certainly still in service in 2016 ... one hundred and eleven years after she was launched!

4 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Ross Mac,

      It is sobering to think that this ship was being built when the Dreadnought was entering service!

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete
  2. Bob- One Hundred and Eleven years must be some sort of Guinness Book record for being in service...would you consider making a 15mm model of the Gunboat for your Portable Game - if you get around to it in the future? Cheers. kEV.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kev Robertson,

      There are some older ships that are still in service ... but as far as I know, they are historic or museum ships, and not still available for active service.

      As the vessel was originally designed to be a tug, making a model would not be very difficult, and it is something that I will certainly consider building.

      All the best,

      Bob

      Delete

Thank you for leaving a comment. Please note that any comments that are spam or contain phishing messages or that come from Google Accounts that are 'Unknown' will be deleted.