The Marina de Guerra del Perú celebrates the anniversary of its creation in 1821 on October 8 and also commemorates the decisive Battle of Angamos, the final part of the naval campaign of the War of the Pacific between Peru and Chile at the end of 1879.

[2] Shortly afterwards it was engaged in the war against the Gran Colombia (1828–1829) during which it conducted a blockade against the seaport of Guayaquil and then assisted in the subsequent Peruvian occupation.

Even so, hit-and-run tactics carried out by Peruvian Admiral Miguel Grau, commander of the ironclad Huáscar, famously delayed the Chilean advance by six months until his death and defeat at the Battle of Angamos.

In 1900 the force consisted of only one cruiser of 1,700 tons displacement, a screw-driven steamer, and ten smaller ships – the latter described by a contemporary British publication as "of no real value".

[3] The lengthy process of expansion and rebuilding started in 1907 with the acquisition from the United Kingdom of the scout cruisers Almirante Grau and Coronel Bolognesi, followed by the arrival of two submarines, Ferré and Palacios, from France in 1911.

The buildup proved to be temporary due to the economic crisis of the second half of the 1980s, forcing the decommissioning of several warships and resulting in a general lack of funds for maintenance.

In 2013, SIMA partnered with Posco Daewoo Corporation and Daesun Shipbuilding of South Korea to construct two Makassar-class landing platform docks.

[10] While the 2021 Peruvian general election was underway, the imprisoned former head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) Vladimiro Montesinos was able to make phone calls from a landline telephone at the Centro de Reclusión de Máxima Seguridad (CEREC) at the Callao Naval Base to organize projects and campaign support for Keiko Fujimori in the Vladi-audios scandal.

[15] Although most of the fleet is based at Callao, this has not been considered an ideal location since it is also the main outlet for Peruvian trade, causing space and security problems.