The Minas Geraes and São Paulo class were two battleships built for the Brazilian Navy in the early twentieth century. The ships were intended to be Brazil’s first step towards becoming an international power, and they consequently initiated a South American naval arms race. Both battleships were too old to participate actively in the Second World War, and instead were employed as harbor defense ships in Salvador and Recife.
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The Minas Geraes and São Paulo class were two battleships built for the Brazilian Navy in the early twentieth century. The ships were intended to be Brazil’s first step towards becoming an international power, and they consequently initiated a South American naval arms race. Both battleships were too old to participate actively in the Second World War, and instead were employed as harbor defense ships in Salvador and Recife. In 1951, São Paulo was sold to a British shipbreaker, but was lost in a storm north of the Azores while being towed to its final destination. Minas Geraes was sold to an Italian scrapper in 1953 and towed to Genoa the following year. They would later follow the design of Armstrong Whitworth’s N-class battleships, which would displace 11,800 tonnes and be protected by belt armor of 9 inches. Each ship would be armed with twelve 10inch guns mounted in six twin turrets in a hexagonal configuration, similar to the later German Nassau-class Battleships Alarmed and N- class battleships of the 20th century. Brazil’s navy fell into obsolescence after an 1889 revolution, which deposed Emperor Dom Pedro II, and an 1893 civil war. Meanwhile, an Argentine–Chilean dispute over the boundary of Patagonia and control of the Beagle Channel kindled a naval armsrace between the two beginning in the late 1880s and lasting until 1902. Both navies were sold as part of the British-mediated three pacts which ended the dispute, but both countries retained the numerous vessels built in the interim.
In 1904, Brazil began a major naval building program that included three small battleships. Designing and ordering the ships took two years, but these plans were scrapped after the revolutionary “dreadnought” concept rendered the Brazilian design obsolete. As such, the ships created much uncertainty among the major countries in the world, many of whom incorrectly speculated the ships were actually destined for a rival nation. At the same time, the American ambassador to Brazil sent a cable to his Department of State in September 1906, warning of the destabilization that would occur if the situation devolved into a full-blown naval armsRace. The Brazilian government later eliminated the armored cruisers for monetary reasons, but the Minister of the Navy, Admiral Júlio César de Noronha, signed a contract with Armstrong Whit Worth for three battleships on 23 July 1906. The latter originally prevailed with a bill authorizing the construction of three small Battleships, three armored cruiser, six destroyers, twelve torpedo boats, three submarines, and two river monitors. The ships would be disassembled in the 1930s. The first designs for these ships were derived from Norwegian coastal defense ships and the British Swiftsure class, the contracted ship N-place 439. They would have a speed of 19knots, have a belt of 9 inches and armor of 5 inches and deck of 1.5 inches.
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