Brazilian cruiser Bahia
Bahia was the lead ship of a two-vessel class of cruisers built for Brazil by the British company Armstrong Whitworth. Crewmen mutinied in November 1910 aboard Bahia, Deodoro, Minas Geraes, and São Paulo, beginning the four-day Revolta da Chibata. During the First World War, Bahia and her sister ship Rio Grande do Sul were assigned to the Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra. She served in the Second World War as a convoy escort.
About Brazilian cruiser Bahia in brief
Bahia was the lead ship of a two-vessel class of cruisers built for Brazil by the British company Armstrong Whitworth. Crewmen mutinied in November 1910 aboard Bahia, Deodoro, Minas Geraes, and São Paulo, beginning the four-day Revolta da Chibata. During the First World War, Bahia and her sister ship Rio Grande do Sul were assigned to the Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra. In the 1930s, she served with government forces during multiple revolutions. On 4 July 1945, she was acting as a plane guard for transport aircraft flying from the Atlantic to Pacific theaters of war. Bahia’s gunners were firing at a kite for anti-aircraft practice when one aimed too low and hit depth charges stored near the stern of the ship, resulting in a massive explosion that incapacitated the ship and sank her within minutes. Only a few of the crew survived the blast, and fewer still were alive when their rafts were discovered days later. The new cruiser—the third ship of the Brazilian Navy to honor the state of Bahia—was commissioned into the navy shortly thereafter on 21 May 1910. As a class, Bahian cruisers were the fastest cruisers in the world when they were commissioned, and the first in the Brazil Navy to utilize steam turbines for propulsion. She received three new Brown–Curtis turbine engines and six new Thornycroft boilers, and she was converted from coal-burning to oil.
The armament was also modified, adding three 20 mm Madsen guns, a 7 mm Hotchkiss machine gun, and four 533 mm torpedo tubes. The ship was part of a large 1904 naval building program by Brazil. Also planned as part of this were the two MinasGeraes-class dreadnoughts, ten Pará-class destroyers, three submarines and a submarine tender. The design borrowed heavily from the British Adventure-class scout cruisers, and was laid on 19 August 1907 in ArmstrongWhitworth’s Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne yard. She was launched on 20 January 1909 with Madame Altino Correia being the sponsor on behalf of Madame Dr. Araugo Pinho. The process of fitting out pushed her completion date to 2 March 1910, after which she sailed to Brazil, arriving in Recife on 6 May. She served in the Second World War as a convoy escort, sailing over 100,000 nautical miles in the span of about a year. In November 1910, black sailors on the dreadnought battleship Minas geraes began planning an uprising early in 1910, choosing João Cândido Felisberto—an experienced sailor later known as the “Black Admiral”—as their leader. Although they were not ready and could not revolt immediately, they rebelled on 21 November, killing several officers and the captain. The revolt quickly expanded to the battleship São Paulo, while other officers were forced off the ship.
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This page is based on the article Brazilian cruiser Bahia published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
