The history of the Brazilian Navy begins with the adhesion of sections of the Portuguese Navy to newly independent Brazil in 1822. The Imperial Brazilian Navy was crucial to the consolidation of the Brazilian Empire and its campaigns against neighboring countries in the River Plate basin, at a time when land infrastructure was minimal. The main external influence was the Royal Navy. By the end of the Paraguayan War in 1870, Brazil was the fifth country in the world in terms of the number of ships, although this force was primarily riverine. Shipbuilding was significant, but it failed to keep pace with technological advances. The Proclamation of the Republic and the Naval Revolts gave political primacy to the Army, and the Navy entered the 20th century in decline.
In 1910, Brazil's incorporation of two powerful dreadnoughts and other ships ordered from Great Britain triggered a naval arms race with its main rival, the Argentine Navy, and the other regional power, the Chilean Navy. External dependence for maintenance prevented the full exploitation of the new ships, and the social divide between officers and enlisted men resulted in the Revolt of the Lash. Brazil entered both world wars after German submarine attacks on its merchant navy. In both conflicts, it basically had the Fleet of 1910 (although shipbuilding began to recover in the 1932 naval program). The forces in operation were subordinated to other Atlantic powers, first Great Britain and then the United States. An American naval mission, hired in 1922, and the shared experience in the Second World War placed the U.S. as the main external influence.
At the beginning of the Cold War, the Navy was equipped with surplus U.S. Navy vessels and geared towards a hypothetical anti-submarine campaign against the Soviet Navy. An aircraft carrier (Minas Gerais) emerged, although lacking attack aircraft, along with amphibious capabilities for the Marine Corps. The social question within the hierarchy was the basis for another revolt in 1964, an immediate factor in the military coup that same year. The naval programs of 1967 and 1977 represented a movement for greater autonomy, in a cycle of expansion that culminated in 1980.
At the end of the 20th century, traditional threats disappeared and new commitments were made in Antarctica, Africa, and with Argentina itself. However, the political and economic situation slowed down the projects until 2009. Under the optimism surrounding the resources of the continental shelf, a plan was drawn up to acquire two aircraft carriers, six nuclear submarines, and numerous other units. It never left the drawing board, but several shipbuilding projects continue, while other gaps in the naval inventory continue to be filled by purchases abroad. This does not compensate for the decrease in the number of assets that has occurred in the first decades of the 21st century.
Origins Since the discovery of Brazil, naval power was what connected the colony to the seat of the Portuguese Empire. In centuries of battles fought by Portugal for possession and control of Brazilian waters, the participation of the local population grew increasingly important. As the ships were made of wood, domestic shipbuilding was carried out, although artillery came from Europe. The transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in 1808 led to the Portuguese Navy establishing itself in Rio de Janeiro with a significant part of its structure. The Brazilian Marine Corps, for example, is heir to the Royal Brigade of the Portuguese Navy.
In the Brazilian independence process in 1822, the nationalization of a portion of the force gave rise to the Brazilian Navy. Taking advantage of Portuguese ships and sailors who joined the newly formed Empire of Brazil and bodies created by King John VI of Portugal, such as the Navy Secretariat, the General Headquarters, the Intendancy and Accounting Office, the Navy Arsenal, the Royal Academy of Midshipmen, the hospital, the Audit Office, the Supreme Military Council, the Gunpowder Factory, the Timber Yards, and others, a native-born Brazilian, Captain Luís da Cunha Moreira, was appointed first Minister of the Navy on 28 October 1822. Foreign officers completed the staff, among them the first admiral, Lord Thomas Cochrane. The doctrine, practices and tradition would be strongly influenced by the Royal Navy in the following century.
Empire of Brazil
The first task was to expel the remaining Portuguese bases on the Brazilian coast in Belém (Pará), São Luís, Recife, Salvador, and Montevideo, which was achieved in 1823. Only the Navy could transport and supply the Army on the battlefronts, cut off enemy communication lines through blockade and privateering, and defend its own from opposing privateers; all typical naval tasks of the period, which would be seen in subsequent conflicts. In an "archipelago" country like Brazil, with the entire population living along the coast and navigable rivers, there was no logistical alternative. In the national economy, the merchant marine, ports, and shipbuilding were significant.
The Navy supported the Brazilian monarchy. Its participation in the independence and in suppressing internal revolts — the Confederation of the Equator of 1824 and the "civil war" of the Regency Period (1831–1840) — was a matter of national integrity. Although the only rebels with naval forces were the Ragamuffins, naval logistics were nonetheless decisive. By 1831 the fleet had grown to two ships of the line, ten frigates, twenty corvettes, seventeen brig-schooners, two gunboats, twelve bombardiers, three steam barges, fourteen transport ships and several large launches, totaling at least eighty warships. After the full adoption of steam propulsion, in the 1860s, there were forty ships with more than 250 guns.
The Imperial Navy's apogee was during the Second Reign (1841–1889). The officer corps was already composed entirely of native-born Brazilians in the 1860s, among them leaders enlisted in the War of Independence, such as Joaquim Marques Lisboa, the Marquess of Tamandaré, Francisco Manuel Barroso da Silva, the Baron of Amazonas, and Joaquim José Inácio de Barros, the Viscount of Inhaúma. For the base of the hierarchical pyramid, recruitment, initially provided by volunteering and forced recruitment ("blood tax"), was complemented by the Apprentice-Sailor Companies, through which it was expected to improve the quality of personnel. Even so, issues of indiscipline and desertion and the practice of corporal punishment did not disappear. The hierarchical relations in the Navy mirrored Brazil's slave-owning society.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy focused on the wars in the River Plate basin — the Cisplatine War (1825–1828), the Platine War (1851–1852), and the Paraguayan War (1864–1870). The Brazilian naval dominance achieved in the mid-century was the mainstay of imperial foreign policy, which sought to maintain two buffer states, Uruguay and Paraguay, on the border with its biggest rival, Argentina, and river access routes to the province of Mato Grosso. A second basin needed to be defended, that of the Amazon River, where a flotilla was installed in 1868, in response to the river's opening to international trade. Another junction of naval and foreign policies was in the repression of the slave trade, a point of friction with the British Empire.
Notable among these campaigns were the blockade of the port of Buenos Aires in the Cisplatine War, the passage of Tonelero on the Paraná River in 1851, the Battle of Riachuelo in 1865, and the forced passages of fortified banks at Curupayty and Humaitá. This last campaign, in Paraguay, was the largest war in South America and its battles are the highlights of Brazil's naval combat history. For the terrain of the Paraná, Paraguay and Uruguay rivers, it was necessary to create a new fleet and keep it supplied at a great distance from Rio de Janeiro. Maintenance and the climate were difficult, and disease killed more than enemy action. The Paraguayans had guns installed on the riverbanks and boarded ships with canoes, fighting with melee weapons on the decks. The Navy, together with the Army, gradually moved up the rivers. Without the river campaign, it would have been very difficult to hold southern Mato Grosso, to which there was no land connection.
Fall of the Empire
After the Paraguayan War was won in 1870, the Brazilian Navy was the fifth largest in the world in terms of number of ships. However, it was an outdated (wooden) fleet, essentially suited to river operations. Technological advances no longer allowed a non-industrialized country to sustain a modern fleet on its own. There were Navy Arsenals in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, Pará and Mato Grosso, building iron-hulled ships, but Brazil was beginning its transition to a ship-importing country. At the same time, the cycle of external wars was ending, diminishing political interest in naval power. Some extraordinary resources were still provided due to border tensions with Argentina and Chilean rearmament. In 1888, the fleet consisted of seventeen ships: three battleships, three river battleships, three monitors, two wooden-hulled corvettes, and five hybrid cruisers (sometimes called cruisers, sometimes armored corvettes). Eleven were built domestically. It was still a considerable force with extensive infrastructure.
The Navy's officer corps, aristocratic, isolated, and little influenced by positivism, differed socially from the Army's officer corps. It was the Army that took the initiative to proclaim the Republic in a military coup on 15 November 1889. The Republic began with two Naval Revolts, in 1891 and 1893–1895, led by Admirals Custódio de Melo and Saldanha da Gama against Presidents-Marshals Deodoro da Fonseca and Floriano Peixoto. The former was successful, and the latter was defeated by a "paper squadron", bought under emergency conditions. The post-civil war amnesty did not immediately erase the resentments between naval commanders opposed to and in favor of the movement. From that moment on, the Army would have political hegemony in the Republic.
First Brazilian Republic
The last decade of the 19th century witnessed a progressive demobilization and the succession of four Navy Ministers in just six years. Shipbuilding virtually stopped, and would remain so for many decades. In the continental strategic balance, which revolved around the three "ABC countries", Argentina and Chile gained a large qualitative superiority over Brazil. The decline of naval power became the subject of public debate among politicians, journalists and officers. Thinkers such as Alfred Mahan and the French proponents of the Jeune École resonated in these discussions.
The consolidation of the Oligarchic Republic, the rise of the coffee and rubber cycles and the interest of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Baron of Rio Branco, in naval power as an instrument of foreign policy were the political conditions for the "Fleet of 1910". Ordered from British shipyards, it consisted of the dreadnoughts Minas Geraes and São Paulo, the cruisers Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul, and ten Pará class destroyers. The same program also incorporated three F class submarines in 1913 and auxiliary ships.