Minas Geraes Class Battleship

Minas Geraes Class Battleship

The Minas Geraes class, spelled Minas Gerais in some sources, consisted of two battleships built for the Brazilian Navy (Marinha do Brasil) in the early twentieth century. The ships were named Minas Geraes, after the Brazilian state, and São Paulo, honoring both the state and city. They were intended to be Brazil's first step towards becoming an international power, and consequently they initiated a South American naval arms race.

In 1904, Brazil began a major naval building program that included three 11,800-long-ton small battleships. Designing and ordering the ships took two years, but these plans were scrapped after the revolutionary dreadnought concept rendered the Brazilian design totally obsolete. Two of these dreadnoughts were ordered instead, making Brazil the third country to have ships of this type under construction, before traditional powers like Germany, France or Russia. As such, the ships caused quite a stir among the major countries in the world, many of whom incorrectly speculated the ships were actually destined for a rival nation.

Soon after their delivery in 1910, both Minas Geraes and São Paulo were embroiled in the Revolt of the Lash (Revolta da Chibata), in which the crews of four Brazilian ships demanded the abolition of corporal punishment in the navy. The mutineers surrendered after four days, when a bill was passed granting amnesty to all those involved. In 1922, the two battleships were used to help put down a revolt at Fort Copacabana. Two years later, lieutenants on São Paulo mutinied but found little support from other military units, so they sailed to Montevideo, Uruguay, and requested asylum. Minas Geraes was modernized in the 1930s, but 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. São Paulo was sold in 1951 to a British shipbreaker, but was lost in a storm north of the Azores while being towed to her final destination. Minas Geraes was sold to an Italian scrapper in 1953 and towed to Genoa the following year.