User:The ed17/Sandbox/Brazilian cruiser Rio Grande do Sul

Rio Grande do Sul was a Bahia-class cruiser built for the Brazilian Navy in 1909–10.

Construction and commissioning
The Brazilian government ordered the two Bahia class cruisers as part of a larger naval modernization plan. A 1905 law allocated funds for three small pre-dreadnoughts, three armored cruisers, and several smaller warships, but the Battle of Tsushima and the commissioning of the first dreadnought caused the Brazilian Navy to radically alter the plan. In 1907, this money was redirected into building three Minas Geraes-class battleship dreadnoughts, three Bahia-class crusiers, fifteen Pará-class destroyer (1908) destroyers, three F 1-class submarine submarines, and two submarine tenders, although in actuality, not all of these ships would be constructed.

The Bahia class design borrowed heavily from the British Adventure-class cruiser scout cruisers. Rio Grande do Sul was laid down in Armstrong Whitworth's Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne yard on 30 August 1907. Construction took about a year and a half, and the cruiser was launched on 20 April 1909. Both Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul were completed and commissioned into the navy in 1910; they were the fastest cruisers in the world when they were commissioned, and the first in the Brazilian Navy to utilize steam turbines for propulsion.

Brazilian naval revolt
In late November 1910, a large naval revolt, later named the Revolt of the Lash, or Revolta da Chibata, broke out in Rio de Janeiro. The tension was kindled by the racial makeup of the navy's regular crewmembers, who were heavily black or mulatto, whereas their officers were mostly white. The Baron of Rio Branco commented: "For the recruitment of marines and enlisted men, we bring aboard the dregs of our urban centers, the most worthless lumpen, without preparation of any sort. Ex-slaves and the sons of slaves make up our ships' crews, most of them dark-skinned or dark-skinned mulattos."

This kind of impressment, combined with the heavy use of corporal punishment for even minor offenses, meant that relations between the black crews and white officers was tepid at best. Crewmen aboard Minas Geraes began planning for a revolt in 1910. They chose João Cândido Felisberto, an experienced sailor, as their leader. The immediate catalyst for their revolt came on 21 November 1910, when an Afro-Brazilian sailor, Marcelino Rodrigues Menezes, was brutally flogged 250 times for insubordination. A Brazilian government observer, former navy captain José Carlos de Carvalho, stated that the sailor's back looked like "a mullet sliced open for salting."

The revolt began aboard Minas Geraes at around 10 pm on 22 November; the ship's commander and several loyal crewmen were murdered in the process. Soon after, São Paulo, the new cruiser Bahia, and several smaller ships all revolted with relatively little violence. The first three ships represented the newest and strongest ships in the navy; Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and Bahia had been completed and commissioned only months before. Key warships that remained in government hands included Rio Grande do Sul, the old cruiser BRAZILIAN CRUISER Almirante Barroso, and the eight new destroyers of the Pará class. Their crews were in a state of flux at the time: with nearly half of the navy's enlisted men in Rio at that time in open revolt, naval officers were suspicious of even those who remained loyal to the government.

Felisberto and his fellow sailors demanded an end to the 'slavery' being practiced by the navy, most notably the continued use of whipping despite its ban in every other Western nation. Though navy officers and the president were staunchly opposed to any sort of amnesty and made plans to attack the rebel-held ships, many legislators were supportive. Over the next three days, both houses of the Brazilian National Congress, led by the influential senator Ruy Barbosa, passed a general bill granting amnesty to all involved and ending the use of corporal punishment.

First World War
In the opening years of the First World War, the Brazilian Navy was sent out to patrol the South Atlantic with French, British and American naval units, although its ships were not supposed to engage any threat outside territorial waters as Brazil was not at war with the Central Powers. The country also tried to ensure that it remained totally neutral; Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul were sent to Santos in August 1914 to enforce neutrality laws when it was reported that the German raider SMS Bremen was lying in wait off that port for British and American merchant ships. Brazil joined the Entente and declared war on the Central Powers on 26 October 1917.

On 21 December 1917, the Brazilian Navy—at the behest of the British—formed a small naval force with the intent of sending it to the other side of the Atlantic. On 30 January 1918, Bahia was made the flagship of the newly organized Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra (Naval Division in War Operations, abbreviated as DNOG), under the command of Rear Admiral Pedro Max Fernando Frontin. The other ships assigned to the squadron were Bahia's sister Rio Grande do Sul, Pará-class destroyer (1908) destroyers BRAZILIAN DESTROYER Piauí, BRAZILIAN DESTROYER Paraíba, BRAZILIAN DESTROYER Rio Grande do Norte and BRAZILIAN DESTROYER Santa Catarina, tender BRAZILIAN TENDER Belmonte, and tugboat Laurindo Pita.

The DNOG sailed for the British colony of Sierra Leone on 31 July. Since other allied countries helped with logistics, little was provided by Brazil aside from the ships themselves and the men crewing them. Despite the threat of a U-boat attack, they were forced to stop several times so Belmonte could transfer necessities such as coal and water to the other ships. They reached Freetown safely on 9 August and remained in the port until 23 August when they departed for Dakar. While on this section of the voyage, Bahia, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio Grande do Norte, Belmonte and Laurindo Pita spotted an apparent torpedo heading for Belmonte, but it missed. Rio Grande do Norte then fired several shots and depth-charged what the force believed to be a U-boat. While the official Brazilian history of the ship definitively claims to have sunk a submarine, author Robert Scheina notes that this action was never confirmed, and works published about U-boat losses in the war do not agree.

After arriving in Dakar on 26 August, the DNOG was tasked with patrolling a triangle with corners at Dakar, Cape Verde and Gibraltar; the Allies believed that this area was rife with U-boats waiting for convoys to pass through. As such, the Brazilian unit's mission was to patrol for mines laid by German minelaying submarines and to make sure that convoys passing through would be safe. Complications arose when both Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul had problems with their condensers, a matter which was made much worse by the hot, tropical climate in which the ships were serving.

In early September, the squadron was struck by the Spanish flu pandemic. The contagion began aboard Bahia, spread to the other ships of the squadron and remained present for seven weeks. At one point, 95% of some of the ships' crews were infected; 103 died overseas, and 250 died in Brazil after returning there. On 3 November, Bahia, three of the four destroyers, and the tugboat were sent to Gibraltar for operations in the Mediterranean Sea. They arrived on 9 or 10 November,  escorted by the American destroyer USS Israel (DD-98),  but the fighting ceased on the 11th when the Armistice with Germany was signed. Sometime in early 1919, Bahia, accompanied by four destroyers, voyaged to Portsmouth, England; they then traveled across the English Channel to Cherbourg, arriving there on 15 February. The commander of the squadron, Admiral Pedro Max Fernando Frontin, met with the Maritime Prefect prior to the commencement of "social events"; these lasted until 23 February, when the ships moved to Toulon and Frontin journeyed overland to Paris. The DNOG was dissolved on 25 August 1919.