In the Royal Portuguese navy In southern Brazil Upon its completion,
Santo António e São José departed for
Santa Catarina in
southern Brazil after completing a trip to
Lisbon. The Portuguese expected Spanish attacks in the region and also planned to reconquer the part of the territory of present-day Brazilian state of
Rio Grande do Sul that had been occupied by
Spain as a result of the
Fantastic War. This prompted the formation of a naval division to be stationed in Santa Catarina, with
Santo António e São José as its flagship, in order to provide support for the troops on land and patrol the coast. The commander of such division was Irish officer . The commander of
Santo António e São José was
captain of sea and war José da Silva Pimentel. The instructions sent on 9 August 1774 by the
Marquis of Pombal to the Viceroy of Brazil,
Luís de Almeida Portugal, the 2nd Marquis of Lavradio, read: By 1 February 1775, the squadron had already reached Santa Catarina, with
Santo António e São José serving as its flagship. The following year, on 6 February 1776, at 15:00,
Santo António e São José sailed from Santa Catarina towards Rio Grande do Sul accompanied by nine vessels: two
frigates, two
corvettes, three
smacks, a
brig and a
sloop. Part of the Santa Catarina Regiment embarked on these ships, this regiment was known as
Barriga Verde, "Green Belly". The squadron reached its destination on 14 February, anchoring away from the coast. The next day, MacDouall went ashore in order to meet with the Army Commander in Operations. Shortly after, heavy winds hit the squadron from the southeast, causing a lot of issues to it, as it was anchored outside the port, which was occupied by both naval and land Spanish forces. In the morning of 19 February, the squadron, headed by
Santo António, entered the port and attacked the enemy naval forces stationed there the next day. In addition to some wounded, eight soldiers died in the combat. On 1 April of that same year, a new attack was carried out on the port's fortifications and naval forces. This attack ended in a Luso-Brazilian victory, as it gave them complete possession of Rio Grande do Sul.
Spanish attack on Santa Catarina island By the end of 1776, a large Spanish fleet consisting of 20 warships and 97 transport ships carrying 12 thousand soldiers divided into four brigades, was sailing in the southern Brazilian coast. The fleet was commanded by admiral
Antonio Barceló and the troops were commanded by
Pedro Antonio de Cevallos,
viceroy of the Río de la Plata. Their goal was to take control of Portuguese possessions in the region. The fleet was armed with a total of 674 guns, carrying 5,148 sailors and 1,308 marines on board. On 6 February 1777, this fleet seized three Portuguese ships off the Brazilian coast. The Spaniards found official reports in the ships detailing the precarious state of Portuguese defenses in
Santa Catarina Island and decided to attack and take control of it. Only on 17 February did the Portuguese notice the approach of the Spaniards. On 20 February, chief MacDuall gathered a council of commanders on board
Santo António. One of them, a Portuguese admiral, was willing to fight the Spanish forces, but the instructions that had been sent to him by the 2nd Marquis of Lavradio ordered not to risk their fleet. Out of the commanders, captain of sea and war José de Melo Brayner was the only one that voted to fight. The Portuguese then withdrew from the island, which was taken effortlessly by the Spaniards. Cevallos left a garrison on the island and sailed south, reaching
Colonia del Sacramento on 22 May. The Portuguese fleet still patrolled the coast from time to time however. On 20 April 1778,
Santo António, together with the ship of the line
Prazeres, seized the Spanish ships
San Agustín and ''Sant'Anna'' after a fierce combat off the coast of Santa Catarina, taking 750 prisoners.
In Europe Bombardment of Algiers In the 18th century,
Barbary corsairs – especially Algerians – began raiding ships in the Mediterranean and on the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The peace treaty that
Charles III of Spain celebrated with the
Ottoman Empire did not stop corsair attacks on Spanish ships. As a result, a Spanish fleet, under the command of Antonio Barceló, carried out the
bombardment of Algiers in 1783, which did little to stop the corsairs. It was then agreed that a new allied fleet, consisting of Spanish, Portuguese, Neapolitan and Maltese ships would attack
Algiers. On 23 May 1784, was appointed commander of
Santo António e São José; on 13 June, the ship carried out an armament display, having 421 men on board. The small Portuguese fleet that joined the allied naval forces consisted of the ships of the line
Santo António e São José and
Nossa Senhora do Bom Sucesso and the frigates
Golfinho and
Tritão. It departed from the port of Lisbon on 18 June and joined the rest of the allied fleet in Algiers on 12 July 1784, attacking it that same day.
Final years in the Portuguese navy On 1 April 1794, back in
Lisbon, the ship underwent general repairs and modernization; the works were completed on 14 June and the ship was renamed
Infante D. Pedro Carlos in honor of the Spanish prince
Pedro Carlos of Spain and Portugal, nephew of Portuguese prince
John, future consort of
Maria Teresa of Braganza, the Princess of Beira, and General Admiral of the Royal Portuguese Navy. After a series of trips from Europe to Brazil in the following years,
D. Pedro Carlos once again underwent repairs in 1806, being renamed
Martim de Freitas. With the
Napoleonic Wars raging in Europe and the subsequent
French invasion of Portugal, the Portuguese royal family decided to flee to Brazil bringing with it its court.
D. Pedro Carlos was part of the fleet that brought the royal family to Brazil, departing from Lisbon on 29 November 1807 and reaching Rio de Janeiro in March 1808. Upon their arrival, the Portuguese ships, including
D. Pedro Carlos, fell into disrepair and were left anchored in Rio de Janeiro.
In the Imperial Brazilian navy Brazilian War of Independence After the return of king John VI to Portugal as a result of the
Revolution of Porto, a letter of 26 October 1821 ordered Prince Regent Pedro, his son, to make all the ships stationed in Brazil ready to return to Lisbon. These included the ships of the line
Martim de Freitas, and . Perhaps the
Portuguese cortes, already fearing independence movements in Brazil, wanted to secure control of the ships.
Martim de Freitas was undergoing repairs in Rio de Janeiro. On 7 September 1822, prince Pedro proclaimed Brazil's independence from Portugal in what became known as the
Cry of Ipiranga. Hostilities between Brazilians and the Portuguese were already happening all over Brazil. Pedro quickly set out to create a naval force capable of facing off the Portuguese forces in Brazil and the ones that could eventually be sent from Europe in order to keep the territorial integrity of the empire. Brazil's finance minister,
Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada, created a national subscription campaign to fund the acquisition of a war fleet and repair the existing ships.
Martim de Freitas, whose repairs were almost finished, was rearmed and incorporated into the newly formed
Imperial Brazilian Navy, being renamed
Pedro I in honor of Brazil's first emperor. On 10 November 1822 it hoisted the flag of the Empire of Brazil for the first time, which was accompanied by a cannon
salvo. The most serious problem faced by Brazilian authorities during the formation of the Brazilian Navy was the severe shortage of officers. The government decided to hire foreign officers, especially British and French ones. The most prominent among them was Thomas Cochrane, who had recently arrived in Brazil after fighting the Spaniards in the
Chilean War of Independence. By decree of 21 March 1823 Cochrane was given command of the Brazilian Navy in the war against Portugal, becoming Brazil's first admiral. Cochrane chose
Pedro I to be the navy's flagship. The admiral hoisted his flag on the ship that same day, having remarked: On 3 April 1823,
Pedro I departed from
Guanabara Bay for Bahia in order to blockade the Portuguese forces stationed there and support general
Pierre Labatut's forces on land. Its commander was
frigate captain Thomaz Sackville Crosbie. Crosbie's staff included admiral Cochrane, secretary and first lieutenant Victor Santiago Subrá, captain lieutenant
John Pascoe Grenfell, first lieutenant William Eyre, second lieutenant William Parker, midshipman Pedro Paulo Boutrolle, commissar José Cristóvão Salgado, chaplain Marista Augusto de Santa Rita and scrivener Manoel Fernandes Pinto. Apart from
Pedro I, Cochrane's fleet also consisted of the frigates
Piranga and
Niterói, the brigs
Real Pedro and
Guarani, and the corvettes
Maria da Glória and
Liberal. On 4 May 1823 it
fought against a larger Portuguese fleet, damaging it, but with no victory for either side, as its Portuguese
powder monkeys refused to provide ammunition for the guns at the height of the battle. On that battle
Pedro I suffered 17 casualties between killed and wounded. Dissatisfied, Cochrane wrote to
José Bonifácio detailing the unreliability of the ships' crews, remarking that
Pedro I was the only ship that could attack an enemy warship or operate against superior enemy forces despite also having an unreliable crew. On 5 May the ship entered
Morro de São Paulo. There the 18-pounder guns on the
deck were replaced by the 24-pounder guns of the frigate
Ipiranga, which were lighter. The 32-pounder carronades of
Ipiranga were also mounted on
Pedro I's
orlop, increasing its total guns. The ship's crew was complemented to a total of 900 men, gathered from the rest of the squadron. After the changes,
Pedro I had one 32-pounder battery and two 24-pounder batteries. On 12 June, accompanied by two more ships,
Pedro I entered the port of Bahia and attempted to attack the Portuguese fleet that was anchored there. The lack of wind and the low tide frustrated Cochrane's attack. The Portuguese fleet decided to leave Salvador on 1 July. On 2 July,
Pedro I left with the other ships of the fleet in pursuit of the Portuguese way up the Equator line, managing to capture many enemy ships, however, admiral Cochrane decided to return on July 17 to subdue the northern parts of Brazil that were still under Portuguese control. Out of the 70-ship Portuguese convoy that left Bahia, only 13 ships managed to reach Lisbon. On 26 July,
Pedro I arrived in
São Luís, capital of
Maranhão, which was still occupied by the Portuguese. After entering the port, a feat never hitherto carried out by a ship of that type, and making an elevation shot over the city in such a way that terrified the Portuguese occupiers, Cochrane told the Portuguese his ship was the spearhead of a large Brazilian fleet, the strategy worked and the Portuguese surrendered the town on 31 July. It was immediately incorporated into the Brazilian Empire. For his service, Cochrane was awarded the
Order of the Southern Cross and the nobility title of Marquess of Maranhão on 23 November 1823.
Confederation of the Equator On 2 August 1824,
Pedro I left for
Pernambuco, where the Confederation of the Equator had been proclaimed, flying lord Cochrane's pavilion and carrying troops from the
army that landed in the in
Maceió. At the beginning of October it sailed north until it reached
Ceará, from where it returned to
Recife. From there the ship sailed to Salvador on October 10, docking at the
Bay of All Saints on October 24. It then returned to the north, docking for a while in Maranhão. There, after requesting his payment, paying a portion that was his debt and satisfying the officers and crew, admiral Cochrane transferred his pavilion to the frigate
Piranga, and sailed back to England. There, he asked to be dismissed from service in the Brazilian navy.
Cisplatine War On 24 November 1826 emperor Pedro I embarked on
Pedro I and sailed south in order to deal with the ongoing Cisplatine War between the Empire of Brazil and the
United Provinces of the Río de la Plata over control of the Brazilian
Cisplatina province. On that occasion
Pedro I was commanded by chief of division and the squadron was commanded by admiral
Manuel Antônio Farinha, the Count of Sousel. During the trip south, the Argentine corsair frigate
Chacabuco appeared in its course, but was pursued and some shots were fired at it.
Pedro I was heavier and the Argentine frigate managed to escape.
Pedro I reached Santa Catarina, from where the emperor went by land to Rio Grande do Sul. However, he didn't reach his destination, having soon changed his course back to Rio de Janeiro, due to the death of his wife, empress Maria Leopoldina of Austria, on 11 December 1826. On 4 January 1827 the ship sailed back to Rio de Janeiro carrying the emperor on board, reaching its destination on January 15. As if it were immediately a matter of properly equipping it for war, deputy
Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos, in August 1827, expressed his thoughts regarding
Pedro I in the tribune of the
General Assembly:
Final years By 1832
Pedro I was serving only as a prison ship as it was already too rotten and incapable of navigating. By that time its crew numbered only 186 men. Some of its parts were removed to be sold. By the second half of 1833 it was still serving as a prison ship, being scrapped in Rio de Janeiro. == See also ==