The three-masted ship was launched under the name
Albert Leo Schlageter on 30 October 1937 at
Blohm & Voss in
Hamburg for
Nazi Germany's
Kriegsmarine. The ship was named after
Albert Leo Schlageter, who was executed in 1923 by French forces
occupying the Ruhr area. Her first commander was
Bernhard Rogge.
Schlageter/Sagres is a sister ship of the
Gorch Fock (1933, taken by Soviets), the
Horst Wessel (
USCGC Eagle), the Romanian training vessel
Mircea (1938), the never completed
Herbert Norkus (after
Herbert Norkus), and finally the
Gorch Fock II which was built in 1958 by the Germans to have at least one replacement for the ships lost after the war. Following a number of international training voyages, the ship was used as a stationary office ship after the outbreak of
World War II and was only put into ocean-going service again in 1944 in the
Baltic Sea. On 14 November 1944 she hit a
Soviet mine off
Sassnitz and had to be towed to port in
Swinemünde. Eventually transferred to
Flensburg, she was taken over there by the
Allies when the war ended and finally confiscated by the
United States. In 1948, the U.S. sold her to
Brazil for a symbolic price of US$5,000. She was towed to
Rio de Janeiro where she sailed as a school ship for the
Brazilian Navy under the name
Guanabara. In 1961, Ambassador
Teotónio Pereira of
Portugal, who was also a man of the sea, loved sailing ships, and had been an organizer of the first
Tall Ships' Races, persevered in his mediations and the Portuguese Navy bought the
Guanabara to replace the previous school ship
Sagres (which was transferred to
Hamburg, where she is a museum ship under her original name
Rickmer Rickmers). The
Portuguese Navy renamed
Guanabara as
Sagres (the third ship of that name), where she remains in service to this day. In 2010, the ship performed her longest voyage, a round the world trip performing an approximate total of 35000 miles, under the command of CMG Pedro Proença Mendes. The ship left
Lisbon on 19 January and returned on 24 December, having participated in
Velas Sudamerica 2010, a historic
Latin American tour by eleven tall ships to celebrate the
bicentennial of the first national governments of Argentina and
Chile. She also took part in the
Expo Shanghai, among other events during that year. The ship has sailed under the
Portuguese flag since 1962. For that reason, in 2012 there were major commemorations of her 75th anniversary and 50 years in the service of the Portuguese navy. ==Sister ships==