page_title: South American dreadnought race
section_title: Rio de Janeiro
hierarchical_section_title: South American dreadnought race / Reciprocation: Brazil orders again / Rio de Janeiro
caption_attribution_description: English: Sultan Osman I fitting out at Low Walker, after Brazil sold the ship to the Ottoman Empire, but before the British seized her.
context_page_description: A naval arms race among Argentina, Brazil and Chile—the most powerful and wealthy countries in South America—began in the early twentieth century when the Brazilian government ordered three dreadnoughts, formidable battleships whose capabilities far outstripped older vessels in the world's navies.
  By the turn of the twentieth century, the Brazilian Navy was inferior to its Argentine and Chilean rivals in quality and total tonnage. It had added few new warships in the last decade and a half, and the recent Argentine–Chilean naval arms race had filled those navies with modern vessels. To address the naval imbalance, in 1904 the Brazilian legislature voted to allocate new income from coffee and rubber towards addressing the naval imbalance. The proponents of this strategy believed that a strong navy would play an essential part in making the country into an international power.
  This naval outlay was originally steered into an order for three small warships, but the arrival of the revolutionary British warship HMS Dreadnought in 1906 quickly scrapped these plans.
context_section_description: After the first Brazilian dreadnought, Minas Geraes, was launched, the Brazilian government began an extended campaign to remove the third dreadnought from the contract because of political—backlash from the Revolt of the Lash coupled with warming relations with Argentina—and economic reasons. After much negotiating and attempts from Armstrong to hold the Brazilian government to the contract, the Brazilians relented, due in part to lower bond rates that made it possible for the government to borrow the necessary money. Rio de Janeiro was laid down for the first time in March 1910.
  By May, the Brazilian government asked Armstrong to stop work on the new warship and to submit new designs which took in the most recent advance in naval technology, super-dreadnoughts. Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt served as Armstrong's liaison to Brazil. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica specifies this design as a 655-foot (200 m) long overall, 32,000-long-ton (33,000 t) ship mounting twelve 14-inch guns and costing near £3,000,000. The many requests made by the Brazilian Navy for minor changes delayed the contract signing until 10 October 1910, and the battleship's keel laying was delayed further by a labor dispute with the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, which led to a lockout. During these delays, a new Minister of the Navy, Admiral Marques Leão, was appointed to replace de Alencar—an important development, as the contract stipulated that the design could only proceed with the approval of the new Minister. Again, however, the Brazilian Navy found itself torn between two schools of thought: Leão and others in the navy favored a reversion to the 12-inch gun, but others, led by the outgoing Minister of the Navy (de Alencar) and the head of the Brazilian naval commission in the United Kingdom (Rear Admiral Duarte Huet de Bacelar Pinto Guedes), were strongly in favor of obtaining the ship with the largest armament—in this case, a design drawn up by Bacellar, carrying eight 16-inch guns, six 9.4-inch guns, and fourteen 6-inch guns.
  D'Eyncourt, who had departed Brazil in October immediately after the contract was signed, returned in March 1911 to display the various design options available to the Brazilian Navy. Armstrong evidently thought the second faction would prevail, so he also took with him everything needed to close a deal on Bacellar's design. By mid-March, Armstrong's contacts in Brazil reported that Leão had convinced the recently elected President Hermes Rodrigues da Fonseca to cancel the design with twelve 14-inch guns in favor of a smaller ship. The credit may not have laid with Leão alone, though; da Fonseca was already dealing with multiple issues. Most importantly, he had to deal with the fallout from a large naval revolt in November 1910 (the Revolt of the Lash), which had seen three of the new vessels just purchased by the navy, along with one older coast-defense ship, mutiny against the use of corporal punishment in the navy.
  To make matters worse, the dreadnoughts' expense combined with loan payments and a worsening economy led to growing government debt compounded by budget deficits. By one measure of Brazil's GDP per capita, income in the country rose from $718 in 1905 to a high of $836 in 1911 before declining over the next three years to a low of $780 in 1914 (both measured in 1990 international dollars). It did not fully recover until after the First World War. At the same time, Brazil's external and internal debt reached $500 and $335 million (respectively, in contemporaneous dollar amounts) by 1913, partly through rising deficits, which were $22 million in 1908 and $47 million by 1912. In May, the president commented negatively on the new ship:
  When I assumed office, I found that my predecessor had signed a contract for the building of the battleship Rio de Janeiro, a vessel of 32,000 tons, with an armament of 14-inch guns. Considerations of every kind pointed to the inconvenience of acquiring such a vessel and to the revision of the contract in the sense of reducing the tonnage. This was done, and we shall possess a 
caption: Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel, previously Rio de Janeiro and soon to be Agincourt, fitting-out.
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