page_title: Brazilian Navy
section_title: Lobster War (1961–1963)
hierarchical_section_title: Brazilian Navy / History / Cold War period (1945–2000) / Lobster War (1961–1963)
caption_attribution_description: Português: Contratorpedeiro da Classe Fletcher D27 Para. Photograph of the USS Guest (DD-472), renamed Pará (D27) in 1959 for her Brazilian navy service. She was scrapped in 1979 and sunk as a target ship in 1983.
context_page_description: The Brazilian Navy is the naval service branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces, responsible for conducting naval operations. The Brazilian Navy is the largest navy in South America and in Latin America, and the second largest navy in the Americas, after the United States Navy.
  The navy was involved in Brazil's war of independence from Portugal. Most of Portugal's naval forces and bases in South America were transferred to the newly independent country. In the initial decades following independence, the country maintained a large naval force and the navy was later involved in the Cisplatine War, the River Plate conflicts, the Paraguayan War as well as other sporadic rebellions that marked Brazilian history.
  By the 1880s the Brazilian Imperial Navy was the most powerful in South America. After the 1893 naval rebellion, there was a hiatus in the development of the navy until 1905, when Brazil acquired two of the most powerful and advanced dreadnoughts of the day which sparked a dreadnought race with Brazil's South American neighbours. The Brazilian Navy participated in both World War I and World War II, engaging in anti-submarine patrols in the Atlantic.
context_section_description: In 1961, some groups of French fishermen who were operating very profitably off the coast of Mauritania extended their search to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, settling on a spot off the coast of Brazil where lobsters are found on submerged ledges at depths of 250–650 ft (76–198 m). Local fishermen complained that large boats were coming from France to catch lobster off the state of Pernambuco, so the Brazilian Admiral Arnoldo Toscano ordered two corvettes to sail to the area where the French fishing boats were located. Seeing that the fishermen's claim was justifiable, the captain of the Brazilian vessel then demanded that the French boats retreat to deeper water, leaving the continental shelf to smaller Brazilian vessels. The situation became very tense once the French rejected this demand and radioed a message asking for the French government to send a destroyer to accompany the lobster boats, which prompted the Brazilian government to put fleet in a state of alert.
  The French Government dispatched a T 53-class destroyer on 21 February to watch over the French fishing boats. The French vessel withdrew after the arrival of a Brazilian warship and the aircraft carrier Minas Gerais.
caption: A Brazilian D27 Pará Fletcher class in 1960.
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