page_title: Brazilian Navy
section_title: First World War (1917–1918)
hierarchical_section_title: Brazilian Navy / History / World Wars (1917–1945) / First World War (1917–1918)
caption_attribution_description: English: Warship silhouettes of the Brazilian Navy, 1914
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: After the declaration of war on the Central Powers in October 1917 the Brazilian Navy participated in the war.  On 21 December 1917 the British government requested that a Brazilian naval force of light cruisers be placed under Royal Navy control and a squadron comprising the cruisers Rio Grande do Sul and Bahia, the destroyers Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Piauí, and Santa Catarina, and the support ship Belmonte and the ocean-going tugboat Laurindo Pitta was formed, designated the Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra ("Naval Division in War Operations"). The DNOG sailed on 31 July 1918 from Fernando de Noronha for Sierra Leone, arriving at Freetown on 9 August, and sailing onwards to its new base of operations, Dakar, on 23 August. On the night of 25 August the division believed it had been attacked by a U-boat when the auxiliary cruiser Belmonte sighted a torpedo track. The purported submarine was depth-charged, fired on, and reportedly sunk by Rio Grande do Norte, but the sinking was never confirmed.
  The DNOG patrolled the Dakar–Cape Verde–Gibraltar triangle, which was suspected to be used by U-boats waiting on convoys, until 3 November 1918 when it sailed for Gibraltar to begin operations in the Mediterranean Sea, with the exception of Rio Grande do Sul, Rio Grande do Norte, and Belmonte. The Division arrived at Gibraltar on 10 November; while passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, they mistook three United States Navy subchasers for U-boats but no damage was caused.
caption: Warship silhouettes of the Brazilian Navy, 1914
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