The Brazilian Naval Academy, situated on Villegagnon Island in the beautiful harbor of Rio de Janeiro, has one of the most unusual histories ever experienced by an educational institution of its type. This little-publicized school has a history in the Western Hemisphere that predates the United States Naval Academy by twenty-seven years, besides origins in Portugal that go back still further. Its present size, both as to number of students enrolled and as to the extent of its establishments, are comparable to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point, Long Island.
Originally the Royal Naval Academy of Portugal, it was transplanted to Brazil in 1808, when it was included in the flight of the Portuguese Royal Family from the armies of Napoleon. Its history in Brazil during the past one hundred and forty years has been equally adventurous; its location, for example, has been transferred no less than nine times since its introduction into that South American country. Nevertheless, like Annapolis, the Brazilian naval school has produced generations of well-trained officers. It has maintained a creditably high standard of education and training throughout its existence. Many of its own customs and traditions are identical to those found in the United States Navy.
Brazil’s naval school has uninterruptedly supplied the Brazilian Navy (and marines) with its commanding personnel. The navy of Brazil, although not one of the world’s largest, nevertheless has fought a number of worthy campaigns in South American warfare. During the bloody Paraguayan War of 1864-1870 it carried out an exceptional offensive campaign, far up the malarial river system of land-locked Paraguay, almost in the heart of the South American continent. A remarkable navy in many respects, it has produced a surprising number of outstanding individuals, as even a casual reader of Brazilian naval history is certain to realize.
A unique feature of the Brazilian Naval Academy is the fact that its origins can be traced as far back as one of the earliest and most famous nautical schools in history—that founded on the Promontory of Sagres, in southern Portugal, by Prince Henry the Navigator in 1416. It was this school of Sagres that launched the Portuguese navigators of the Age of Discovery on their way to discover “worlds and seas.”
The age of Prince Henry and the conquistadores who succeeded him was followed by national collapse. By 1580 Portugal was not only no longer able to hold onto her overseas possessions, but had even lost her independence to Spain. Prince Henry’s nautical school, and the spirit of enterprise that went with it, seemingly was a thing of the past.
For many years after Portugal’s independence had been recovered in 1640, officer-training for the Portuguese Navy was a somewhat haphazard affair. Command of war vessels was given to either army officers or maritime adventurers, neither of whom supplied the navy with full professional ability nor homogeneity.
Eventually the examples of other naval powers on the European continent (as well as the traditions of the school of Sagres) produced a reawakening in Portugal. In France, in 1627, Cardinal Richelieu had initiated the first standardized training of officers for a European navy. He organized and trained a group of sixteen youths, for service in a new French Navy. His successor, Jean Colbert, organized the Compagnie des Garde-de-la-Marine and, thus, departed completely from the European practice of recruiting naval officers from among soldiers- of-fortune. Similar steps were taken in Spain in 1717, when the naval school of Cadiz was founded, and in England in 1729, when the Academy at Portsmouth was created.
Portugal, although no longer a prominent naval power, took the first direct step toward building her naval academy in 1761. Under the sponsorship of the Marquis of Pombal, one of the strongest statesmen in the country’s history, the decree of July 2, 1761, was passed. It ordered the creation of the Companhia dos Guardas-Marinha (Company of Midshipmen) in the Portuguese Navy. This company was to be twenty-four in number; between the ages of fourteen and eighteen; and, in keeping with the narrow and backward social concepts of the times, its members were to be drawn from among the nobility.
These midshipmen of Pombal’s day were required to have the same qualifications for appointment as did cadets of the land forces; this consisted principally of sound health and ability to read and write, plus the aforementioned necessity of noble birth. This class of midshipmen was extinguished in 1774, thirteen years after its creation.
The final step was taken during the reign of Dona Marfa I. By the decree of August 5, 1779, the Royal Naval Academy of Portugal was ordered created. A three-year course of training was outlined in this decree. Military training, mathematics, and nautical sciences were to be the basic elements of the curriculum.
This school placed special emphasis upon the teaching of mathematical sciences and navigation. It played an important part in the development of mathematical study in Portugal during the era, and some of its mathematics instructors earned a considerable reputation in the annals of Portuguese science. There were six professors and three substitute professors named to the Academy. They ranked with those of the University of Coimbra, Portugal’s famous educational institution, and enjoyed the same favors and honors.
Late in 1807 came the gatherings of war clouds over Portugal at a period when the naval school was enjoying a steady, even if slow, growth and development. Great Britain and France were the central combatants of a great European war. Angered by a Portuguese refusal to join in his war on the British, Napoleon suddenly ordered the invasion of Portugal. Since Portugal was virtually defenseless, Dom João, the Prince- Regent of Portugal, decided to abandon Lisbon and flee to his colony of Brazil.
This sensational flight, which possibly totalled fifteen thousand people, was safely completed with the aid of an English naval squadron: the first part of the Royal Fleet arriving in Rio de Janeiro on January 17, 1808.
The Royal Family itself arrived in Rio de Janeiro on March 7. Although weary from its long and cramped ocean crossing, the Companhia dos Guardas-Marinha did not land until the twenty-second of March. The company evidently proceeded directly to temporary quarters on the historic Rua dos Ourives (Street of the Goldsmiths), where it waited until a site for the Academy was found. While established there, the guardas-marinha received their first opportunity to wander about and become acquainted with the interesting colonial capital.
The Academy’s first permanent location in Brazil was in the Mosteiro de São Bento, a monastery inhabited by a community of Benedictine friars. By amicable agreement with the Prior it was arranged that the school would be established in the hospedárias (inn, or guest lodgings) of the monastery. There, on a hill-top overlooking the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, the Royal Naval Academy commenced to function within the walls of the storied old monastery, opening a three-year course of study on May 5, 1808.
The Naval Academy remained in the Monastery of Sao Bento during the remaining years of Brazil’s colonial period. During this time it was quite difficult for a Brazilian- born applicant to gain admission to the school, even if he could enlist powerful influence, and the majority of the students continued to be youths from the exiled families of Portuguese nobility, In 1810, for example, of the twenty-three cadets matriculated in that year, only six were native- born Brazilians.
Dom João did not return to Portugal until 1821, six years after the final defeat of Napoleon. He left his son, Pedro, in Brazil as Regent. Early in 1822 Dom João sent orders from Lisbon for the return of the Royal Naval Academy to Portugal, his orders specifying that the archives and library were to be returned with the school. Pedro, who sensed that Brazilian independence was close at hand, managed to evade compliance with those orders. Thus when Brazilian independence was declared on September 7, 1822, and Pedro crowned as Dom Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, the naval school was still on Brazilian soil: its name was then changed to “Imperial and National Naval Academy of Brazil.”
The Naval Academy numbered twenty-two guardas-marinha and thirty-nine aspirantes when independence was declared. Only eight of the former and twenty of the latter refused to switch their allegiance from Portugal to Brazil. Their stand was echoed by four professors: jointly this group obtained permission to resign from the school and return with their families to Portugal. All of the remaining personnel pledged allegiance to Brazil.
Brazil became an independent nation with scant spilling of blood, since the movement for independence encountered little opposition from Portuguese military units in the country. Resistance was effective only in the seaports of Baía and Montevideo, where large forces loyal to the Metropolis were garrisoned. Most of the Portuguese naval strength in Brazilian waters joined the revolutionary movement. Ninety out of 113 Portuguese naval officers in Brazil took allegiance to the green-and-gold Brazilian flag, exclusive of the squadrons based at Baía and Montevideo. Most troops of the Royal Naval Brigade (marines), crews of men-of-war, and skilled artisans of the navy yards did likewise. Brazil thus received a windfall of sea power with its independence.
Brazil’s new navy was instrumental in the expulsion of the Portuguese forces that were based at Baía and Montevideo. Under Lord Cochrane, an Englishman who had earlier fought in Chile against the Spaniards, this task was completed in July of 1823, thus sealing Brazilian independence. It also marked the first of many times that the Brazilian Navy has served as a cohesive force in the history of that country.
The vital importance of a navy to such a nation as was the new Brazilian Empire—weak, loosely-knit, sprawling languidly from five degrees north of the Equator to deep within the southern temperate zone, near roadless—is obvious. The trend toward separatism from distant Rio de Janeiro was strong in every part of the country, which proved to be a national drawback, since it was exploited by selfish and corrupt political- military interests. In the years to come Brazil escaped the fate of Spanish America (i.e., multiple political division) partially because of its navy which, besides fighting foreign wars, crushed many separatist rebellions within the country. Brazilian history is replete with rebellions of a fanatic-separatist nature, such as the cabanagem, balaiada, abrilada, sabinada, etc., all of which the navy helped to crush. The navy, suffering from a shortage of adequately-trained creole officers, as a direct result of the Academy’s small output of graduates, had to turn to foreign navies to complete its needs. Thus, such names as Thomas Cochrane, James Norton, David Jewett, and John Grenfell figure in the earliest wars of the Brazilian Navy.
Uniforms of the cadets were changed late in 1823. They became dark blue in color; their tunics were short, reaching only to the waist; the chief ornamentation consisted of a few trimmings of twisted silk, and also of eight gold-plated buttons. The buttons had an anchor in the center, surrounded by nineteen stars, symbolic of the nineteen provinces of the Brazilian Empire. A short sword was worn with this uniform, which is even today the traditional dress uniform of the Academy.
The Naval Academy operated as well as it could in its one cramped wing of the Monastery of São Bento during the early years of Brazilian independence. It survived the early wars and rebellions of Brazilian history—the most important of which was the war in the “Purple Land” of the Banda Oriental. This war, which began in 1825 as a revolt of the people of that region against Brazilian authority, grew into a major struggle when the United Provinces of La Plata (today known as Argentina) rushed to the support of the orientales. It was a long and hard-fought war that lasted from 1825 to 1828. The Brazilian Navy blockaded the La Plata Estuary, during much of that time, and almost captured Buenos Aires. It emerged victorious in most of the naval battles that took place in the La Plata area, but was unable to deliver a knock-out blow to the Argentines, whose armies and fleets fought with tenacity. A Brazilian landing in Patagonia ended in failure. After much inconclusive fighting in the La Plata, and on land in the Banda Oriental, a treaty of peace was signed in 1828. As a result of this treaty the independent republic of Uruguay was created out of the Banda Oriental, as a buffer state between Brazil and Argentina.
The Academy continued to function in the monastic environment of Sao Bento after the war against the Argentines. So woeful was its lack of facilities there that the Minister of the Navy described the school as amounting to three miserable compartments roofed by crumbling tile.
In 1832, as a result of political feuds in the Brazilian Congress, the military and naval schools of Brazil were merged. This arrangement proved to be a failure and, in 1833, the two schools were separated once more. Misfortune continued to dog the naval school, however, as it went back to its familiar rut, the inn of Sao Bento. It remained there until 1839, as Brazil passed through a period of internal disorder. The worst disturbance was known as the Guerra dos Farrapos— “the War of the Beggars”—when the province of Rio Grande do Sul was in revolt against the government from 1835 to 1845.
In 1839 the Academy began a new era in its checkered history, when it was transferred aboard the man-of-war Dom Pedro II. This vessel, then nine years old, had scarcely ever been used by the Brazilian Navy because, owing to a dismasting that it had suffered on its maiden voyage, it was superstitiously regarded as a black sheep by many people.
By 1849 the Dom Pedro II had fallen into a ripe state of putrefaction, hence, in that year, the school journeyed back ashore. It was installed in a building on the Largo da Prainha, one of Rio de Janeiro’s busier commercial districts. The school was still there when it received the basic reform of 1858, which added numerous new studies to the curriculum, and improved the studies of gunnery and oceanography. This reform also provided that the entire fourth year was to be spent in a vessel making a long ocean trip by sail. This last measure resulted in the execution of several memorable “blue- water” voyages-of-instruction, in the years to come, by last year classes.
The school suffered a heavy blow in 1860 when the corvette D. Isabel, carrying the entire class of guardas-marinha of that year on their voyage of instruction, sank off the coast of Morocco. A total of 123 men died in this watery catastrophe, including twenty- one officers and eleven guardas-marinha.
The bloody Paraguayan War broke out in 1864. Of all the foreign wars of the Brazilian Navy, this was the most difficult. An expensive conflict, it lasted from 1864 to 1870. It cost Brazil alone more than 50,000 lives and $300,000,000 in capital. Although the war nominally was fought by a coalition of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay against Paraguay, Brazil was finally left to prosecute the war practically alone.
Paraguay was a total military dictatorship, under the vicious Francisco López— “El Supremo”—who was an epitome of the caudillos who have cursed Latin-America since 1822. The Paraguayans had lived in quasi-isolation from the outside world for years and were fanatically loyal to their tyrant. López had a well-equipped army of 80,000 men, then the most powerful fighting force on the South American continent, and which actually constituted a menace to his almost unarmed neighbors. At the start of hostilities López had so little fear of defeat that his troops, in response to an Allied ultimatum, sent back the insolent answer:
“Para que, Señor, prisioneros? Nosotros los mataremos a todos, y traeremos la esquadra brasilena.” (What for, sir, prisoners? We will kill them all, and take the Brazilian squadron back with us.)
The warlike Paraguayans overran much of the Brazilian provinces of Mato Grasso and Rio Grande do Sul early in the war. At the famous battle of Riachuelo in 1865, however, they were routed. The Brazilian Navy fought this battle in a cramped bend of the Paraguay River, against an attacking and superior Paraguayan fleet that was supported by powerful shore batteries.
The Brazilian Navy was the key instrument to victory for the Allies. Under the command of Admiral Tamandare—the “Brazilian Nelson,” a naval commander of the highest distinction—it executed a laborious offensive through the river system of inland Paraguay, an offensive that was carried out against difficulties of every kind. Cholera and malaria proved to be just as deadly enemies as Paraguayan shells and machetes. Between 1865 and 1870 one Paraguayan defensive obstacle after another was overcome by the guns and landing forces of the Brazilian fleet. The Brazilian army kept up a parallel offensive by land.
The Allied offensive developed after the victory of Riachuelo. In 1867 the passage of Curupaitf, a fortified river point of great strength, was effected by the Brazilian fleet. In 1868 it achieved the passage of Humaita, a fortress so formidable that it was known as “the Gibraltar of South America.” The passage of Humaita, in effect, sealed Paraguay’s military fate, even though López did not meet his end at the hands of a Brazilian corporal until 1870.
At the outbreak of the Paraguayan War a group of cadets from the naval school went to serve with the Brazilian fleet. One of them was Guarda-Marinha João Guilherme Greenhalgh, whose death in battle under heroic circumstances made him the historic idol of the naval academy. Greenhalgh was killed at the battle of Riachuelo on board the Parnaiba, flagship of the Brazilian admiral Barroso. The Parnaiba was grappled and boarded by the crews of no less than four Paraguayan vessels at the outset of that battle, but remained in action after repelling them. Greenhalgh was killed during the carnage on the Parnaiba’s decks— in defense of the ship’s colors against a swarm of Paraguayans. A sixteen-year-old aspirante, Joaquim de Nascimento, was killed at Humaitá.
The naval school experienced another of its gypsy-like changes of location in the middle of the Paraguayan War, when it was placed aboard the old frigate Constituiçāo (which provides an odd analogy to the transfer of the U. S. Naval Academy from Annapolis in the frigate Constitution—“Old Ironsides”—to Newport during the American Civil War). Despite the great age of the Constituiçāo (it was built in 1826), it served as the home of the naval academy for the next fourteen years.
A visit was paid to Annapolis and West Point in 1877 by a former instructor at the naval school, the then Capitāo-Tenente (lieutenant) Saldanha da Gama. Saldanha was well-impressed by Annapolis and wished to incorporate certain of its teaching methods in the Brazilian naval school (which he did, later, when he became its commandant). He felt that Annapolis’ program was much better developed than that of West Point, at the time, and that it also was better organized; the military discipline at both schools he considered about equal. The language classes at Annapolis, however, he considered to be “no good; just like they are in Brazil.”
The Constituiçāo had become so ancient and decayed by 1880 that the school was moved ashore once more. It spent the interval from 1880-1883 provisionally established in the navy yard of Rio de Janeiro. In March of 1883 it was transferred to the Ilha das Enxadas, a large island in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, where it was installed in an old but extensive group of buildings.
Brazil became a Republic in November of 1889, when Emperor Dom Pedro II was overthrown by the Brazilian Army. In the stormy period that followed, a feud developed between the army and navy, as the navy resented the army’s interference with the country’s politics, while the army suspected the navy of wishing a return of the monarchy.
In the bitter civil war that ensued (1893- 1895) the naval academy underwent an epic, if disastrous, period. Commanded by Admiral Saldanha da Gama (the Brazilian officer who had visited West Point and Annapolis in 1877), who did his utmost to keep the naval school from becoming embroiled in the fighting, but who finally was obliged to participate in it, the academy underwent its full share of civil war. When the conflict ended the naval school had virtually ceased to exist—its buildings were damaged or wrecked, its grounds torn up, its equipment scattered, and the cadet battalion gone. In the last battle of the civil war, fought at Campo Osorio, in the pampas-land of Rio Grande do Sul, Saldanha and most of the cadets who took part in the battle were killed. Five cadets were beheaded after capture.
The school remained closed by government order until May, 1895. Its doors were then reopened, with the provision that only those students who had taken no part in the rebellion were to be permitted to enroll (very few had not).
The first director of the Escola Naval in the following years was an outstanding man, Antonio Alves de Camara, who was well-known for his scientific achievements. As director of the Escola Naval he is chiefly remembered as having created the Greenhalgh Award, the school’s first annual award for intellectual achievement. Since 1895 it has been given annually to the school’s most distinguished scholar. Consisting of a gold medal and seal it was named in honor of Guarda-Marinha Greenhalgh, who was hacked to death by Paraguayan machetes at the battle of Riachuelo.
Alves Camara was replaced in 1900 by Admiral Arturo Jageguai, then a famous old veteran of the Paraguayan War, and one of the strictest disciplinarians of an earlier era in the Brazilian Navy. Severe and circumspect, and efficient, Jageguai was the terror of the cadets of his day; many stories are still told of his “regime of iron” at the school.
Construction of new buildings for the Escola Naval was requested by the Naval Ministry in 1904 and again in 1907, but without success. Several new docks were built in 1908, however.
The school was moved again in 1914, from the wretched buildings and humid climate of the Ilha das Enxadas, to Angra dos Reis, a small but historic coastal port southwest of Rio de Janeiro. There, situated in a secluded inlet, were modern and spacious buildings which were then being used as a recruit training base by the navy.
The Escola Naval was located at Angra dos Reis from 1914 to 1921. This was not too happy a period in spite of the fine accommodations there, as continuous grumbling was suffered from those who lived in Rio de Janeiro. Almost all of the professors and officers resented their isolation from Rio de Janeiro, and disliked life in sleepy and socially-stagnant Angra dos Reis. The cadets, who rated liberty once every fifteen days and who then had to make a six-hour trip by launch and train to reach Rio de Janeiro, also sorely missed the gayeties of the Brazilian capital. To make things even less satisfactory, the government curtailed enrollment of new students for two years. The school thus became underpopulated, which is the reason for the present shortage of officers in the Brazilian Navy and Fusileiros Navais (its landing forces).
After several years of crafty political maneuvering, the dissatisfied personnel at Angra dos Reis managed to have their way. Under political circumstances that were scarcely flattering to the country, the Escola Naval was returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1921, again to be installed in the decrepit establishments on the Ilha das Enxadas, which were now even older and more dilapidated.
The arrival of the American Naval Mission to Brazil in 1922 was an event that indirectly benefited the Escola Naval. It has remained in Brazil ever since; ever since 1922, thus, the trend in the Brazilian Navy has been toward the psychology and systems of the United States, and away from the older navies of Europe.
The school was partially destroyed by a fire in 1932. The fire was caused by a short circuit and, besides damaging the old buildings, destroyed many precious historical documents. Among the former were the scholastic archives, which included matriculation records of the institution dating back to its early period in Portugal.
Fate at last became kind to Brazil’s historic old scientific-nautical school when, in 1938, the long dreamed-of new school was completed. This was an expensive and modernistic establishment on the Ilha de Villegagnon, an island in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, close to the city’s main business district. An elaborate new plant was built on Villegagnon. The buildings were modern and military in design; a tiled, open-air swimming pool was one of its features. As seen from the near-by city today the school presents a handsome silhouette of rigid, regular lines, although prison-like in its color.
In 1939 the study of atomic fission was introduced into the chemistry branch of the department of physical sciences at Villegagnon. The Escola Naval thus became the first school in Brazil, and possibly in Latin America, to begin studying atomic science.
Brazil was an active military participant in World War II. An expeditionary force of the Brazilian Army was sent to the Italian front. The Brazilian Navy, in relation to its size, did a large amount of convoy and escort work in the South Atlantic. Built around two old battleships, two old cruisers, nine new destroyers, eight older destroyers, six corvettes, and eight sub-chasers, it was dismissed lightly by most United Nations military commentators, when Brazil declared war on the Axis in August of 1942, with the prediction that the enemy would more likely encounter the Brazilians in port than out at sea. Events proved them to be clumsy prophets, however, as the Brazilian Navy almost literally spent the war at sea. Said Admiral Ernest J. King of the U. S. Navy:
“The Brazilians have developed a very efficient anti-submarine force of surface ships and airplanes which, operating as an integrated part of the South Atlantic Fleet, took its full share of the task of knocking out the German submarine effort directed against the convoy routes off the east coast of South America.”
Brazilian naval officers frequently became escort commanders of United Nations convoys. They were concerned with the protection of maritime traffic as far north as the West Indian island of Trinidad. War losses included the old cruiser Baía, the naval transport Vital do Oliveira, and the minelayer Camaquā. Three hundred and fifty men were lost on the Baía, including four Americans.
Today, wealthy in history and background the Escola Naval functions on Villegagnon Island. Its students come from almost all social levels in Brazil, in sharp contrast to the situation that existed in early Imperial times. Admission is possible for any youth who wishes to enter and, like the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, selection is determined on the basis of competitive examinations. As a group, the students are intelligent and talented; their personalities seem to be quite similar to Americans of the same age.
As a new Brazil evolves out of the decadent conditions inherited from its colonial period, the old naval academy functions as a modern institution under the jutting skyline of Rio de Janeiro.