| Golden Journal No. 59
Ships of the Armada
Part Three: Portugal’s Actual Fleet
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
April 2025
 Portugal entered the 20th Century with a proud naval tradition, long since decayed along with her fleet. Most of the ships dated from the abortive 1890 fleet renewal program, which produced five cruisers. Four of these were little more than colonial gunboats. An ironclad dating from the 1870’s and a handful of actual gunboats rounded out the force. We’ve included them all in Golden Journal No. 59: Portugal’s Armada, so let’s have a look at them.
The Ironclad
When successive Portuguese governments began their quest for a dreadnought to match Brazil’s, the kingdom and republic already had a “battleship,” the ancient ironclad Vasco da Gama.
Inadequate even when laid down by Thames Iron Works in 1875, Vasco da Gama had been intended to defend the Tagus Estuary (the approaches to Lisbon). She followed modern design themes of her time, carrying two 10.2-inch guns in a central armored battery, with a painfully slow speed that didn’t really matter given her mission.
In 1901, the Italian shipyard Orlando took her in hand for reconstruction; the firm made sort of a specialty of turning worthless old ironclads into worthless new ironclads, having done so for Spain and Turkey as well. Orlando cut the hull in half, gutted it, and threw everything away including her iron armor. The new, lengthened Vasco da Gama had a 10-inch steel belt and three inches of deck armor, suitable for a real battleship, and new 203mm (8-inch) guns in sponsons on either side of the ship, plus one 150mm (5.9-inch) gun in a shielded mount aft. A completely new power plant with a VTE triple-expansion engine and Yarrow water-tube boilers could drive her at 15.5 knots. As rebuilt, she displaced 2,900 tons.
Vasco da Gama seen in 1903, after her re-construction.
She would serve as Portugal’s flagship until 1914. Her crew plotted a 1913 coup against the First Republic, and in May 1915 they mutinied, killed their captain and bombarded Lisbon, killing over 100 people. She would be modernized again in 1922, losing one 8-inch gun and the 5.9-inch gun, and finally scrapped in 1935.
Her playing piece should show only the secondary gunnery factor, not a primary one.
The Elswick Cruiser
Named Dom Carlos I until 1910, the cruiser Almirante Reis spent her entire service life as both the largest ship of the Portuguese Navy, and the most modern of her cruisers. This goes far toward explaining the fleet’s lust for new, powerful warships.
Almirante Reis was an Elswick cruiser, a very popular export design built by Britain’s Armstrong conglomerate at their shipyard in Elswick. The Portuguese ship, laid down in 1897, came from the 1890 naval program which included ten such cruisers and four coast-defense battleships. The kingdom’s 1892 bankruptcy delayed the order for Almirante Reis until January 1897, and half of the cruisers would be the only ships of those 14 actually built.
She commissioned in 1899, and immediately became the fleet’s showboat, taking the flag to Brazil, bringing the royal family on vacation to the Portuguese island colony of Madeira, visiting Spain and England, and helping dedicate the memorial to Prince Henry the Navigator (who was not, in fact, actually a navigator, nor did he establish a school of navigation).
Almirante Reis displaced 4,200 tons, carrying a mixed main armament of four 152mm (6-inch) guns and eight 120mm (4.7-inch) guns, all of them the typical Elswick-made weapons of the time, plus a large array of light (47mm and 37mm) rapid-fire guns for defense against enemy torpedo boats, also very typical of the era. She initially had five torpedo tubes, three of them below the waterline and two above.
Portuguese cruiser Dom Carlos I, the future Almirante Reis.
She had an armored deck and a ram bow, and when new her very modern power plant of two VTE triple-expansion engines and a dozen Yarrow water-tube boilers could put out 12,500 horsepower and drive her at 22.5 knots. That was an exceptional speed for the time, but once she passed into Portuguese service, her owners ceased performing maintenance on her. The boilers steadily corroded, and by 1914 she was down to a top speed of 19 knots. She did, however, have exceptional range, allowing her to patrol all of the far corners of Portugal’s far-flung colonial empire.
In 1910, her crew (which had already mutinied in 1906) came late to the revolution, but murdered their captain plus three of his officers. The Republic renamed the ship Almirante Reis in honor of Admiral Carlos Candido dos Reis, who helped plan the revolution and then shot himself when it appeared that the revolutionaries stood on the brink of defeat. Needing a hero, the successful revolutionaries selected Reis and did not mention the exact circumstances of his death.
The strain of escorting convoys to Angola and Mozambique once the war began did in Almirante Reis’s neglected boilers, and she would be retired in January 1916 and scrapped after the war.
The Italian Cruiser
The 1890 naval program provided for ten cruisers, only five of which would be built, only one of which (Dom Carlos I/Almirante Reis) would be of the size initially projected. The other four would be much smaller ships.
The order for Adamastor (named for a mythical sea giant) was finally placed in 1895, with the Italian yard Orlando. She would be called an “armored cruiser” by the Portuguese, but only boasted a thin armored deck over her machinery spaces and not a waterline belt. She was a small ship, displacing just 1,729 tons. Adamastor carried two 150mm and four 105mm guns; the 150mm weapons were the 1880-vintage Krupp L/30 Mantel Ring Cannon, short-ranged and not very powerful, thus the lower-than-usual game rating for their firepower. Like other ships of her time, Adamastor carried an array of light-weight quick-firing guns (65mm Hotchkiss and 50mm Krupp); in what appears to be standard Portuguese practice these were of course different weapons than those carried by any other Portuguese ship.
She joined the fleet in 1897 and made voyages to South America before taking up duty patrolling Portugal’s African colonies. But she was at Lisbon in October 1910 and played a major part in the republican revolution, firing the first shots of the uprising to signal its start, and shelling the royal palace.
Adamastor arrives in Portugal for the first time, 1897.
By 1916 she had moved to Mozambique, and supported Portuguese troops trying to fend off the invading Germans from Tanganyika; she would receive a unit award of the Order of the Tower and Star (Portugal’s highest award for bravery). Afterwards she became the station ship at the Portuguese colony of Macau, and in 1933 she steamed back to Portugal at her maximum speed of 4 knots for scrapping.
The French Cruiser
Spreading their orders around, the Portuguese placed two contracts for the 1890 Program’s cruisers with the French Normand shipyard in Le Havre. São Rafael and São Gabriel, known in the Portuguese Navy as “the angels,” bore the names of Vasco da Gama’s flagships on his voyage to India.
The Angels displaced 1,743 tons, and carried a mixed main armament of two 150mm L/30 Ring Cannon and two 120mm (4.7-inch) guns; the latter appear to be Elswick Model M export models. The new ships had a rather thin armored deck, but no belt armor. They could make 17.5 knots when new, and like the other small cruisers had the great range necessary to show the flag across the Portuguese colonial empire. In essence these were gunboats, not cruisers, but they suited Portugal’s needs at the time.
Between December 1909 and April 1911, São Gabriel circumnavigated the globe, to mark the 390th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan’s feat. While she was gone, her sister ship joined the revolution, bombarding the royal palace and the Terreiro do Paço Square, the iconic center of public life in the capital. Karma caught up with her in October 1911 when she ran aground just outside the mouth of the River Ave in northern Portugal, tore out her bottom and was declared a total loss.
The Angels in drydock, 1908. São Rafael in the foreground and São Gabriel behind her.
São Gabriel soldiered on, convoying transports to Africa during the First World War. Like the other Portuguese cruisers, she suffered from neglect and by 1914 her speed had dropped to 15 knots. She was scrapped in 1924.
The Home-Made Cruiser
The Portuguese contract with the Normand shipyard also specified that all drawings and documentation would be provided so that Portugal could build more such cruisers at home. A public subscription drive to build four ships in Portugal raised enough money for just one, which was laid down at the Lisbon Naval Arsenal in 1898.
The Portuguese hired one of Normand’s naval architects, Alphonse Croneau, to oversee the project. For cost reasons they demanded that the ship be reduced in size, but still carry enough coal for long-range colonial patrols and a heavier armament than São Gabriel. Croneau managed to cram four 150mm French-made guns (in sponson mounts, two on either side) and two 100mm pieces (fore and aft in single shielded mounts) aboard without increasing the size of the ship, but it only decreased slightly.
Another colonial gunboat, Rainha Dona Amelia displaced 1,630 tons and could make 20 knots, with slightly more deck armor than São Gabriel. Croneau had provided a very capable ship given the size and budget constraints.
Rainha Dona Amelia when new.
Rainha Dona Amelia (named for the current queen) commissioned in 1901 and undertook missions against the slave trade in Angola and to break a tax strike with naval gunfire. She was on her way to the Portuguese colony of Macau in China when the revolution broke out, and took the new name Republica. She then became a training ship until grounding in August 1915; salvage efforts failed and she was a total loss.
The Destroyers
A quartet of destroyers would be the one element of the 1906-1914 programs to actually reach physical form. These were small boats, displacing 515 tons and modeled closely on the British River class destroyers built between 1903 and 1905. By the time the Portuguese got around to building them they were fairly obsolescent.
Yarrow & Co., which designed the River class and built a half-dozen of them for the Royal Navy, provided the parts for the Portuguese boats. They were shipped to the Lisbon Naval Arsenal in section, and assembled there; the First World War interrupted deliveries and it took eleven years to complete all four, starting in 1913 and wrapping up the last boat in 1924.
With Yarrow unable to complete the order during the war, the Portuguese turned to the Ansaldo yard in then-neutral Italy and ordered one near-sister, to be named Liz. Desperate for destroyers, the Royal Navy offered Portugal a premium price and she was sold to the British just before she would have been commissioned.
Destroyer Guadiana seen in 1915.
The Guadiana class carried one 100mm and two 76mm guns, all of British make, and two twin torpedo tubes. They could make 27 knots when new, and remained in service until the 1930’s, with one hanging on as a training ship until 1945.
Portugal’s Armada comes with 23 die-cut and silky-smooth playing pieces (17 long ones and six square ones). We tell you all about the ships, the story of the Portuguese Navy, and then we have scenarios so you can play with them in Great War at Sea: Jutland 2e.
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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good.
He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.
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