**TITLE:** The Revolt of the Navy
In the early years of the Brazilian Republic, as the country still struggled to define the contours of its new political regime, tensions between the armed forces and the central government reached a breaking point. The Revolt of the Navy was the name given to two distinct episodes of rebellion led by units of the Brazilian Navy, both driven by dissatisfaction with the authoritarian direction the early republican governments were taking. The movements occurred at different times but shared the same essence: naval officers’ resistance to the concentration of power in the hands of the Army.
The first episode took place in November 1891 and was a direct reaction to one of the most controversial actions of Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca, then president of the Republic. Pressured by a severe economic crisis and unable to negotiate political solutions with the opposition, Deodoro made a decision that openly violated the newly enacted Constitution of that same year: he ordered the closure of the National Congress. The measure sparked an immediate backlash in the Navy. Units stationed in Guanabara Bay, under the command of Admiral Custódio de Melo, mutinied and threatened to bombard the city of Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the Republic. Facing the imminent threat of armed conflict, Deodoro chose to resign on November 23, 1891, after just nine months in office.
With Deodoro’s departure, Vice President Floriano Peixoto assumed power in 1892. However, the transition opened a new constitutional dispute. The 1891 Constitution stipulated that if the presidency or vice-presidency became vacant before two years of the term had been completed, new elections should be called. The opposition began accusing Floriano of illegally remaining in power, setting the stage for another conflict.
The second episode, known as the Second Revolt of the Navy, began to take shape in March 1892 when thirteen generals sent a manifesto to Floriano demanding the calling of presidential elections. The president responded with an iron fist, ordering the arrest of the movement’s leaders. Tensions escalated over the following months until erupting in full force on September 6, 1893, when a group of high-ranking Navy officers formally rebelled and demanded immediate elections.
Among the rebels were prominent figures: Admirals Saldanha da Gama, Eduardo Wandenkolk, and Custódio de Melo, who had been Minister of the Navy and was a declared candidate for the presidency. The involvement of these officers also reflected the Navy’s deeper discontent with the political prestige the Army had accumulated at the expense of the naval force. The movement also included young officers and a significant portion of monarchists who saw the republican instability as an opportunity for a comeback.
However, the revolt failed to gain the popular support it had hoped for in Rio de Janeiro. Starting on September 13, rebel ironclads exchanged fire with the artillery of forts controlled by the Army loyal to the government. Intense battles took place at Ponta da Armação in Niterói, where government forces—comprising battalions of the Public Force and the National Guard—totaled around 3,000 men. The violence of the clashes was such that the state capital, then based in Niterói, was temporarily moved to Petrópolis in 1894, only returning to its original location in 1903.
With no prospects of victory in Guanabara Bay, the rebels moved south. Some of the forces landed in Desterro, now Florianópolis, in an attempt to forge an alliance with the Gaúcho federalists who were waging their own conflict in Rio Grande do Sul. The strategy, however, did not produce the expected results, and the revolt gradually lost strength.
A decisive factor in the rebels' defeat was U.S. intervention. The United States, which had already exerted influence behind the scenes during the first episode by pressuring Deodoro to resign, reentered the scene in 1894. After reports of attacks on three American ships by the rebels, Washington sent a squadron to Rio de Janeiro. Floriano had acquired warships from abroad through the American businessman and banker Charles Ranlett Flint—a fleet that opponents derisively called the "paper fleet" and government supporters dubbed the "Flint Squadron." The American cruisers, commanded by Admiral Benham, forcibly broke the rebels' blockade of Rio’s port on January 29, 1894, sealing the revolt’s fate once and for all.
By March 1894, the rebellion had been crushed. The harshness with which Floriano Peixoto confronted the two revolutionary movements solidified his image as an unyielding ruler, earning him the nickname by which he would forever be known in Brazilian history: the Iron Marshal. The Revolt of the Navy, in turn, went down in the records as one of the most turbulent episodes of the so-called *República da Espada* (Sword Republic), the early period when the military dominated the country’s political scene, and institutional stability was, at best, a distant aspiration.