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| History | |
|---|---|
 Empire of Brazil | |
| Name | Cabral |
| Namesake | Pedro Álvares Cabral |
| Commissioned | 1866 |
| Fate | Scrapped c. 1882 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Cabral-class ironclad |
| Displacement | 1,050 metric tons (1,030 long tons) |
| Length | 47.54 m (156 ft 0 in) |
| Beam | 10.66 m (35 ft 0 in) |
| Draft | 2.43 m (8.0 ft) |
| Installed power | 750 ihp (560 kW) |
| Propulsion | 2 shafts, 2 steam engines |
| Speed | 10.5 knots (19.4 km/h; 12.1 mph) |
| Complement | 125 officers and men |
| Armament | 8 × rifled 70-pounder Whitworth guns |
| Armor | |
The Brazilian ironclad Cabral was a Cabral-class armored corvette-type warship operated by the Imperial Brazilian Navy from 1866 to 1882. The vessel was built in the shipyard of the British company J. and G. Rennie in Greenwich, England, and was the leader of its class, which also included Colombo. It was launched in 1865 and incorporated into the navy on 15 September 1866. The battleship was entirely made of iron and displaced 858, 1,033 or 1,050 tons, depending on the source. It had two steam engines that developed up to 750 hp, propelling the vessel at about 20 km/h. Its structure comprised a double pillbox with eight gunports. The navy had great difficulties with this ship, which was hard to navigate and, due to the design of its casemate, which left a part of it unprotected, it was vulnerable to diving projectiles.
A few months after its arrival in Brazil, Cabral was sent to combat in the Paraguayan War. The first obstacle was the Fortress of Curupayty which, together with several other ships of the imperial fleet, Cabral bombarded intensely on 2 February 1867. On August 15, Cabral successfully forced the passage of this fort, a maneuver that lasted for about two hours. After this transposition, on 2 March 1868, Cabral and Lima Barros were approached by about 200 Paraguayans who were on canoes. Cabral was about to be taken by the Paraguayans, when Silvado and Herval approached and repelled them. In July, Cabral participated in the bombing of the Fortress of Humaitá, which it also crossed on the 21st. In this crossing, Cabral demonstrated its poor maneuverability by violently ramming two other ironclads, harming, but not preventing, the maneuver. In August, it surpassed the Timbó fortress and, in October, the Angostura fortress.
In the last years of the war, the battleship was no longer in demand and returned to Rio de Janeiro, where it underwent repairs. In 1873, it was assigned to the third naval division, with the mission of patrolling the Brazilian coast between Mossoró, in Rio Grande do Norte, and the border with French Guiana. In the second half of the 1870s, the ship was relegated to the river battery due to its poor seaworthiness. The navy decommissioned it on 8 November 1882.