NRP Afonso de Albuquerque
The Afonso de Albuquerque in 1935
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 Portuguese NavyPortugal
|
|
| Name: | NRP Afonso de Albuquerque |
| Namesake: | Afonso de Albuquerque |
| Builder: | Hawthorn Leslie |
| Launched: | 1934 |
| Commissioned: | 28 May 1934 |
| Fate: | Destroyed in combat in 1961 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Afonso de Albuquerque class |
| Displacement: |
|
| Length: | 100 m (330 ft) |
| Beam: | 13.49 m (44.3 ft) |
| Draught: | 3.81 m (12.5 ft) |
| Propulsion: | |
| Speed: | 21 knots (39 km/h) |
| Range: | 8,000 mi (13,000 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h) |
| Complement: | 191 |
| Armament: |
|
| Aircraft carried: | 1 |
The NRP Afonso de Albuquerque was a warship of the Portuguese Navy, named after the 16th-century Portuguese navigator Afonso de Albuquerque. She was destroyed in combat on 18 December 1961, defending Goa against the Indian Armed Forces invasion.
The ship was the first of the Afonso de Albuquerque class, which also included the NRP Bartolomeu Dias. These ships were classified, by the Portuguese Navy, as avisos coloniais de 1ª classe (1st class colonial aviso or sloop) and were designed to maintain a Portuguese naval presence in the Overseas territories of Portugal. They had limited capacity to combat other surface vessels, as they were intended, mainly, to support amphibious operations and troops on land.
After the Second World War, the Afonso de Albuquerque class ships were reclassified as frigates.
In her career Afonso de Albuquerque served mainly in the Indian and the Pacific oceans, protecting the Portuguese territories of Mozambique, India, Macau and Timor.
On 9 September 1936 the crews of the Afonso de Albuquerque and the destroyer Dão mutinied while anchored in Lisbon harbour. Opposed to the Salazar dictatorship's support of the Nationalists rebels against the pro-government Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, the sailors confined their officers and declared their solidarity with the Spanish Republic. As the ships were leaving the Tejo estuary they were fired upon by the batteries from the forts and both the Afonso de Albuquerque and the Dão received direct hits and were grounded. Some of the sailors were killed while trying to flee, but most of the sailors were arrested and sent to the penal colony of Terrafal in Cape Verde. After the mutiny was put down the government claimed that the sailors had prepared to sail to Spain in order to assist the Spanish Republic.
...
Wikipedia