Bahia was the lead ship of a two-vessel class of cruisers built for Brazil by the British company Armstrong Whitworth. Crewmen mutinied in November 1910 aboard Bahia, Deodoro, Minas Geraes, and São Paulo, beginning the four-day Revolta da Chibata. Brazil's capital city of Rio de Janeiro was held hostage by the possibility of a naval bombardment, leading the government to give in to the rebel demands which included the abolition of flogging in the navy. During the First World War, Bahia and its sister ship Rio Grande do Sul were assigned to the Divisão Naval em Operações de Guerra, the Brazilian Navy's main contribution in that conflict. The squadron was based in Sierra Leone and Dakar and escorted convoys through an area believed to be heavily patrolled by U-boats.
Bahia sometime before its mid-1920s modernization, as indicated by its two funnels
João Cândido Felisberto with reporters, officers and sailors on aboard Minas Geraes on 26 November 1910, the final day of the rebellion.
Bahia sometime after its major modernization; the addition of a funnel was a striking change to the ship's appearance
A profile of Bahia at some point after its 1920s modernization; note the men congregated on the foredeck
The Bahia class was a pair of scout cruisers built for Brazil by Armstrong Whitworth in the United Kingdom, based on a design that borrowed heavily from the British Adventure-class scout cruisers. The class comprised the lead ship Bahia and her sister Rio Grande do Sul, along with a canceled third ship, Ceara. Both were named after states of Brazil. As a class, they were the fastest cruisers in the world when commissioned, and the first in the Brazilian Navy to use steam turbines for propulsion.
Bahia prior to being modernized between 1925 and 26, with a low bridge and two funnels.
Bahia post-modernization. The most striking visual changes were adding height to and adding a third funnel. Even though oil has a greater thermal efficiency, an extra funnel was necessitated by the arrangement of new oil-firing boilers, where two each were placed in three independent compartments.
