NRP Sagres III

Received this postcard from a postcrossing user in Netherland, depicting the tall ship NRP Sagress III school ship of the Portuguese Navy since 1961. It is the third ship with this name in the Portuguese Navy, so she is also known as Sagres III. It is also depicted in a postage stamp issued by France in 1999. Click here to see the stamp.

Following a number of international training voyages, the ship was used as a stationary office ship after the outbreak of World War II and was only put into ocean-going service again in 1944 in the Baltic Sea. On 14 November 1944 she hit a Soviet mine off Sassnitz and had to be towed to port in Swinemünde. Eventually transferred to Flensburg, she was taken over there by the Allies when the war ended and finally confiscated by the United States.

In 1948, the U.S. sold her to Brazil for a symbolic price of $5,000 USD.[1] She was towed to Rio de Janeiro, and for Brazil she sailed as a school ship for the Brazilian Navy under the name Guanabara. In 1961, the Portuguese Navy bought her to replace the old school ship Sagres II (which was transferred to Hamburg, where she is a museum ship under her original name Rickmer Rickmers). The Portuguese Navy renamed her Sagres (the third ship of that name), and she is still in service.

Source: Wikipedia