Nictheroy, a 7080-ton (displacement) Brazilian auxiliary cruiser, was built at Newport News, Virginia, in 1893 as the Morgan Line's coastal passenger and cargo ship El Cid. The Brazilian government, faced with a mutiny by most of its Navy, came to the United States looking for ships, and El Cid became one of its purchases. Her conversion was conducted with the utmost haste. The ship returned to New York on 26 October 1893 from a commercial voyage, was put in dry dock at the Erie Basin in Brooklyn around 31 October, and after about two days there was moved to the docks of the Morgan Iron Works in Manhattan just above the Brooklyn Bridge for conversion. There, E. W. Very, late Lieutenant USN and now General Director of the Hotchkiss Ordnance Co., took charge of installing her armament, which included a 15-inch dynamite gun in the bow similar to the three on USS Vesuvius. On 18 November the ship left her pier practically complete and on 20 November she sailed for Brazil as a Brazilian warship.
Nictheroy arrived at Rio de Janeiro in March 1894 and joined the force confronting the mutinous navy. The Navy revolt ended later in 1894 without Nictheroy having used her dynamite gun, and the ship was subsequently used as an accomodation ship for the school for apprentice seamen at Rio de Janeiro. In early 1898 the United States made arrangements to purchase her, along with the cruisers Amazonas and Almirante Abreu (later USS New Orleans and Albany respectively), then under construction in England. When personnel from USS Oregon inspected Nictheroy in March 1898 they found that she no longer had any guns. She was placed in commission in ordinary as USS Buffalo in July 1898, probably after her return voyage from Brazil.
This page features some views of the Brazilian Auxiliary Cruiser Nictheroy, which was later USS Buffalo (AD-8).
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.