Almeida de Carvalho - Missions Carried Out

From 1969, the ship was at the service of the US Navy under the name "Kellar", until it was acquired by the Portuguese Navy and renamed with its current name, and was attached to the Hydrographical Institute.

The use that the ship was intended for would not be what it was most used for. It was used more as an oceanographic ship than a hydrographical ship and this saw to it that in 1971, in the United States, it underwent some modifications in the Merit Ship Repair shipyard (in Oakland), work that was closely overseen over a period of two months by the team that would bring it to Portugal.

At the time, the Portuguese Navy had two hydrographical ships with the name Almeida Carvalho and the call sign A527.
Between 1950 and 1963, before it was submitted for modification, it was at the service of the national hydrographical service with the NRP "Comandante Almeida Carvalho", a ship that just like the Almeida Carvalho, was constructed in an overseas shipyard (in Canada) and acquired from another navy, in this case the English Navy, where it had been called the "Mingan".

However, only the first of these ships was readapted twice, the first time (1950) to serve hydrographical needs, and the second time in 1964 when it was adapted and reclassified as a corvette (and was then re-named "Cacheu") in order to strengthen the Navy with small-sized ships which had become necessary with the outbreak of the African war.

The integration of the NRP "Almeida Carvalho" to the armed forces allowed for the continuation of research work and support to fishing boars that it had been carrying out since the 1960s.
With replacing the NRP "São Jorge" (1967-1972), in mind, the "Almeida Carvalho" was then replaced by the NRP "D. Carlos" (1997-).

The list of hydrographical ships serving the Portuguese Navy consists of 36 examples of which four boats are still in use.

The NRP "Almeida Carvalho" sailed for more than 41,000 hours of and travelled over more than 244,000 miles over the 30 years it was at the disposal of the Hydrographical Institute.

Main foreign ports visited

San Francisco; Balboa; Panama Canal; Las Palmas; Cidade da Praia; Dakar; Bissau; Saint Nazaire; Casablanca; La Coruña; Cadiz; Jorf Lasfar.