Created on November 30, 1896, it is the shelter of generations of sailors committed to the defense of the Homeland.
It was no coincidence that the site where the Puerto Belgrano Naval Base was built 127 years ago was chosen. The Bahía Blanca estuary had been known since colonial times and was used as a refuge for ships that were surprised by bad weather at sea.
It was also a reserve anchorage for the National Squadron. And in the midst of the battles of the Río de la Plata, Admiral Guillermo Brown used its waters for repairs and the preparation of some ships, far from the theater of war.
In 1824, Brown had already sent Colonel Francisco Seguí, in command of the brig “General Belgrano”, to carry out a hydrographic survey of the coastal area of the interior of the Bahía Blanca estuary. There he discovered that the deep-sea sector was suitable as an anchorage.
In the first cartographic records, the site is indicated as “Bajos del Belgrano”, “Sonda del Belgrano” or “Puerto Belgrano”, which later gave its name to the current base; But it will take nearly three decades for that designation to become official.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the emergence of border conflicts that threatened Argentina’s territorial integrity led the national government to acquire state-of-the-art and large warships: battleships.
With the arrival of the first of these characteristics, the urgent need for a military port complex began to arise, in the south of the province of Buenos Aires, which would concentrate docks, workshops and arsenals within it, and which would allow appropriate support for these modern ports. ships. However, the idea of a Patagonian port was not shared by everyone and the location of this new naval settlement was the subject of fervent political discussion.
It was the initiative of the Naval Center that provided a solution, when it organized a competition for its partners in order to determine the ideal place for the installation of the military port that the government announced. The work ended up being executed where the contest proposed it.
The winner was the then Captain of the Frigate Félix Dufourq, who in his project suggested Puerto Belgrano as the appropriate place, putting an end to differences of opinion. Almost immediately, President José Uriburu sent the bill to Congress to establish its construction there.
Law No. 3450 was approved on November 30, 1896, established as the date of creation of the Military Port, today known as the Puerto Belgrano Naval Base.
It was only on June 2, 1923, when the then President Marcelo T. de Alvear and his Minister of the Navy Manuel Domecq García signed General Order No. 121, when the name of Puerto Militar was changed to Naval Base Puerto Belgrano. in homage to that brig that arrived to these shores on a survey mission.
Although the Military Port was the work of Dufourq’s thought, the colossal task of its construction was the product of the ability of the Italian engineer Luis Luiggi.