Artur Silveira da Mota, Baron of Jaceguai[a] (26 May 1843 — 6 June 1914) was a Brazilian admiral, noble and writer.

[2] After the notorious wreck of the Brazilian corvette Isabel near the cape Spartel in 1860 that killed most of its crew, his father tried to persuade him into joining the army and even managed to get into contact with the Minister of War in order to facilitate the process, but Mota refused, continuing his career in the navy.

[3] On 2 December 1852, he was promoted to 2nd lieutenant, being appointed hydrography instructor of the class of guarda-marinhas, who were on their long-haul instruction trip aboard the frigate Constituição.

[6] On 20 February 1865 Mota headed south to join the Río de la Plata fleet to begin naval operations in the ongoing Paraguayan War.

There, on the 27th, the Viscount of Tamandaré, commander-in-chief of the Brazilian naval forces in the Río de la Plata, appointed him as his personal secretary and aide-de-camp.

Two years later he was chosen by the Marquis of Caxias and the Viscount of Inhaúma for the most honorable and most brilliant mission that a Brazilian naval officer has ever had, I dare say, the vanguard post in the passage of Humaitá".

In one of them, in Humaitá, Mota accomplished the greatest feat of his life forcing the very dangerous passage of the river, under the relentless fire of Paraguayan batteries.

He was a supporter of the Armstrong system, which opposed the Whitworth, and at public conferences, some of which were attended by the emperor Pedro II, he defended his point of view.

In December 1878, he was promoted to the post of head-of-division and, in the following year, he was appointed Extraordinary Envoy and Plenipotentiary Minister on a special mission in China.