Aviso

Usually very lightly armed and often not significantly faster than battleships or cruisers, the aviso was not intended to face enemy warships and this meant that paddle-wheel propulsion was still viable for them.

The advent of wireless telegraphy changed this, however; avisos became obsolete as dispatch-carrying vessels with the continued development and improvement of this means of immediately communicating detailed information at a distance.

ARA Alferez Sobral, an 800-ton vessel used for non-combat tasks, built as a United States Navy fleet tug, was attacked and damaged during the 1982 Falklands War.

[2] During the interwar period air mail service and commercial airlines boomed and French industrialist Pierre-Georges Latécoère founded the famed Aéropostale line between Paris and South America via Toulouse, Morocco, Mauretania, Senegal, Brazil Argentina and Chile.

Period aircraft (war surplus Breguets and purpose-built Latécoères) were initially too short-ranged to undertake the Atlantic crossing between Saint Louis du Senegal and Rio de Janeiro.