The warship was built at the French shipyard Forges et chantiers de la Méditrranée and launched to sea in 1875, being commissioned on April 23 of that year.

In May 1892, she sailed together with other vessels bound for the province of Mato Grosso to help forces loyal to the federal government against separatist rebels.

Sabotage was thought to have been committed by the survivors since they all had time to put on their best clothes and coats, collect money, and get into the escape boat.

Maneuverability was improved in an upgrade between 1880 and 1881 when new rudders were installed, but the ship did not carry out missions on the high seas.

Several vessels began searching for the monitor, which was only found on the 17th, about seven miles (11 km) south of Ponta de Caruçu.

The Solimões thus became one of sixteen ships in the fleet (the battleships Riachuelo, Sete de Setembro, and Javary; the hybrid cruisers Guanabara and Almirante Barroso; the ocean-going corvettes Trajano, Barroso, and Primeiro de Março; the 1st Class (50 tons) torpedo boats 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and the 4th Class (50 t) torpedo boats Alfa, Beta and Gama.

[1] On March 27, 1892, the Solimões was accompanied by the monitor Bahia and both headed to the port of Santos to carry out joint maneuvers.

On the way, the commander of the Solimões received the mission, via telegraph, to go to Corumbá, in what was then the province of Mato Grosso, to support the legalists who were fighting a separatist insurrection.

However, on May 18, bad weather again struck the ships off the coast of Rio Grande do Sul, where the battleship was last sighted.

The encounter with the reef severely damaged the vessel and Captain Xavier de Castro ordered a group of crew members to go ashore in a boat to ask for help from the nearest authorities.

This testimony, made in Montevideo, raised suspicions that the group might have sabotaged the ship since it did not make sense to send those sailors, as Solimões had officers and other people more qualified to do it.

Another point that generated controversy in the survivors' narrative was that they discovered the boat used by the castaways, which had all the equipment to sail.

[6][7] The survivors arrived in Rio de Janeiro on June 8 and were subjected to an investigation to ascertain the circumstances.