The three-masted ship was launched under the name Albert Leo Schlageter on 30 October 1937 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine.

The ship was named after Albert Leo Schlageter, who was executed in 1923 by French forces occupying the Ruhr area.

Sagres is a sister ship of the Gorch Fock, the Horst Wessel, and the Romanian training vessel Mircea.

Another sister, Herbert Norkus, was not completed, while Gorch Fock II was built in 1958 by the Germans to replace the ships lost after the war.

[1] She was towed to Rio de Janeiro where she sailed as a school ship for the Brazilian Navy under the name Guanabara.