, the lead ship, was laid down by Armstrong on 17 April 1907, while "São Paulo" followed thirteen days later at Vickers. The news shocked Brazil's neighbors, especially Argentina, whose Minister of Foreign Affairs remarked that either "Minas Geraes" or "São Paulo" could destroy the entire Argentine and Chilean fleets. In addition, Brazil's order meant that they had laid down a dreadnought before many of the other major maritime powers, such as Germany, France or Russia, and the two ships made Brazil the third country to have dreadnoughts under construction, behind the United Kingdom and the United States. Newspapers and journals around the world, particularly in Britain and Germany, speculated that Brazil was acting as a proxy for a naval power which would take possession of the two dreadnoughts soon after completion, as they did not believe that a previously insignificant geopolitical power would contract for such powerful warships. Despite this, the United States actively attempted to court Brazil as an ally; caught up in the spirit, U.S. naval journals began using terms like "Pan Americanism" and "Hemispheric Cooperation".