---
title: '''Conservando os Mares Livres'' [Keeping the Seas Free] (Ensuring Freedom of the Seas [Portuguese])'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/us-owi-ensuring-freedom-of-the-seas-portuguese-1942/
description: A photograph of a US battleship firing its main guns, with smoke and crew in the foreground, sits above a Portuguese text block.
section: Collection
---

1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/)
2. [Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)
3. 'Conservando os Mares Livres' [Keeping the Seas Free]

[!['Conservando os Mares Livres' \[Keeping the Seas Free\], 1942 US poster: A photograph of a US battleship firing its main guns](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/us-owi-ensuring-freedom-of-the-seas-portuguese-1942.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/us-owi-ensuring-freedom-of-the-seas-portuguese-1942.jpg)

# 'Conservando os Mares Livres' [Keeping the Seas Free] (Ensuring Freedom of the Seas [Portuguese])

A photograph of a US battleship firing its main guns, with smoke and crew in the foreground, sits above a Portuguese text block, a US flag and a portrait of President Roosevelt, inside a blue border of stars. The headline puts the virtue phrase 'free seas' over a warship firing (glittering generalities), the flag and portrait lend authority (transfer), and the text gives only US ship counts and costs (card-stacking).

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/)

## Text on the object

Original (Portuguese) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
CONSERVANDO OS
MARES LIVRES

Os canhões de 16 polegadas do couraçado “North Carolina” recentemente incorporado na esquadra, estão lançando projéteis de uma tonelada, a 42 quilómetros de distância, na fotografia que aí se vê. Êste navio do custo de 1,625,000,000 escudos, é um dos cinco recentemente lançados à água, e não há outro que o iguale em couraça e potência de fogo. Com 343 navios de combate em atividade, e 345 em construção, a Marinha dos Estados Unidos está em condições de fazer face a tôda e qualquer tentativa das nações agressoras, no sentido de fechar ao mundo a passagem dos mares.

PRESIDENTE ROOSEVELT
```

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

```
KEEPING THE
SEAS FREE

The 16-inch guns of the battleship “North Carolina”, recently commissioned into the fleet, are firing one-ton projectiles at a distance of 42 kilometres in the photograph seen here. This ship, costing 1,625,000,000 escudos, is one of five recently launched, and there is no other that equals it in armour and firepower. With 343 combat ships in service and 345 under construction, the United States Navy is in a position to face any and every attempt by the aggressor nations to close the passage of the seas to the world.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT
```

[← Ensuring Freedom of the Seas \[Icelandic\]](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/us-owi-ensuring-freedom-of-the-seas-icelandic-1942/) [Manteniendo libres los mares \[Ensuring Freedom of the Seas\] \[Spanish\] →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/us-owi-ensuring-freedom-of-the-seas-spanish-1942/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [Fragments of the Abydos king list from Ramesses II's temple, in the British Museum: rows of royal cartouches](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/abydos-king-list-ramesses-ii-temple-british-museum/) (New Kingdom Egypt · 0000 · Card stacking, Transfer)
- [Clay cylinder with the Ehulhul inscription of Nabonidus, king of Babylon, describing work on three temples](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/cylinder-nabonidus-ehulhul-inscription-555bce/) (Neo Babylonian Empire · 0000 · Transfer)
- [Seated limestone statue of Hatshepsut as king, with feminine royal titles on the throne, reassembled from fragments broken up at Deir el-Bahri](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/hatshepsut-seated-statue-limestone-met-1458bce/) (New Kingdom Egypt · 0000 · Transfer, Testimonial)
- [Glazed-brick panel with a striding lion, from Babylon (reign of Nebuchadnezzar II)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/ishtar-gate-panel-striding-lion-nebuchadnezzar-ii-604bce/) (Neo Babylonian Empire · 0000 · Transfer)
- [Limestone relief block of Ramesses II wearing the White Crown, a jubilee relief from his temple at Herakleopolis](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/jubilee-relief-ramesses-ii-herakleopolis-met-05-4-256/) (New Kingdom Egypt · 0000 · Transfer)
- [Line drawing of the Great Kadesh battle relief on the walls of the Ramesseum, from Breasted's History of Egypt](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/kadesh-relief-ramesseum-breasted-drawing-1275bce/) (New Kingdom Egypt · 0000 · Card stacking, Transfer). Content note: A drawing of an Egyptian royal battle relief showing Hittite soldiers and horses killed and drowned, as the king's monument presented the battle; it is a one-sided image made by the winning side's own account.
- [Gypsum alabaster slab inscribed in cuneiform, from Nimrud (Kalhu), reign of Ashurnasirpal II](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/nimrud-slab-ashurnasirpal-ii-inscription-883bce/) (Neo Assyrian Empire · 0000 · Transfer, Glittering generalities)
- [Egyptian alabaster jar inscribed with the name of Xerxes the Great in four languages (Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, Egyptian), 486 to 466 BCE](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/xerxes-jar-four-languages-486bce/) (Achaemenid Empire · 0000 · Transfer)