Ilha das Cobras

By the mid-eighteenth century, the island was the site of a fort and a shipyard. It was the site of a prison built on the island for the inquisition of religious offenders by local church authorities between 1735 and 1740.

In the early 1770s, a new secular house of correction was completed, the inmates of which labored in the shipyard or spent their days making cable and other naval stores.