For anyone visiting the Lake District this summer the Tall Ship 'Nao Santa Maria' will be docked at Whitehaven, for ship's tours from 31 July to 10 August.
She is a modern ship, but a recreation of the ship which Christopher Columbus sailed in to the Americas.
Full details closer to the time, this is breaking news this morning.
I visited her a few months ago when she was in Great Yarmouth. Nice boat. Wouldn't really want to transatlantic with the boat under only sail 500 years ago though
It was an interesting ship to see, summer of 2024, when it was at the St. Katherine Docks in London, just downriver from the Tower Bridge. The ship must visit points around the UK frequently.
It came with an audioguide, explaining such things as that while Columbus (the Captain) had a bed, the regular sailors slept out in the open, on the deck. Rainy nights must’ve been cold and wet, not made any better by dinner having consisted of hardtack infested with maggots and weevils. Right, extra protein, but still …
Visitors can go below the top deck, which has a few replica barrels and other accessories, along with panels in Spanish and English describing seafaring in the 15th Century. A few corrections had been pasted over some of the wording. My husband knows a little Spanish, and noticed that a paragraph in English had been repeated on one panel, correctly translating a paragraph in Spanish, but then not actually translating a different Spanish paragraph elsewhere on the panel. He sought out one of the crew on the ship (not all of whom spoke English proficiently), to let them know about the discrepancy, in case somebody would want to rectify it for accuracy. The woman who came forth as one of the more in-charge staff was surprised, but acknowledged that the second paragraph would benefit from a proper translation, and thanked him for bringing it to her attention. I wonder if fixing that got done in the last year and a half?
It looked as if the highlight for most was taking selfies up on the poop deck, as well as ringing the bell. Some of the below-decks area has curtains to hide the modern bits. One curtain hadn’t been pulled completely closed, revealing some PVC pipes and a cooking stove. That was an interesting contrast, as the “public” parts of the boat otherwise looked authentically antique.
There’d been a queue to get onto the boat, and they only let a certain number of people onboard at a time. As some people disembarked, more people were admitted. It wasn’t obvious at first, but there was a small tent some distance from the ship, and that’s where they sold tickets, before people got into the queue. They didn’t check your ticket until just before you got on the ship. Maybe things are done Online now, or maybe that hasn’t changed. If it’s still done as it was in London, have everybody else in your group get in the queue right away, while one person goes to the tent to buy the tickets. That will save overall time spent standing in line, especially if the queue is getting longer.
