Chasing a Historic Ship

The most historical replica of Christopher Columbus’ favorite ship, the Nina is docked at our port this week. When I first heard that it would arrive several weeks back, I was bound and determined to not only pay the admission fee and hop aboard to check out its nooks and cranies, but also to see it sailing.
It arrived yesterday at noon, so I drug out my family and we walked along the shore to watch it. It was a good day for sailing, and it did have its sails up, but unfortunately, the captain decided to enter the port from a direction no one anticipated, so all we really could see was a little square dot on the horizon. By a stroke of luck, accidentally being in the right place at the right time after we had completely given up hope of seeing the vessel in motion at all, we did get to see it come around a bend and dock at the boathead basin. (Unfortunately, though, all the sails were folded at that point).

Today we zipped down in our car to take a little tour. It was really fantastic to get to explore it! The ship is really quite small: 93 feet, and it was so fun to imagine how 27 people actually sailed in it, and what spats they must have had considering they shared the same space with all their provisions, including live animals down in the hold who were suspended up in the air to keep them from breaking their legs. There were probably 27 people on board the ship at the same time we were, and there was not a lot of room to move around. I had The Banana on my back in the sling, and I Mr. Perpetual Mess kept getting loose, and I was so worried about him climbing out of the ship, onto the dock and taking an unexpected swim that I felt like I observed the ship with only 1/2 my eyes, and only snapped but a few pictures. I like them, though!

I loved the system of ropes for all the different sails, and how all the parts of the ship were carved of wood. It was beautiful, and I’ve been wondering all day what kind of person Christopher Columbus was. I kind of suspect he was a bit of an arrogant jerk, and that his crew were a bunch of nasty, greedy slimeballs, but he was obviously a deeply convicted kind of guy, naming all of his discoveries after things that were important to his Catholic faith. It would be interesting to understand his personality.

Here are some links to an interesting article in our newspaper about the ship, and a mulimedia slideshow with pictures that are a lot more fun than mine.