During a stint in the Peace Corps, American engineer John Patrick Sarsfield discovered that shipbuilders on Brazil's Bahia coast still used the same 15th-century techniques that probably created Columbus' vessels. In the hands of master shipbuilders using only adzes, axes, handsaws and chisels, work on the Niña began in 1988 under Sarsfield's direction. The hull was complete when Sarsfield was killed in a traffic accident in 1990 on a trip to select a main mast for the ship. Completed under the direction of British maritime historian Jonathan Nance, the replica Niña has been hailed as the most authentic replica of a Columbus-era ship ever built.
0,861344.column, Brazil RPCV John Patrick Sarsfield's replica of Columbus's ship is a a real crowd-pleaser
'Little ship that could' a real crowd-pleaser
Joy Wallace Dickinson | Florida Flashback
May 3, 2009
Setting sail
For many of us, marine adventures have been limited mostly to a Bahamas cruise when we indulged too much at the midnight buffet — or only to our fondness for Johnny Depp in a pirate hat.
So a visit last week to Ponce Inlet to see to replicas of the Niña and the Pinta, two of history's most famous ships, proved an eye-opener about life at sea in the 15th century when such sturdy caravels sailed the ocean blue.
Caravels, by the way, were compact European vessels that served as cargo carriers, warships, patrol boats and pirate ships from about 1400 to 1600, according to the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Va.
Best of its time
The Niña and Pinta, two of the ships on Christopher Columbus' first voyage in 1492, were caravels; the third, the Santa Maria, was a larger cargo vessel that Columbus never liked much, apparently.
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The Santa Maria sank in Hispaniola in December 1492, and the Pinta pretty much disappeared from history after that first voyage.
So, it's the little girl, the Niña — a sort of floating "Little Engine That Could" — that holds the spotlight in the caravel-replica show.
The original Niña logged more than 25,000 miles with Columbus. With its "clean, sculptured, honest design," it was "possibly "the best open-water sailing vessel" of its time, crew member John Malcom has written on thenina.com.
That's the Web site for the Virgin Islands-based Columbus Foundation, which operates the replicas as floating museums.
The Niña set sail in 1991. The larger Pinta, launched in 2005, was built to accompany the smaller ship and offers larger deck space for walk-aboard tours.
Crew more comfortable now
Both ships were built at Valenca, Brazil.
During a stint in the Peace Corps, American engineer John Patrick Sarsfield discovered that shipbuilders on Brazil's Bahia coast still used the same 15th-century techniques that probably created Columbus' vessels.
In the hands of master shipbuilders using only adzes, axes, handsaws and chisels, work on the Niña began in 1988 under Sarsfield's direction.
The hull was complete when Sarsfield was killed in a traffic accident in 1990 on a trip to select a main mast for the ship.
Completed under the direction of British maritime historian Jonathan Nance, the replica Niña has been hailed as the most authentic replica of a Columbus-era ship ever built.
Life on board the Niña in 1492 was not for the faint of heart. With a deck length of 65 feet, the ship is smaller than some of the yachts docked at Florida's ritzy marinas.
The crew of about 27 had little room to sleep or cook. The cargo hold carried horses, cows, pigs, and chickens, with the four-legged critters suspended in slings because the ship's rolling motion would have broken their legs.
Now, crew members (six to eight on each ship) sleep on World War II-style pipe berths and use a small propane stove for cooking — and they don't have to smell the livestock or clean up after them.
The ships carry 130-power diesel engines, radar and global-positioning systems. But sailing them is surely hard work.
"You have to have a real good feel for the ship to bring it into port," crew member Chelsea Best, 19, said last week as she talked with visitors at Ponce Inlet.
The crew's tasks can include chatting with the thousands of folks who come to see the ships. Judging from the turnout last weekend, the replicas are crowd-pleasers.
See them for yourself
They are open today in at the Inlet Harbor Marina in Ponce Inlet and leave early tomorrow for St. Augustine, where they'll be at the City Marina through May 17.
Then they'll head North, aiming for a stop at the Statue of Liberty on July 4.
Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at jwdickinson@ earthlink.net and by good old-fashioned letter at the Sentinel, 633 N. Orange Ave., Orlando, FL 32801.
