He and the crew will take visitors on the tour, which AJ said "will really give people the feel for what it was like to be on one of Columbus' ships. Morgan Sanger, usually accompanied by one of the couples' four sons, will be sailing the ships into port tomorrow. The Pinta was also built in Brazil and was launched in 2005. It makes it more interesting to clamber around the two ships." The Pinta, unlike the Nina, is not the painstakingly exact replica the Nina is, but "is in the style of the caravel. In fact, by the 2000s, it became apparent the Nina needed a companion. The Nina logged at least 25,000 miles under Columbus' command."Īfter 1992, "the obvious thing to do was to take her from port to port." Thanks to the recent revival of tall ship regattas up and down the East Coast, sponsored by the American Sail Training Association, there were plenty of opportunities to stop at ports, she said. When he had the pick of the whole merchant marine on his second voyage (he would make four), he selected her. "She made the entire first voyage and brought the admiral safely home. "The Nina was Columbus' favorite," AJ said.
#REPLICAS OF NINA PINTA SANTA MARIA MOVIE#
While no information about the design of the Nina exists, AJ said, specific reference to her rig and gear survives in a document called Libro de Armadas, which indicated she may have been a four-masted ship.ĪJ said the foundation was running out of money at this point and wondered how the project would continue when one of the producers for the movie "1492" learned of the project and paid to finish the ship so it could be in the film. There, natives used an archaic ship-building process called Mediterranean Whole Moulding, a technique used by 15th century boat builders.īefore long, the Nina was being built, using traditional tools and wood from timbers from the nearby forests. The Columbus Foundation, which they formed, hired maritime historian and engineer John Sarsfield, "and he said the only place in the world where we can begin to build such a ship was on the coast of Brazil." Unfortunately, there were no blueprints and the only paintings were artists' conceptions. The more we talked about it, the more we took it seriously," she said. These were magnificent shipwrights in their own right."Īs the time was approaching for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage in 1992, they were asked if they had a wooden boat that could pinch-hit as a Columbus vessel.
Not a few owned boats but didn't have money to maintain them, "and they wanted to work for Morgan so he could work on their boats. His clients included the wealthy and rock elite of the era, many of whom had wooden boats. Morgan Sanger still operates a boat yard for wooden ships there, which he started in the late 1970s, AJ said. The foundation is a family affair, run by Morgan Sanger and his wife, AJ, both Americans who have spent most of their lives in Tortola, the largest island in the British Virgin Islands. That's according to information gleaned over the years by the Columbus Foundation, which oversees operations of the two ships. The Nina and Pinta are called "caravels," a sailing vessel favored by explorers because they were small, fast, had a shallow draw and were highly maneuverable.
Moreover, Columbus didn't like her because she was too heavy and sailed poorly. For those who wonder why there's no Santa Maria, the answer is the ship was apparently not very seaworthy and sunk on its first voyage. The 85-foot Pinta is in the style of the ships of the era.īoth will be sailing into the Badger's Island Marina East and will offer tours from Tuesday, June 14, through Monday, June 20. The 65-foot Nina is an exact replica of the ship Columbus sailed to what is now the Bahamas in 1492, a journey funded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Ready to educate Seacoast residents and give them a taste of what it was like to make a cross-Atlantic voyage during the Age of Discovery, the captain and crew of the replica ships Nina and Pinta will arrive in Kittery on Monday. KITTERY, Maine - Most readers of a certain age know the couplet, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," but many Americans know little more about Christopher Columbus, the famous explorer who was credited with but actually didn't discover America.
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