On Board the Nao Santa Maria

The crew of H.M.S. Nutcracker insisted I buy tickets to tour the Nao Santa Maria. They were charging $10 for adult tickets, that’s a lot of sunflower seeds. I can’t afford that! So, we sorta snuck aboard through a knothole. That’s not a typo, it is a knothole rather than porthole. The knot in one of the boards had popped out. She is showing her age after 525 years.

 

No problem we can fit through.

 Okay, it is a bit of a tight squeeze

The ship is 90 feet long and 29 feet wide. It seemed gargantuan to us but must have really been crammed for the 45 sailors on board.  They had to sleep in the open on the main deck. Below deck was all filled with supplies. The crew ate pound cake, legumes, salted fish and meat, dried fruit and wine. I would never survive – no sunflower seeds.

Here she is against the Newburyport skyline

Santa Maria tied up at the harbor wharf.

Merry and Spitfire pose on the canon. (They think they were pirates in a past life).

The ship even had a “crows nest”

The Captain had his own cabin

Even 525 years ago, you couldn’t escape the “paperwork”

The tiller looks over engineered.

The tools of the period.

Spitfire was fascinated by the rigging.

Spitfire prepares to man the ropes for the main sail.

The capstan for raising the anchors

They even had a “dinner bell”.

We have to get a couple of these for the woodpile.
[Swivel cannons which were normally mounted on the deck rails]