The sailing training ship Santa Maria Manuela, a living vestige of the legendary ‘Portuguese white fleet’ visits Palma after calling at Minorca and after a long absence of sailing ships of this type in Mallorca, where they were once more common. Santa Maria Manuela was built in the CUF shipyards at Lisbon in 1937, as a lugre bacalhoeiro (codfish fishing lugger). The similar Creoula was built in the same shipyards at the same time. Another similar and still existent ship, Argus was built in 1938 by the shipyard De Haan & Oerlemans, Heusden, Holland.
Since its building and until the late 1980s, Santa Maria Manuela was employed in the codfish fishing in the seas of Newfoundland and Greenland, being one of the ships of the White Fleet (as the Portuguese fishing fleet was known in Newfoundland, because of the white color of most of their ships).
The ship was owned by Empresa de Pesca de Viana fishing company, until 1963, when it was sold to Empresa de Pesca Ribau. During the 1960s, Santa Maria Manuela underwent several modifications and technological improvements in order to be able to continue in fishing activity. Finally in 1993, definitely been considered obsolete, the ship was partially demolished, only her hull being preserved. In 2007, Pascoal S.A. bought the remainings of the ship and started a long and well documented restoration process in the Aveiro shipyards, returning it to its original state in 2010.[1]
She took part in the Fete-Maritime-de-Brest-2016 (Tall ships Race) on 19 July 2016.
Passage
Equipped to accommodate some 40 passengers, it is notable for its four-masted schooner rig, with a registered tonnage of 1,300 tonnes and a maximum length of 67.4 metres. It currently belongs to the Jerónimo Martins group and is the sister ship of the Creoula, of the Portuguese Navy. Like the Belem, which arrived on Friday after visiting the bay of Pollensa, it began its activity in hard days of work at sea. The former as a cargo ship between the Río de la Plata, Brazil and the Antilles, and the latter as a fishing vessel off the coast of Canada. Both have participated in successive nautical-sporting events: the Belem carrying the Olympic flame from Greece to France this year, for Paris 2024, and the Santa Maria Manuela in the Tall Ship Race.