The Fayette Citizen-Weekend Page
Wednesday, December 8, 1999
Ghost ship on the Tennessee River

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
Lifestyle Columnist

When you've been on a river for a couple of weeks, far from your normal frame of reference, sometimes you see ghosts.

That was the only way we could account for what appeared one bright October morning as we pulled our little trawler back out onto the Tennessee from an overnight anchorage on a tributary. Dave was at the helm. We had watched an eagle rise from the surface with his breakfast in his talons, to alight on a bare tree across the river from us. As he tore into his repast, Dave said, “Better check for traffic.”

I'd learned my lesson about how quickly barges can slip up on slow travelers like us, so I swept my binoculars upstream and down. Nothing behind us, but downstream I spotted... something.

“A barge?” Dave asked. “No,” I said. “I don't know what it is but offhand I'd say maybe a square-rigger.” “Yeah, right,” he replied, and we both laughed.

When I looked again a few minutes later, however, I stopped laughing. “Dave. It is a square-rigger.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, and picked up his glasses.

We watched, incredulous, as the apparition drew nearer, its center mast square-rigged, its mizzens bearing furled lateens. She ran silently but under power, unadorned, and carried no identification that we could see. Dave picked up the radio mike, while I grabbed the camera. I snapped only three frames: we were in the forested Tennessee Gorge and the masts of the dark ship were lost against the trunks and branches of the trees. Dave had even less luck. There was no radio response at all.

What WAS it? I ventured that its high poop deck and woven rigging made it a Spanish galleon, but Dave thought it might be a caravel. As we ransacked our combined knowledge of old ships, I had the advantage, having slipped the Encarta Encyclopedia into the CD-ROM drive of my laptop.

Our ghost was indeed a caravel, the best-known of which were two of the ships Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492. The common trading vessel used during the Age of Discovery, they were cargo carriers, warships, patrol boats, and even corsairs, or pirate ships.

Quick and maneuverable, with a shallow draft, caravels were good sailors. Wherever we stopped, we asked if people knew about a 500-year-old ship on the river, but no one had seen it or even heard about it. After awhile, we stopped asking. Three poor snapshots were the only proof I had of our phantom encounter.

About two weeks after we got home, a photo by a Huntsville Times photographer appeared in the AJC. It was our mystery vessel passing a gargantuan barge on the Tennessee River.

“A replica of the Niła,” the caption says, “...on its way to Guntersville, Ala.,” where it would be on display until the end of November.

The Niła! I did some on-line research. Although the larger Santa Maria, a freighter, was Columbus' flagship, she had sluggish sailing characteristics and the admiral disliked her. The Pinta, also a caravel, was never mentioned again after the initial voyage across the Atlantic; her fate is unknown.

But the nimble Niła was Columbus' favorite. When the Santa Maria ran aground at Hispaniola and sank, he and most of his crew depended on the Niła for a safe journey home.

For his second trip, an exploratory voyage to Cuba, Columbus was offered the entire Spanish Merchant Marine fleet from which to select his flagship. He chose Niła, and purchased a half share in her. Thus began a profitable partnership.

Columbus sailed Niła to the New World a third time; she was known to have been in Santo Domingo in 1500. She is last recorded making a trading voyage to the Pearl Coast in 1501, and logged at least 25,000 miles under Columbus.

Not bad for a ship probably not more than 50 feet long.

Niła's dimensions and details of her construction have been lost to history, but when the Columbus Foundation decided to replicate her for the 500th anniversary of the 1492 voyage, they engaged John Patrick Sarsfield, an American engineer, maritime historian, and expert on Portuguese caravels, to design and build it.

Sarsfield had discovered an obscure fishing village in Brazil that still uses the archaic process that built the original Niła. It all came together: shipwrights using traditional tools and methods, with a source of the naturally shaped timbers needed to construct a wooden ship.

Ships of this period were built not from plans, but from a set of proportions based on the length of the keel. Details like the number of masts and rigging specifics were extracted from recent discoveries of 15th- and 16th-century Spanish shipwrecks in the Caribbean. Research suggesting that Niła was rigged as a four-master, plus an inventory of equipment she was carrying in 1498, helped authenticate the replicators' work.

Independent investigators stated in Archeology magazine that Sarsfield's Niła is likely the most authentic replica Columbus-era ship ever built. Her successful unescorted open-sea voyage of more than 4,000 miles to the United States also was a first for such a replica.

Since June of 1992 Niła has been touring new ports, and has visited both coasts, the Great Lakes, several of the great inland rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico. She is said to be the only touring maritime museum of its kind.

Niła's Web site — www.thenina.com — has lots more about both the original and the replica, including what life aboard is like, plus interesting links.

I e-mailed the Columbus Foundation, and learned she'll be at the Panama City Marina from Dec. 10 to 17. They're hauling her for repairs, but plan to have her open for tours. The contact number: 284-495-4618. After that she'll be in Punta Gorda (Dec. 23-Jan. 3) before cruising back to Brazil.

The admiral — wherever he is — would be proud.

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