The Italian school ship “Amerigo Vespucci”, which this year celebrates its 85th anniversary, has stopped this weekend in the port of Valencia.
During all the weekend, hundreds of Valencians have come to see this iconic ship that has been open to the public. To facilitate visits to the ship, which has been berthed at the dock Xitá within the commercial place of the port, the Valencia Port authority has set up a shuttle bus from the “Edificio del Reloj” to the place of berth.
The ship, that berthed last Friday in the port of Valencia, within the education campaign that is organized every summer, had a hundred cadets from the Naval Academy Italian on board. After visiting Valencia, the last stop of the campaign, the ship is returning to port of Livorno, home of the Naval Academy, after a journey that has taken it to the ports of Lisbon, Cadiz, Dublin, Oslo, Copenhagen, Antwerp and Brest.
The “Amerigo Vespucci”, named like that because of the famous explorer Amerigo Vespucci, was put into service in June 1931. Built to resemble to a wooden warship in the early nineteenth century, this three-masted sailing ship has 101 meters length, 15.5 meters wide and a draft of 7.3 meters. The Amerigo Vespucci’s rig consists of 24 sails of 2,400 square meters of tarp and its mainmast is 54 meters high.