Captain Jack Sparrow would have been impressed if he had been watching the historic replica of Ferdinand Magellan’s galleon, NAO Victoria, join a fleet of super yachts for a voyage across the Atlantic on board a semi submersible yacht carrier.
The carrier, Super Servant 4, is one of a fleet of two specialist ships operated by DYT Yacht Transport now owned by SevenstarYacht Transport
Although she can sail perfectly on her own keel, the sailing ship would take nearly two months to get from Spain to Florida. From her discharge port of Fort Lauderdale the 25.9-metre (85-foot) carrack will then sail on to St. Augustine for the Christmas holiday before beginning a cultural exhibition tour that will take her along the coast of Florida and up the U.S. East Coast to educate the public about the first complete circumnavigation of the world by Magellan’s expedition in the 16th Century.
“We decided to ship her to reduce the voyage time,” said Eduardo Almagro Blanco, the general manager for Fundacion NAO Victoria, the Spanish not-for-profit foundation that manages NAO Victoria along with El Galeon, another historic Spanish replica.
The original NAO Victoria, launched in 1519, was one of five ships in the Portuguese explorer’s Spanish expedition to discover the passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans now known as the Strait of Magellan.
After Magellan’s death and under the command of Juan Sebastian Elcano, she became the first ship in history to complete the 32,000-mile voyage in 1522 and the first ever to successfully circumnavigate the globe.
In 1570, the original ship disappeared without a trace during a treacherous storm while underway from the Antilles to Seville.
The replica was built for the Universal Exposition of Seville in 1992, using 164 written and iconographic documents from different Spanish historical archives, 126 drawings and engravings, 22 affidavits, 18 treaties on naval construction, and three wrecks.