Additional Information
| Dimensions | 95L x 25W x 89H (cm) |
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| Dimensions | 95L x 25W x 89H (cm) |
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The San Felipe Launched in 1690, was one of the most beautiful Spanish ships of its era. She was led the Spanish Armada. San Felipe’s role in the war against the British and French was to help protect Spanish settlements and harbors but also to transport gold from the new world. The San Felipe was armed with 96 cannons enough firepower to match the best ships the French and British navies had to offer. In 1705, the San Felipe fought a heroic battle against 35 British ships but was captured by an English ship and badly damaged and ended up at the bottom of the ocean with several tons of gold.
Sovereign of the Seas – The ship was designed in 1634 by Phineas Pett and was the first ship to have three full gun decks, carrying 102 guns on the orders of King Charles I instead of the 90 originally planned. No expense was spared in her construction. All her guns were made from bronze instead of cast iron which meant their construction was four times more expensive.
The construction of Sovereign of the Seas was part of Charles I’s plan to overawe possible enemies, primarily the Dutch and Spanish, with England’s naval power. Her first engagement was the Battle of Kentish Knock during the First Dutch War on 28 September 1652. Her career came to an abrupt end when she accidentally caught fire at Chatham on 27 January 1696.
In the late 1920s, the Japanese Ministry of Transport ordered the four-masted barks Nippon Maru and Kaiwo Maru for the Kokai-Kunrensho (Institute for Nautical Training), which already operated the four-masted bark Taisei Maru and the four-masted barkentine Shintoku Maru. Their work for the merchant marine is reflected in their names. Maru, which signifies wholeness or unity, is an almost universal suffix for Japanese merchant-ship names. Nippon means Japan, and Kaiwo is the mythological king of the seas, equivalent to Neptune or Poseidon. Commissioned in 1930 and 1931, respectively, the barks were described by Harold Underhill as “imposing rather than beautiful.” Their very high freeboards reflected a desire to maximize the amount of natural light admitted to the crew spaces below decks, while their comparatively shorter yards and smaller sails were designed to accommodate the relatively small stature of the average Japanese before World War II.
Before World War II, the ships’ training voyages carried them throughout the Pacific, and Nippon Maru made four voyages to the United States, five to Hawaii and seven elsewhere in the Pacific. During World War II her yards were sent down and she was used as a motor-training vessel in the Home Islands. Repatriating Japanese soldiers and civilians after the war, she was rerigged in 1952 and resumed training, making her first cruise to the United States in 1954, and her first to the East Coast in 1960. Both Nippon Maru and Kaiwo Maru remained active training ships until the 1980s, when they were replaced by new ships with the same names.
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