Museo Nao Victoria

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Museo Nao Victoria (Chile)
ReplicaNaoVictoriaMagallanes.jpg
Nao Victoria Replica in the museum
Established2011
LocationPunta Arenas, Chile
Type Maritime museum
Website https://www.registromuseoschile.cl/663/w3-article-83699.html

The Nao Victoria Museum is a private maritime museum located in Punta Arenas, Chile. It has been open to the public since 1 October 2011. The museum offers interactive displays featuring replicas of the ships that contributed to the discovery of the area, helped colonize the territory, or had a special and historic heritage significance for the Magallanes Region of Chile. The replicas were built using traditional shipbuilding techniques.

Contents

A visitor dressed as a Spanish conquistador, part of the interactive programs in the museum Museo Nao Victoria Visitante vestido de soldado espanol.JPG
A visitor dressed as a Spanish conquistador, part of the interactive programs in the museum

Collections

The main collection of the museum is the full-size replicas of historic ships on display along the Straits of Magellan. Replicas of weapons and ancient navigation tools are also exhibited, as well as copies of documents and books relating to the historic ships and an outdoor shipbuilding workshop.

Replicas

Today the museum has three ship replicas:

Nao Victoria

The Victoria was a nao (carrack) 27 metres (89 ft) long and 7 metres (23 ft) wide, part of the fleet commanded by Ferdinand Magellan that carried first Europeans to discover the waterway around southern tip of South America. Later, commanded by Juan Sebastian Elcano, she was the only ship of the five to complete the first-time circumnavigation of the globe. Commanded by Duarte Barbosa, the Victoria participated in the discovery by Europeans of Chile, being the first to explore the region, in 1520, and discovering or naming Patagonia, Cape Virgenes, the Straits of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego, the Pacific Ocean and other landmarks.

James Caird

James Caird was a lifeboat of the Endurance, adapted by carpenter Harry McNish to sail from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island during Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1916 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. A party of six, including Shackleton and Frank Worsley, made their way for 17 days and 1,300 km (800 miles) across the notorious Drake Passage, battling gales and icing, with Worsley navigating based sextant readings of the seldom visible sun taken from the pitching boat. They succeeded in hitting South Georgia and obtained rescue for the stranded expedition.

Schooner Ancud

Ancud was the ship that, under an 1843 mandate of the President of Chile, Manuel Bulnes, claimed the Strait of Magellan on behalf of Chile's newly independent government, building Fort Bulnes. The commander of the schooner was Captain John Williams Wilson. On 31 December 2011, the museum announced the construction of a replica of the schooner in its shipbuilding workshop; [1] the replica Ancud was opened to public on 5 September 2012.

HMS Beagle

HMS Beagle, a British Navy brig-sloop, was converted into an exploration vessel. The most famous of her three trips was the second one under the command of Captain FitzRoy. On board was the young Charles Darwin. HMS Beagle remained in the Magellan Region for almost three years, and the observations made by Darwin were influential in the development of his theory of evolution. The construction of the full-size HMS Beagle replica started in November 2012. [2] Four years later, in November 2016, the museum announced that the vessel was completed. [3]

Other collections

Shipbuilding workshop

During summer 2013 the shipbuilding workshop of the museum built a one-third scale replica of an 18th-century galleon. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

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The schooner Ancud was the ship sent by Chile in 1843 to claim sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan and establish Fuerte Bulnes, the first Chilean settlement in the strait. It was built for the purpose in the city of San Carlos de Ancud and commanded by John Williams Wilson, a British-born Chilean captain.

The Chilean takeover of the Strait of Magellan began in 1843 when an expedition founded Fuerte Bulnes. In 1848 the settlement of Punta Arenas was established further north in the strait and grew eventually to become the main settlement in the strait, a position it holds to this day. The Chilean settlement of the strait was crucial to establish its sovereignty claims in the area. Argentina complained diplomatically this act in 1847, as part of the East Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and Strait of Magellan Dispute, and once the dispute was settled, formally recognised Chilean sovereignty of the strait in 1881. The Magallanes territory was made a regular Chilean province in 1928.

References

  1. "Construirán réplicas navegables de la goleta Ancud y del bergantín Beagle". La Prensa Austral (in Spanish). 31 December 2011. Archived from the original on 2013-11-01. Retrieved 2012-09-20.
  2. "Construyen Replica del HMS Beagle". radiopolar.com (in Spanish). 15 November 2012. Retrieved 2012-11-16.
  3. "Réplica de la embarcación HMS Beagle fue terminada tras cuatro años de construcción". La Prensa Austral (in Spanish). 27 November 2016. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  4. "The 1:3 replica of a galleon of the eighteenth century". April 28, 2014. Retrieved 2014-04-29.

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