Juan Sebastián de Elcano

Type

Schooner

Period

20th Century

Nation

Spain

Overview: The Juan Sebastián de Elcano is the Spanish Navy's flagship midshipman training vessel, still in active service today. She is a training ship of the Spanish Navy. She is named after Juan Sebastián Elcano, the Basque navigator who completed the first circumnavigation of the globe after Magellan's death, and carries his coat of arms with the motto "Primus Circumdedisti Me." Specifications: She is a steel-hulled, four-masted topsail barquentine, and at 113 metres (371 ft) long she is the third-largest tall ship in the world and the sailing vessel that has sailed the farthest, covering more than 2,000,000 nautical miles in her lifetime. Displacement is 3,673 tons, beam 13.11 m (43.0 ft), draft 7 m (23 ft), with a sail plan of 21 sails totaling 2,870 m², a top speed of 13 knots under engine and 17.5 knots under sail, and armament limited to 2 × 57 mm ceremonial gun mounts. Sources disagree on classification — Wikipedia and Wikidata call her a barquentine, while Sail Training International and the Spanish Navy itself describe her as a topsail schooner or brig-schooner, a nuance worth flagging in any build notes. Service History: She was launched on 5 March 1927 at the Echevarrieta y Larrinaga shipyards in Cádiz and delivered to the Navy on 17 August 1928. As a training ship, her primary mission is the at-sea training of future Navy officers (guardiamarinas/midshipmen), usually via an annual training cruise mostly conducted outside Spain, during which midshipmen take classes and participate in on-board operations; of the 97 training cruises completed to date, eleven have been round-the-world voyages. She is often described as a four-mast brig-schooner with crossed foresail, and her silhouette is easily recognized by most tall-ship lovers. Notable Facts: Carlos I of Spain granted Elcano a coat of arms bearing the motto "Primus circumdedisti me"—Latin for "The first to circumnavigate me." The ship also serves a diplomatic role, acting as a floating embassy for Spain during her port calls abroad. Her mixed schooner/barquentine rig classification remains a point of debate among historians and modelers alike, and is worth noting explicitly in any kit or scratch-build documentation.