Portuguese frigate Dom Fernando II e Glória

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Dom Fernando II e Glória is a wooden-hulled Portuguese Navy 50-gun frigate. She was built at the shipyards of the Royal Navy Arsenal in Daman, Portuguese India, and launched on 22 October 1843. Her maiden voyage took place in 1845, sailing from Goa to Lisbon. She was Portugal’s last sailing warship and the final ship on the India Run, the long sea route linking Portugal to its Indian colonies since the 16th century.

From 1865 she served as the navy’s Artillery School training ship, a role she kept until 1940. The frigate remained in active service until 1878, when she made her last sea voyage to the Azores after traveling more than 100,000 miles. During that voyage she helped rescue the crew of the American barque Lawrence Boston after it caught fire near the Azores.

After years moored in Lisbon as the Artillery School, she was heavily modified in 1889, with changes to support her role as an artillery instructor. She served as the flagship of the naval forces based on the Tagus in 1938. In 1940 she became the headquarters of the Fragata Dom Fernando Welfare Institution, which ran general education and seamanship programs for underprivileged youth until a major fire on 3 April 1963 damaged her hull and structure. She was abandoned and sank into the mud of the Tagus River for 29 years.

Restoration began in 1990. The hull was removed from the mud, floated, and moved to dry docks at Alfeite and Aveiro for repair. On 27 April 1998 she was reinstated as an Auxiliary Navy Unit and on 12 August 1998 delivered to the Navy Museum. She was a highlight of Expo ’98, drawing almost 900,000 visitors, and in September 1998 she received the International Maritime Heritage Award for her restoration. The International Register of Historic Ships lists Dom Fernando II e Glória as one of the oldest armed frigates and sailing warships in the world. Since 2008 she has been located on the southern bank of the Tagus in Cacilhas, Almada, as part of the Navy Museum.