Portuguese ship arrives to celebrate 500 years of bilateral ties

Published on October 10, 2010
By ONRAVEE TANGMEESANG

photo from thairath online

A Portuguese Navy sailing ship has made its way to Thailand to mark the first official contact between the two countries five centuries ago.
The Sagres, a strikingly beautiful, tall ship, docked at Bangkok's Klong Toei Port yesterday morning. The naval training ship was warmly greeted by Portuguese Ambassador Antonio de Faria e Maya along with representatives from the Portuguese community.


The ship is here for the first time to celebrate the arrival of Portuguese envoy Duarte Fernandes at Trangque, a city of Siam that is now the southern province of Trang, in 1511, during the Ayutthaya period. Next year will mark 500 years of diplomatic relations between Thailand and Portugal.


The Sagres is expected to be here until Thursday and is open to local visitors.


"The ship can receive more than 1,000 visitors each day and we would like to welcome everyone to come and visit us," said the ship's commander, Pedro Proenca Mendes.


What's special about this ship is that it is used for training Portugal's future naval officers and everything in the ship is manual, because the Portuguese want to train their naval officers to actually learn about the traditional way of sailing. Moreover, as it is a training ship, the decorations inside the ship are truly different from those in battle ships.


The ship was built in 1937 in Hamburg, Germany, and owned by the Germans. However, after World War II, the ship was kept by the United States as a war prize. Later, the US gave this ship to Brazil and Portugal purchased her from Brazil


The visit by Sagres is part of the touring-around-the-world mission of the Portuguese navy in order to strengthen relations with visited countries and to be a floating embassy of Portugal.


"Wherever we go we send messages of friendship and support our foreign policy," the captain stated.


The mission will take about 11 and a half months, which will be over this December, when the ship is due to land in Lisbon.

Source: The Nation online