A Look Into The Past

It was Sunday, September 17, 2011, we  were

in Madrid, and I was fortunate enough to visit Naval Museo, the Spanish Naval Museum, located on a quiet street a few blocks from Spain's  famous Prado, one of the world's greatest art museums. The naval museum is operated by the Spanish Navy, and you must go through security screening before entering the upstairs exhibits. Lodged in 24 rooms, the museum traces Spanish maritime history from the fifteenth century until the present.  It houses some great "guy stuff" and my dear wife and travel mate indulged my musings.  While the exhibits are too numerous to mention, I will try to give a brief account of what we saw.  We surveyed the art and artifacts in chronological order which I believe is best.  

One of the many ship models.

There are paintings galore; some of them wall-size, about twelve feet by twenty feet and larger. They depict various ships as well as famous battles and famous events.  One wall has portraits of naval heroes exclusively.  Large maps and charts also abound.  The most famous is a map painted on leather by Jaun de la Cosa, a cartographer during the time of Columbus.  Actually de la Cosa made seven voyages to the new world, three of them with Columbus. There are also hundreds of model ships, some quite small, crafted by sailors at sea.  Others are ten feet long, and many have immaculate detail. One of my favorites is a model of the United States battleship USS Maine. You will recall it was sunk in Havana Harbor, a prelude to the Spanish-American War.  The models depict the transition from sail to steam as a means of locomotion for watercraft.   Some weapons depicted are rifles and pistols, not only of Spanish origin but other countries as well.  Some of the long guns of the north Africans were ornately decorated.  The inlaid stocks of fifteenth century pistols were quite elaborately inlaid with mother-of-pearl and semi-precious stones. Of course there are cannon, quite a few cannon.  One display depicts a cannon and the cannoneer's hammock hung within a few feet of his gun. I would be remiss if I did not mention the fine collection of figureheads mounted high on one wall overlooking one of the rooms full of models.  The carved wooden figures graced the prows of the ships of the great Spanish Armada was well as merchant ships. There is a section of a full scale model of a mast of one of the great sailing ships. It gives you an idea of the size of these great vessels.  And paintings illustrate the great ships at sea.

We found this to be a great place to visit in Madrid. You could almost feel as though you were a part of the age of discovery. Indeed, the great Spanish missions of the American southwest would not have been except for some of the men whose portraits adorn these walls.  Mel Fisher would never had found the sunken galleon, Atocha, had the Spaniards had not built those great ships to bring back the treasures  of the Americas. And the stories and myths of the pirates of the Caribbean would not exist with no treasure laden galleons to plunder. I would have never camped with the Boy Scouts in the Horspasture area of Pickens County, SC, had the Cherokee Indians not stolen Spanish horses and hidden them there.   Yes, we could feel the connection to history there and the Spanish Navy does a great job of presenting it.

Mock-up of gun port

Navigation Instrument

Mock-up of captains cabin