Greeted by hundreds of enthusiastic visitors, the much-awaited Galeon Andalucia arrived at Wushih Harbor (烏石港) in Yilan County yesterday morning after taking refuge in Keelung last week to avoid Typhoon Fanapi.
The 17th-century Spanish replica came at the invitation of the Yilan County Government, which had initially planned to hold visits at Wushih Harbor for four days. However, the typhoon forced organizers to shorten the activity to two days. The ship is scheduled to leave for Hong Kong tomorrow.
Many people arrived at the harbor early to line up, for fear of missing the opportunity to explore the ship, which started allowing visitors on board at 10am.
PHOTO: HU CHIEN-SEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Although the organizer limited the tour to 10 minutes per person and no more than 100 people at a time, most visitors did not follow the rules, forcing people in line to wait for as long as two hours in the scorching sun before being admitted onto the ship.
The Andalucia left Seville, Spain, in March and followed the route set by its Spanish predecessors 400 years ago, passing through the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Straits, stopping in several countries along the way before arriving in Shanghai in June.
The ship, which is equipped with three large masts, seven big sails and 10 replica cannons, also served as the mobile exhibition room for the Spanish Hall at this year’s World Expo in Shanghai.
Pepelu de Miguel, who serves on board the Andalucia, said the rise of the galleon in the 17th-century was directly linked with trade between Spain and the Philippines, as galleons were the ships used to carry spices back to Spain.
“The designer of the replica, Ignacio Fernandez Vial, is also a marine engineer,” he said. “He was searching [materials] at the Navy Museum in Madrid, as well as in the archives in Seville, where all the data since Columbus sailed to America is stored. He was able to find a lot of drawings and paintings of ships coming to Spain from the history documented by Marques de la Victoria, a member of royalty.”
Asked why people are so taken with replicas, de Miguel said it was because they were part of history.
“I think people want to know how people lived in the past,” he said. “They like to see, touch and feel what they were doing before.”
The ship will be open to visitors until 7pm today.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
RSS