For the next couple weeks, visitors can enjoy a slice of history by boarding a replica Christopher Columbus ship ported in Lenoir City.
Slightly larger than the original, the 85-foot by 24-foot Pinta docked Friday at Fort Loudon Marina and is open to the public through Oct. 11. Crews will then sail to Knoxville for a stay Oct. 15-31.
“We travel the Niña and the Pinta, we’ve traveled the Great Lakes, the east coast, upper Mississippi, the Missouri River, the Ohio (River), Tennessee (River), the Arkansas (River), the Red River, Gulf Coast all the way down to the Mexican border,” Stephen Sanger, Pinta captain, said. “The Niña has been to the Panama Canal 12 times all the way up as far as Vancouver, British Columbia. We travel 10 months out of the year, about 20 to 30 ports, and then beginning of 2020 we were in the shipyard until first week of February, and then we go out to the first port of Biloxi, Miss., have a great turnout and then after that the news came out about COVID and the shutdowns and all that and went back to the shipyard.”
Typical visits include the Pinta and Niña, but the Niña was damaged in September 2020 during Hurricane Sally and is undergoing repairs.
Sanger said COVID-19 has impacted the bulk of normal school field trip visits.
“From a school group standpoint, the turnout has been devastating really,” he said. “We just have a few homeschool groups that are booking right now, but other than that we’re not getting any schools for obvious reasons. They’re just trying do the safety first, which is understandable. We’re an outdoor event, we’re all vaccinated and we’re just trying to get people to come on down. Hopefully the families will bring them down on the weekends when they can come down.”
Sanger said the historic replica provides something classrooms can’t: hands-on interaction.
“Especially for the kids, it’s a glimpse of history back over 500 years ago,” Sanger said. “Every kid learns about it in the classroom, but to be able to get on board and touch and feel and really get a perspective of what life was like back in the 15th century just gives you more of an appreciation of how we got here. But these ships, this is what came over from Europe and that’s what populated the Americas.
“To be able to visualize things I think is one of the most powerful ways of people to learn,” he added. “It’s easy to read things in a book and get told in the classroom, but to be able to walk on board — when you become a crew member if you’re over 18 and you get to travel on the open ocean, then you really get an appreciation for those guys who came across. A lot thought the world was flat, the uneducated, but for these little ships to travel 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, for Columbus to do it four times over a 12-year period is pretty incredible.”
Knox County residents Kathy Smith, Carol King and Debbie Lathrop came after deciding to visit for a meal at Calhoun’s.
“It’s really interesting to actually walk through,” King said. “I’m just surprised how small it is.”
“The gentleman over there was talking about how quickly they crossed the Atlantic,” Lathrop added. “The fastest was 20 days.”
Tellico Village residents Patty and Paul Cook finally made the trip to see the ship with their own eyes.
“I think it’s great,” Patty said. “Very small, much smaller than I pictured. ... I can’t imagine being on the open ocean for a year on this, no way. They were very brave men.”
Patty said she wished she could have brought her grandchildren. The self-guided museum gave her a better appreciation of history.
“It would have been great for them to see this,” she said. “... I was surprised to how they put the large animals in a sling so that they didn’t break their legs. That was very interesting.”
Tickets for the general public are $6.50 for adults, $6 for seniors and $5.50 for students ages 5-16. Children under 4 years old visit for free. The Pinta is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and no reservations are needed. Group tours with a minimum of 15 are also available.
For more information, call 787-672-2152 or visit www.ninapinta.org.
