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Ulteriors news (2° part) -
School ship Amerigo Vespucci.

 

The prow of the school ship Amerigo Vespucci.
It is moored to Venice - 2006

This vessel has been set up, constructed, launched and armed in only 409 days, a record.

The Combat Flag has been donated 15th October 1931 and it is guarded on board in a valuable cowling.

The launch however had happened some month before, just 22th February, and this date is not motive, has an historical connection. 22th February 1522, in fact, the navigator Amerigo Vespucci is dead. The ship takes his name and that he is represented in its figurehead.

The moment of the launch is always more important and it has much detail: to the margins of the cradle there were the ship yard workmen, that they controlled every small movement of the hull, and from which, for the joy, an enormous roar has been raised, than quickly it has joined in concert with the band and the sirens of all the ships present in port.

 

 

A page of a calendar that reproduces the launch's moment
(photo supplied from Beppino)

 

 

 

Other differences between the ships Amerigo Vespucci and Cristoforo Colombo.

The most obvious differences between the two vessels were in the bowsprit. They are different inclination and various attack of the shrouds, to thread of the bulwark for the Vespucci and outside for Colombo.

On board of Colombo the greater boats are to the center ship and the relative cargo mast was moreover absent.

The Vespucci has a single eye of Hawse for bow, in order to ease off the anchor, while the Colombo had two eyes of Hawse.

It is said that the funnel of Colombo was more low than the Vespucci one and therefore nearly invisible. It moreover seems that the whale-boat of Colombo or be removed, before the cession to Russia, and put on the Vespucci, than originally it did not have it.

 

 

 

 

On the foremast of the Vespucci is present the Ferrari’s symbol (the Maranello’s house).

Enzo Ferrari founded its factory in the year 1929.
That same year Francisco Rotundi, the lieutenant colonel of the Navy Corps of Engineers, began to write the plan of the Vespucci.

In the year 1994 fifty “red ones” (the red cars of the Ferrari Italy Club) have covered the tree-lined avenues of the Naval Academy of Livorno in order to meet itself to the “mediceo” port (the Livorno’s port), with the magnificent vessel: two myths that they care high the name of Italy in the world.