Santa Maria (ship, 1953)
 Illustration of Santa Maria
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The Santa Maria was a passenger ship of the Portuguese shipping company Companhia Colonial de Navegação , which entered service in 1953. The ship remained until 1973 in ride and then went for scrapping the Taiwanese Kaohsiung . The Santa Maria gained fame primarily through its hijacking in January 1961. When it was commissioned, it was the largest passenger ship in Portugal together with its sister ship.
history
The Santa Maria was built under hull number 749 in the Cockerill-Sambre shipyard in Antwerp and was launched on September 20, 1952. A year later, in September 1953, it was delivered to the Companhia Colonial de Navegação and commissioned in the transatlantic service from Lisbon to Buenos Aires . Together with her sister ship Vera Cruz , which was commissioned in 1952 , the Santa Maria was the largest passenger ship in Portugal when it was completed. A title that both ships wore until the Príncipe Perfeito was commissioned in 1961.
From 1956, the Santa Maria called at Port Everglades as a stopover , from then on the destination of the Atlantic voyage was various ports in Central America.
Kidnapping in 1961
After a stop of the ship in Willemstad on January 21, 1961, the Santa Maria was occupied on January 22 by rebels of the bourgeois democracy movement of Portugal under the command of Henrique Galvão , who had previously checked in as passengers on board. There were about 600 passengers and 300 crew members on board. The officers and the captain Mário Simões Maia La Guayra were captured, and the third officer on watch, João José do Nascimiento Costa, was shot in a scuffle.
The ship changed course after a stop in St. Lucia in the direction of West Africa. It was observed by warships and aircraft of the United States Navy and the Royal Navy , but in the meantime it repeatedly disappeared from the field of view of the observer over a longer period of time. After the rebels were offered political asylum, the Santa Maria called at the port of Recife on February 2nd . The aim of the kidnapping was to start a revolution and overthrow the system of António de Oliveira Salazar .
Whereabouts
Immediately after the kidnapping and discharge of the passengers, the Santa Maria returned to Portugal and resumed regular service. The rest of the ship's career was uneventful. In 1973 the Santa Maria was retired after twenty years of service and in the same year it was scrapped in Kaohsiung together with her older sister ship Vera Cruz .
Web links
- the ship on faktaomfartyg.se (Swedish)
- the ship on ssmaritime.com (English)