Stately Portuguese Visitor Sails Calmly Into Jakarta

Jakarta Globe, Ismira Lutfia  | September 27, 2010   

Jakarta. The Portuguese training ship Sagres sailed into Jakarta with great fanfare from the Indonesian Navy on Saturday to begin its its five-day stopover here.

The Portuguese Navy’s training ship Sagres in Jakarta’s
 Tanjung Priok port. The ship will be open to the public
 through Thursday on its first visit to Indonesia as part of
 its global goodwill cruise. (JG Photo/Ismira Lutfia)    

Arriving at the Tanjung Priok port after a week-long voyage from Dili, East Timor, Sagres will be open to the public until Thursday before it continues on its journey to Bangkok as part of its 11-month circumnavigation as “a floating embassy of Portugal,” said the ship’s captain, Comr. Luis Proenca Mendes.

“We will continue sailing to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, India and Egypt before reaching Lisbon by December,” said Second Lt. Flavio Eusobio, an officer on the ship.

This is the ship’s first journey to East Timor and Indonesia, Mendes said. The detour from its normal route from China to Singapore added six weeks to the ship’s itinerary.

“The ship’s main purpose is to train cadets from the Portuguese naval academy, who undergo three months’ training on board the ship at the end of their second year,” the captain said as he took journalists on a tour around the vessel, whose 23 white sails bear red crosses.

Sagres left its home port of Lisbon in January. 

The last batch of cadets who trained on the Sagres joined the ship in California, bound for Shanghai, where the ship docked to participate at the Shanghai World Expo.

The 12 cadets worked daily on the ship’s bridge to familiarize them with the working life on board a ship. They also learn navigation, maneuvering and leadership skills as well as how to deal with unpredictable weather.

And for the younger generation, used to being constantly connected with the rest of the world through their gadgets, Mendes said the cadets’ time on the bridge gives them the unique experience of being offline and away from the phone.

“From time to time we also invite foreign cadets to join our training on Sagres,” said Mendes, who was made captain of Sagres in 2007.

Eusobio said Sagres was built in Germany in 1937 along with two other ships of similar type. Its original name was Albert Leo Schalgeter, and it belonged to the German Navy from 1937 to 1945.

It was captured by the American forces in World Ward II and was handed over to Brazil in 1948.

It was named Guanabara under the Brazilian flag before the Portuguese bought it in 1962, when it was commissioned into the Portuguese Navy with the name Sagres.

The ship’s other missions in its 2010 circumnavigation are to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Peace, Friendship and Commerce Treaty between Portugal and Japan in Tokyo and the 500th anniversary of the Portuguese arrival in the Far East.

East Timor was a colony of Portugal in the 16th century until it declared independence in November 1975 but was invaded by Indonesian troops just days later. 

“This is a navy ship but it carries a message of friendship,” Mendes said.