Sailing training ship Palinuro: Little sister under sail

The keel of the Italian sail training ship Palinuro was laid 90 years ago

Some fishing vessels have an amazing history. These include the Palinuro of the Italian Navy, a schooner barque or barkentine. Launched in 1933 at the Anciens Chantiers Dubigeon shipyard in Nantes, France, and launched the following year under the name Commandant Louis Richard, she drove her client Joseph Briand, President of the French Société des Pècheries Malouines, into bankruptcy before she could even set sail on her first mission. Briand sold the steel three-master together with her sister ship Lieutenant René Guillon to the Pècheries du Labrador in Saint-Malo. Here, the Commandant Louis Richard was converted into a schooner and equipped with refrigeration chambers and state-of-the-art technology.

After first being used as a fishing vessel in 1934, the ship went cod fishing in the Atlantic. In 1948, after changing hands twice - the new owner was the Bonin shipping company in Noirmoutier-en-Île - it was renamed Jean Marc Aline and used in the southern Indian Ocean near the islands of Saint Paul and Nouvelle Amsterdam. As business was poor, its days as a fishing vessel were numbered. Initially, the French navy considered using the barkentine as a School ship In the end, the Italian Marina Militare beat her to it. It acquired the sailing vessel for the training of non-commissioned officers and, after extensive modifications, put it into service at the beginning of July 1955 under the name Palinuro with the identification number A 5311. Since then, the ship has been assigned to various training centres and its current home port is La Spezia, the capital of the province of Liguria on the Golfo dei Poeti.

The Palinuro has travelled a lot. Between 1955 and 2002 alone, she completed 33 training voyages and travelled to destinations in France, Greece and North Africa. She lived up to her motto faventibus ventis (lat: favoured by winds) by not only covering around 300,000 nautical miles, but also taking part in numerous sailing events such as the Cutty Sark Tall Ships Races, the Hanse Sail Rostock, Sail Antwerp, Sail Flensburg and Sail Bremerhaven. A particular highlight of her operational history was the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, for which she transported the Olympic flame from Genoa to Barcelona. The crew was very committed to the ship. When the Italian Navy wanted to replace the Palinuro with a new ship after 25 years of service, the crew insisted that she be repaired. And they were successful. In the mid-1980s, the barquentine underwent a general overhaul and is still in service as a nave scuola, a training ship. And this despite the not exactly generous space available. In 2002, the crew consisted of five officers, 25 non-commissioned officers and 31 seamen; now there are 84 crew members, although this number has to be reduced during training voyages to make room for students and teaching staff. Given the relatively modest size - the Palinuro measures 59 metres in length and is a good ten metres wide - not always an easy undertaking. The original 150 hp diesel engine has been replaced by a 600 hp engine, which can be used if the approximately 1000 square metres of sail area are not sufficient or cannot be used. If you look at the Marina Militare website, one thing is clear: the Italian Navy is proud of the Palinuro. And it will hopefully continue to hold on to the historic sailing ship, which will celebrate the 90th anniversary of its keel laying in 2023. The smart three-master has already proven its good sailing characteristics on several occasions and can certainly hold its own against the impressive but cumbersome Amerigo Vespucci, at least in this respect.
The name Palinuro incidentally, goes back to a legend from Roman mythology. Palinurus was the helmsman of Aeneas on his voyage from destroyed Troy to Italy. When Venus, Aeneas' mother, asked the sea god Neptune to bring her son safely to his destination, he promised that only one crew member would be harmed on the way. This unlucky fellow was Palinurus. Overwhelmed by the god of sleep, he fell from the ship and drifted across the sea for three days until he was stranded on the coast of Lucania in southern Italy, where he was beaten to death by the inhabitants. Admittedly, not a very uplifting story. Nevertheless, the helmsman is a worthy namesake, as he saved the lives of many with his death and became a legend himself.

Andreas von Klewitz