History afloat

Replicas of two of Columbus’ ships visit Arkansas

Nina crew member Mike Cheesebrough shows a stone ballast to Shaniya Goss and Braylon Jefferson, students of Geyer Springs Gifted and Talented Academy. In Columbus day, children might begin working on a ship as young as 8.
Nina crew member Mike Cheesebrough shows a stone ballast to Shaniya Goss and Braylon Jefferson, students of Geyer Springs Gifted and Talented Academy. In Columbus day, children might begin working on a ship as young as 8.

The Geyer Springs kids are late.

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Two ships belonging to the Columbus Foundation, the Nina and the Pinta, were recently docked on the Little Rock side of the Arkansas River. On Oct. 15, the ships were side by side and the Nina, which is larger, obscures the Pinta from view.

Bradford Elementary is here, fifth- and sixth-graders hopping up and down on the concrete curb, hugging themselves against the morning chill.

"The Nina and the Pinta," a boy announces dramatically, extending his arms. The replicated ships -- one 65 feet long, 18 feet wide and the other 85 feet long, 20 feet wide -- seem too small to be seaworthy. (Modern cruise ships are often more than 1,000 feet long.)

It's 9:34, four minutes past time for the tour to begin, and still no second-through-fifth-graders from Geyer Springs Gifted and Talented Academy. A shaggy-haired young man gulps coffee, sets his mug on a folding table (the official "box office" of the Columbus Foundation, which runs this floating museum) and tries to wrangle the Bradford kids.

"Please don't untie anything," he urges, leading the way to the Pinta.

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Sarenity Gilliam (left) and Keyonna Thomas are among students listening to a talk about the Spanish flags flying on the reproductions of Christopher Columbus’ ships the Nina and the Pinta.

The 14 crew members for the modern-day Nina and Pinta are mostly volunteers, living on board and working for tips.

Before hitting the Arkansas River, these ships motored along the Great Lakes, the Illinois River and the Mississippi River, moving at about 7 miles per hour. (Sails work better on open water than inland routes, so the ships have been fitted with engines, as well as modern plumbing and electricity.)

GEYER SPRINGS ARRIVES

They had bus trouble but now, a wobbly line of Geyer Springs students approaches, wearing all combinations of khaki, plaid and navy. Some clutch spiral notebooks to record their impressions.

Pearce Risley, 20, from Indiana, bounds toward them, offering high fives.

They follow him down narrow metal steps to the Pinta and up wooden steps to the poop deck.

"What do you know about Christopher Columbus?" Risley asks.

"In fourteen-hundred-ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," the students recite.

"Good. He had three ships. Does anybody know the name of those ships?" Risley says.

"Ninapintasantamaria!" they shout.

"Very good. We're currently aboard the Pinta. This is clearly built larger than in Columbus' day -- 15 feet longer and 8 feet wider."

"This is larger?" fourth-grader Rahneisha Johnson asks, incredulous.

With just 40 small people and a handful of adults, the poop deck is claustrophobically close.

Risley starts to tell them that the Nina is the most historically accurate replica in existence, and that both ships were handmade in a village in Brazil, where shipswrights follow 15th-century techniques. But he is interrupted by questions.

"Yes, we live on the ship, and we move it place to place," he says.

Rahneisha turns to a friend. "He live on it," she stage whispers.

"OK, we're going to talk about the history of Columbus," Risley says. "He set sail from Palos, Spain. He was trying to reach Asia."

"Halfway through, the Santa Maria ran into a coral reef, breaking the keel, or the backbone, of the ship," Risley says. "Christopher Columbus actually saw this as a sign, and he used all the spare timber that he could grab from the ship and built a fort on Hispaniola, or modern-day Haiti. He left his crew from Santa Maria at the fort and said 'colonize this land, we'll come back for you.' Long story short, he actually did go back during his second voyage two years later, and found the fort in ashes."

The students exchange wide-eyed glances, pondering the likely murders of 40 colonists.

"The crew was getting really agitated with Christopher Columbus because he lied to them. He said it would only take about three weeks to get there ... so they were actually planning a mutiny. Do you guys know what that is?"

After a chorus of high-pitched "no's," Risley tells them that, 31 days in, the sailors wanted to toss Columbus overboard. Columbus begged for three more days: "'If there's no land in three days, we'll turn around and go back to Spain,'" he said.

The second night, the men saw land. They came aground at what is now the Bahamas, where they were greeted by indigenous people with gold in their ears and noses. Columbus and the sailors (24 on the Pinta, 25 on the Nina) loaded their ships with gold and tropical plants and, although Risley doesn't mention this, at least a dozen indigenous captives, several of whom died on the trip to Spain.

INQUISITIVE MINDS

"Back then, you would start on a ship working between the ages of 8 and 11. You would have to go down below with a bucket and clean up all the water and take care of the animals. By the time you were 14 to 17, you were a full-blown sailor .... By the time you were my age, you were probably going through a midlife crisis," Risley says.

He asks for questions and a dozen hands shoot up.

They want to know: Why is there no Santa Maria; why you call a ship a "she"; how old this boat is; what the flags mean; and how old the real ships are.

The answers: There is no Santa Maria, because the Santa Maria was too big to traverse rivers; if you care for the boat as much as you do your mother, the boat will rock you to sleep; the flag with the castle and lion represents the unification of Spain, following the marriage of Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Argon; this Nina was built 23 years ago; this Pinta was built in 2005 ("I was born in 2005!" several students exclaim); and the original ships, wherever they are, are about 580 years old.

WATER AND WINE

By now, many students have forgone raising their hands.

"Where are the cannons?"

"When did they go sail to the Indies?"

"What was the captain's name?" (Something unpronounceable, Risley says.)

The students are distracted, mesmerized by occasional drips from the rolled up sails.

"I think its raining," a boy says.

"No, it's dripping," another boy responds.

More shouted questions: "Why did they have animals?" (For eggs and milk.)

"How did they cook?" (In a small metal box filled with sand, which heated more than cooked.)

"How did the sailors go to the bathroom?" ("Number one" disappeared into the sea through holes in the lower deck. For "number two," sailors crouched on the ship's bow, clung to a beam and aimed overboard.)

Risley discusses what the sailors drank -- water and wine, sometimes mixing the two, since water in barrels sours quickly. The vitamin C in the wine also fought scurvy, although the sailors didn't realize it.

Then it's time for the most amusing of ship-related topics: the poop deck.

PUPA OR PUPPIS?

"The reason they call it a poop deck is not because they would go to the bathroom up there," Risley says.

"Poop deck," Jeremiah Thomas, third-grader, gasps and covers his mouth with his hand, shoulders shaking in exaggerated laughter.

"Back in Columbus' day, they would have had a priest aboard .... He would carve dolls out, and he would hang them from the railings up there, and it was thought to bless the ship for a better journey. And in Spain, the word puppet was pronounced poop-a."

"Poop-a," the students echo, giggling.

(In Latin, pupa means doll. Other sources contend that the poop deck, or stern deck, is thus named because the Latin word for stern is puppis.)

THE NINA, IN SHORT

By the time they move to the Nina, only the most patient watch Risley demonstrate how the lever lifts the anchor.

Second-grader London Uwans raises her hand.

"I have to say, there's no such thing as walking the plank," she announces.

Risley concurs. "It was a Hollywood thing. They just made it up for dramatic effect."

There is some debate about a small boat resting on the main deck.

Risley says it is definitely not a lifeboat. It weighs 900 pounds, takes several hours to launch and was built, in part, by a 14-year-old apprentice.

The kids are amazed.

"A 14-year-old built this?" they gape.

Sara Ahmed, a fourth-grader with a long brown ponytail, writes it down in her notebook.

THE END

Then, unceremoniously, the tour is over.

Risley leads them off the ships, as teachers count heads and students qualify their impressions.

"Sometimes they call me Christopher Columbus," says a third-grader named Chris Sanders.

"I really wanted to see the Santa Maria, but it crashed into coral reef," Xzavian Harmon says. Then he shrugs and leans back onto the grassy embankment behind the curb.

"We're sunbathing," he decides.

"We're sunbathing," Chris and Langston and Richard Smith shout, and they lean back, too. They're done with the ships, but they're not ready for the bus.

Tickets to tour the Columbus ships are $6-$8. They will dock at 4831 Riverfront Drive, Fort Smith, from Friday until Nov. 2. For more information, go to thenina.com or call (787) 672-2152.

Family on 10/22/2014

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