Spanish
The Training Ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano is a ship of the Spanish Navy whose main function is the training of future officers of the Navy. It is a large sailboat, of the brigantine-schooner type, with four masts and more than 20 sails.
The ship made its first training voyage in 1928, sailing from Cádiz to America, beginning a long tradition of training naval officers at sea. It owes its name to Juan Sebastián Elcano, a 16th-century Spanish navigator who went down in history for being the first man to complete the circumnavigation of the world.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Spanish Navy needed a new training ship to replace the old Nautilus. In 1910 the Nautilus ceased to be a training ship for Naval Guards, and in 1933 it was dismantled in La Graña, with the last Commander being Captain of Frigate D. Manuel de Mendívil Elío, who later became the first Commander of the "Juan Sebastián de Elcano".
As a consequence of the sinking of the "Nautilus" in 1910, the Navy finds itself with a great functional void. Therefore, a new ship had to be built that would be useful for such a task, and that at the same time would emulate the glorious circumnavigation of the "Nautilus" in 1892.
During the interval from the scrapping of the “Nautilus” to the commissioning of the “Elcano”, the Naval Guards sailed on the cruisers “Carlos V”, “Reina Regente” and later on the “Cataluña” in which Naval Guards and Aspirants embarked together.
The "Elcano" project began to take shape in 1923, when on April 6th the Ministry of the Navy signed a contract with D. Horacio Echevarrieta y Maruri to convert the motor-sailer "Minerva" into a Naval Academy training ship. The following year, a Royal Decree of June 30th authorized the aforementioned Ministry to proceed with the renewal of said contract with the aim of building a new ship for that purpose.
Design and Features
- Type: Four-masted brigantine-schooner
- Length: 113 meters
- Beam: 13 meters
- Sail area: Over 3,000 m² of surface area
- Home port: Cádiz, Spain
- Capacity: About 200 crew members, including 70–80 midshipmen
The Juan Sebastián de Elcano training ship has two main permanent missions:
The navigator training, which consists of contributing to the training of midshipmen, future officers of the Navy, of the General Corps and the Marine Corps.
According to the curriculum of the Naval Military School, midshipmen embark on the B/E "Juan Sebastián de Elcano" during the second semester of the third year of their career to carry out a Training Cruise. As a standard Cruise, a 6-month trip to America can be considered, covering about 20,000 miles and 155 singladuras (sea days).
During the instruction cruise, they maintain intimate and constant contact with the sea, where they are called upon to develop their main professional tasks. Added to this is the eminently practical teaching received on board, which contributes to the consolidation and expansion of their technical and seafaring knowledge, to the acquisition of a greater degree of general culture and to the assimilation of the principles, habits and virtues that constitute the soul of this great profession.
The second permanent mission is related to its designation as "ambassador." The ship carries out a support role for the State's foreign policy, taking the national insignia to all the countries it visits, and receiving on board different national and foreign authorities and personalities, earning the love and affection of the people who visit it.
Armamento a bordo
Unlike most Navy units, this ship -which is a brigantine schooner-, does not have missiles, nor torpedoes, nor any weapon system for combat. But it does have, like any other warship, light weapons for the unit's self-defense, in order to maintain an adequate capacity to face an unforeseen threat that may arise at sea or in a foreign port.
Travels around the world
Until 2022, the "Elcano" has carried out more than 90 Instruction Cruises, most of them long, and of these, eleven circumnavigations, the last of which ended in 2021. The first one was carried out between August 1928 and May 1929, in the opposite direction to that followed by the galleon "Victoria" - the ship of J.S. de Elcano on the first circumnavigation in 1522 -, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, but not Cape Horn as it returned via the Panama Canal.
El Juan Sebastián de Elcano ha realizado más de 11 vueltas al mundo y ha visitado más de 70 países.
It should be noted that in these almost one hundred years of life, the "Juan Sebastián de Elcano" has traveled more than one million eight hundred fifty thousand nautical miles (1,850,000) in all seas and oceans and sailed more than 15,300 voyages. It has entered 205 ports in 73 different countries, with a total of 1,265 visits or stopovers.
You may be interested in: Princess Leonor arrives in Santo Domingo aboard the training ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano
In 1977, the ship celebrated its 50th anniversary. In 2009, it commemorated the fifth centenary of Elcano's birth. In 2019–2022, it participated in commemorative activities for the 500 years of the first circumnavigation of the world.
In 2025, the Princess of Asturias, Leonor, embarked on the ship as part of her naval military training, reinforcing the symbolic role of the Juan Sebastián de Elcano as the cradle of the future leaders of the Spanish Navy.
According to data from the Spanish Navy, the crew of the Juan Sebastián de Elcano is composed of 188 sailors. In total, 16 officers, 21 non-commissioned officers, 35 leading seamen, and 112 petty officers and sailors, who are joined by officer professors from the Naval School and several civilians (hairdresser, sailmaker or carpenter) on each cruise.
All this personnel has been previously trained in centers such as the Naval Military School of Marín, the Non-Commissioned Officers School of San Fernando, the School of Specialties of the E.N. of La Graña, and/or the Antonio Escaño School of Specialties of Ferrol.
