Qualla: ARA Presidente Sarmiento

ARA Presidente Sarmiento: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wolfgang Fricke, CC BY 3.0. Six times this ship sailed all the way around the world. Cadets climbed her masts off the coast of Japan, hauled lines through Atlantic gales, and stood watch in harbors from Hamburg to Yokohama. Today the ARA Presidente Sarmiento sits perfectly still in a downtown Buenos Aires basin, her three masts rising above the renovated docks of Puerto Madero, surrounded by glass towers and weekend joggers. She is the last intact cruising training ship anywhere from the 1890s, and she earned that title the hard way - by going everywhere.

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Image: Wolfgang Fricke | CC BY 3.0

ARA Presidente Sarmiento: Built on the Mersey, Bound for the World

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christiano Junior, Public domain. The frigate was ordered from Laird Brothers, the famous shipyard at Birkenhead on England's River Mersey, under a contract signed in 1896. She slid down the ways on 31 August 1897, christened by Ana Cane Dominguez, and reached Buenos Aires the following August. Argentina had comm...

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Image: Christiano Junior | Public domain

ARA Presidente Sarmiento: A Machine of Iron and Canvas

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mauricio V. Genta, CC BY-SA 4.0. Step below her teak decks and the Sarmiento reveals a beautiful contradiction. She is a sailing ship and a steamship at once. A towering rig of masts and yards drove her across the open ocean, but a massive triple-expansion steam engine, fed by two coal-fired boilers, waited for ...

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Image: Mauricio V. Genta | CC BY-SA 4.0

ARA Presidente Sarmiento: From the Open Sea to a Quiet Basin

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0. The world changed faster than the ship did. Retired from seagoing duty in 1938, the Sarmiento served on without her sails along Argentina's rivers around 1950, then settled into a stationary teaching role until 1961. The country never let her go. For seven years she even sailed a...

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Image: Dennis G. Jarvis | CC BY-SA 2.0

ARA Presidente Sarmiento: Walking the Decks Today

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Cross the gangway and the twenty-first century falls away. The brass gleams, the compass binnacle stands ready, and a single torpedo hangs suspended on the main deck above the spot where its launch scuttle once opened at the bow. Visitors duck through low passages past the engine...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain