Dom Fernando II e Glória

''Dom Fernando II e Glória'' is a wooden-hulled, 50-gun frigate of the Portuguese Navy. She was launched in 1843 and made her maiden voyage in 1845. Built at the shipyard of Daman in Portuguese India, it was Portugal's last sailing warship to be built and also the last ship that undertook the Carreira da Índia (''India Run''), a regular military line that connected Portugal to its colonies in India since the beginning of the 16th century.

The ship remained in active service until 1878, when she made her last sea voyage, having travelled more than one hundred thousand miles, the equivalent of five circumnavigations of the world.

After long service it was almost destroyed by a fire in 1963 with the burned wooden-hull remaining beached at the mud-flats of the river Tagus for the next 29 years. Finally in 1990 the Portuguese Navy decided to restore her to her appearance in the 1850s. During the World Exhibition of 1998 the ship remained in Lisbon as a museum ship on the dependency of the Navy Museum, being classified as an Auxiliary Navy Unit (''UAM 203''). Since 2008, the ship lies on the southern margin of the Tagus river in Cacilhas, Almada.

Construction

In 1821, the Intendant of the Royal Navy of Goa, Cândido José Mourão Garcez Palha, proposed to the Portuguese government the construction of a new frigate in the Portuguese colony of Daman, who possessed to the east a large forest of teak wood in Nagar-Aveli, considered to be an excellent wood for ship building.Paine, p. 50 The authorization for the construction was given in 1824, by the Portuguese king João VI. The civil war period and the political and economical problems in Portugal, delayed the construction for several times throughout the years. She was built in the Shipyards of the Royal Navy Arsenal under the supervision of the naval builder engineer Gil José da Conceição, being involved in its construction both Portuguese and Indian workers. She was finally launched in 1843, and towed to Goa for fitting out as a full-rigged ship.

She was named as a tribute to the king consort of Portugal Ferdinand II, husband of the Portuguese Queen Maria II, and to Our Lady of Glory, a figure of special devotion among the Catholic population of Goa.

The frigate was noted for her spacious accommodations, a critical factor on voyages that could take three months or even more without an intermediate port of call.

Service

The maiden voyage took place between 2 February and 4 July 1845 under the command of Captain Torcato José Marques, with a crew of 145 men, connecting Goa to Lisbon. Since then it was used on several types of missions over the years:

*Transporting military units, settlers, colonial administrators throughout the Empire, and even degredados to the Portuguese colonies in Africa and India.
*Transporting in 1852 to the Portuguese island of Madeira, the Empress consort of Brazil Amélie of Leuchtenberg, and her daughter Princess Maria Amélia of Brazil who was sick with tuberculosis and was looking for a good climate to recover from her disease, dying however five months after the arrival.
*Transporting to Angola in 1854 the Portuguese explorer António da Silva Porto and the thirteen members of is expedition after their completion of the crossing of Africa, from the coast of Angola to the coast of Mozambique.
*Participation in May 1855 as flagship of a Portuguese naval force in Ambriz, Angola, against a local rebellion.
*Participation in 1860 in the colonization of Huíla, Angola, transporting sheep and horses from South Africa to Angola.

In 1865, she replaced the sailing ship ''Vasco da Gama'' as the Artillery School of the Portuguese Navy, conducting training missions up until 1878, when it completed her last training mission on sea in a voyage to the Azores islands. In this last voyage she rescued the crew of the American barque ''Lawrence Boston'', which had caught fire off the Azores archipelago. After this, she remained permanently moored in Lisbon as the Naval Artillery School with significant modifications being made on her in 1889, with the replacement of her elegant masts, and the construction of two redoubts on both her sides for the placement of modern cannons, to better serve her role of artillery instruction unit.

In 1938 served as the flagship of the naval forces of Continental Portugal, based in the river Tagus.

Fire and damage

In 1940, after being considered unfit for navy service, it became the he