Gazela of Philadelphia

One of the oldest wooden square riggers still sailing, built in Portugal in 1883 as a trading vessel for European waters.

In 1900 the Bensaude family bought her and converted her into a fishing vessel carrying dories. For the next seventy years she fished cod on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland with about thirty-five dories. In the 1930s she was refitted to sail inside the Arctic Circle between Greenland and Baffin Island, with a new engine in 1938; a new pilot house followed in 1958 to keep the crew from being swept off the deck by boarding seas.

Her last fishing trip was in 1969; in 1970 she was bought and donated to the Philadelphia Maritime Museum and left Europe for the USA in 1971. For the next four years she was a static museum, and in 1975 she was refitted to be seaworthy as a training ship and sailing museum.

She took part in Operation Sail in 1976 and the Statue of Liberty celebrations in New York in 1982, with several sail training cruises up to 1983. After an extensive restoration in 1983–84 she made one of her longest voyages since leaving the cod fleet, calling at Boston, Portland, Bath, Halifax, Lunenburg, Prince Edward Island, Gaspé, Quebec City, New London, Baltimore and Annapolis.

Today she is a sail training ship, a living museum and a goodwill ambassador for the international seaport of Philadelphia. In 1992 she sailed to New York and on to New England, Baltimore and Bristol, Pennsylvania. She was filmed for Interview with the Vampire in 1993 and featured in the PBS documentary The Irish in America in 1998. In 1999 she sailed to Nova Scotia for the making of the French film The Widow of Saint-Pierre, and as part of OpSail 2000 visited San Juan, Puerto Rico, and six cities on the US east coast.