When you've been on a river

for a couple of weeks, far from your normal frame of

reference, sometimes you see ghosts.

That was the only way we

could account for what appeared one bright October

morning as we pulled our little trawler back out onto the

Tennessee from an overnight anchorage on a tributary.

Dave was at the helm. We had watched an eagle rise from

the surface with his breakfast in his talons, to alight

on a bare tree across the river from us. As he tore into

his repast, Dave said, "Better check for

traffic."

I'd learned my lesson about

how quickly barges can slip up on slow travelers like us,

so I swept my binoculars upstream and down. Nothing

behind us, but downstream I spotted... something.

"A barge?" Dave

asked. "No," I said. "I don't know what it

is but offhand I'd say maybe a square-rigger."

"Yeah, right," he replied, and we both laughed.

When I looked again a few

minutes later, however, I stopped laughing. "Dave.

It is a square-rigger."

"Uh-huh," he

said, and picked up his glasses.

We watched, incredulous, as

the apparition drew nearer, its center mast

square-rigged, its mizzens bearing furled lateens. She

ran silently but under power, unadorned, and carried no

identification that we could see. Dave picked up the

radio mike, while I grabbed the camera. I snapped only

three frames: we were in the forested Tennessee Gorge and

the masts of the dark ship were lost against the trunks

and branches of the trees. Dave had even less luck. There

was no radio response at all.

What WAS it? I ventured

that its high poop deck and woven rigging made it a

Spanish galleon, but Dave thought it might be a caravel.

As we ransacked our combined knowledge of old ships, I

had the advantage, having slipped the Encarta

Encyclopedia into the CD-ROM drive of my laptop.

Our ghost was indeed a

caravel, the best-known of which were two of the ships

Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492. The

common trading vessel used during the Age of Discovery,

they were cargo carriers, warships, patrol boats, and

even corsairs, or pirate ships.

Quick and maneuverable,

with a shallow draft, caravels were good sailors.

Wherever we stopped, we asked if people knew about a

500-year-old ship on the river, but no one had seen it or

even heard about it. After awhile, we stopped asking.

Three poor snapshots were the only proof I had of our

phantom encounter.

About two weeks after we

got home, a photo by a Huntsville Times photographer

appeared in the AJC. It was our mystery vessel passing a

gargantuan barge on the Tennessee River.

"A replica of the

Ni�a," the caption says, "...on its way to

Guntersville, Ala.," where it would be on display

until the end of November.

The Ni�a! I did some

on-line research. Although the larger Santa Maria, a

freighter, was Columbus' flagship, she had sluggish

sailing characteristics and the admiral disliked her. The

Pinta, also a caravel, was never mentioned again after

the initial voyage across the Atlantic; her fate is

unknown.

But the nimble Ni�a was

Columbus' favorite. When the Santa Maria ran aground at

Hispaniola and sank, he and most of his crew depended on

the Ni�a for a safe journey home.

For his second trip, an

exploratory voyage to Cuba, Columbus was offered the

entire Spanish Merchant Marine fleet from which to select

his flagship. He chose Ni�a, and purchased a half share

in her. Thus began a profitable partnership.

Columbus sailed Ni�a to

the New World a third time; she was known to have been in

Santo Domingo in 1500. She is last recorded making a

trading voyage to the Pearl Coast in 1501, and logged at

least 25,000 miles under Columbus.

Not bad for a ship probably

not more than 50 feet long.

Ni�a's dimensions and

details of her construction have been lost to history,

but when the Columbus Foundation decided to replicate her

for the 500th anniversary of the 1492 voyage, they

engaged John Patrick Sarsfield, an American engineer,

maritime historian, and expert on Portuguese caravels, to

design and build it.

Sarsfield had discovered an

obscure fishing village in Brazil that still uses the

archaic process that built the original Ni�a. It all

came together: shipwrights using traditional tools and

methods, with a source of the naturally shaped timbers

needed to construct a wooden ship.

Ships of this period were

built not from plans, but from a set of proportions based

on the length of the keel. Details like the number of

masts and rigging specifics were extracted from recent

discoveries of 15th- and 16th-century Spanish shipwrecks

in the Caribbean. Research suggesting that Ni�a was

rigged as a four-master, plus an inventory of equipment

she was carrying in 1498, helped authenticate the

replicators' work.

Independent investigators

stated in Archeology magazine that Sarsfield's Ni�a is

likely the most authentic replica Columbus-era ship ever

built. Her successful unescorted open-sea voyage of more

than 4,000 miles to the United States also was a first

for such a replica.

Since June of 1992 Ni�a

has been touring new ports, and has visited both coasts,

the Great Lakes, several of the great inland rivers, and

the Gulf of Mexico. She is said to be the only touring

maritime museum of its kind.

Ni�a's Web site -

www.thenina.com - has lots more about both the

original and the replica, including what life aboard is

like, plus interesting links.

I e-mailed the Columbus

Foundation, and learned she'll be at the Panama City

Marina from Dec. 10 to 17. They're hauling her for

repairs, but plan to have her open for tours. The contact

number: 284-495-4618. After that she'll be in Punta Gorda

(Dec. 23-Jan. 3) before cruising