Reconquista
A ceremony worth seeing
The launching of a ship is always a ceremony worth seeing for its emotion and tradition. Galicia is one of the global powers of shipbuilding, that are thrown away by many a year. The ceremonies I like are for small boats, almost handmade that normally get tossed in small fishing villages. These pictures are of a christening in a village called Rias Baixas O Grove. Normally these towns have the old tradition of breaking a bottle Albariño white wine against the boat. Often the ceremony also has a small band of bagpipes and the ship is dragged to the dock by a horse - it is believed that these ceremonies are a pagan tradition.
It seems that people once believed that the sea gods demanded the sacrifice of something precious to protect voyages. The custom of wine amphoras crashing upon launch the boat is attributed to the Greeks, in honor of Poseidon and the Romans continued the custom. Traditionally champagne is what is used for boat launches because it is usually more expensive and the sacrifice should be something valuable. Among sailors there is a tradition that a navigational artifact must be baptized with some ceremony to the sea to reduce the toll in human lives.
Read more
+9
