The Museum Ship Santo André is one of the tourist centers of the Maritime Museum of Ílhavo, it was part of the Portuguese cod fleet and its main objective is to illustrate the trawling arts.
This vessel began its useful life in 1948 at the time of modern ships, in the Netherlands by order of the Empresa de Pesca de Aveiro and was a Portuguese cod fishing vessel. At the end of the seventies, new restrictions on fishing in outer waters appeared, which resulted in the slaughter of a large part of the fleets decades later, and the famous Navio Santo André Museum did not escape this trend, which was dismantled on August 21, 1997 and its last trip was to Norway in 1997, under the command of Captain Manuel Silva Santos. So that the memory of cod fishing would not die, the vessel was recovered and reclassified as a museum ship and opened to public visitation.
The Ílhavo City Council and the fishing company Tavares Mascarenhas S.A decided in 2001 to transform the ship into a museum, thus starting a new life cycle in order to show those who visit it how the cod trawl fisheries were, and honor the memory of the crew that were there during almost half a century of this activity.
Currently, the Ship Santo André is moored at the pier in the Jardim Oudinot district of Aveiro, with the function of a ship-museum and it is very worth visiting and keeping memories.
