I Explored The “Museo Del Mar” And This Is What I Found!

Museum Facade, Museo del Mar, Maritime Museum | Puerto Rico By GPS | Orlando Mergal

Muse­um Facade
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If you’re vis­it­ing San Juan, Old San Juan Puer­to Rico that is, then there’s one place that have to vis­it. It’s called the Mar­itime Muse­um, or “Museo del Mar”, as the locals call it, and it’s locat­ed on #360 San Fran­cis­co Street. That’s just a few doors up on your left hand side as you enter the Old City.

Old San Juan was found­ed in 1521 by Span­ish Con­quis­ta­dor, and first gov­er­nor of Puer­to Rico, Juan Ponce de León. That makes Old San Juan the third old­est cap­i­tal in the New World after Havana (1514) and San­to Domin­go de Guzmán (1496). That oth­er lit­tle town, on the north­east coast of Flori­da, is 44 years younger.

As you must have noticed by now, I’m talk­ing about Old San Juan, not plain San Juan. What’s the dif­fer­ence? Old San Juan is the orig­i­nal colo­nial town that was sur­round­ed by a city wall until 1897. The rest of the munic­i­pal­i­ty is called San Juan and it grew through­out the years until it incor­po­rat­ed what used to be the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Río Piedras on July 1, 1951.

Today’s San Juan is sur­round­ed by Car­oli­na and Tru­jil­lo Alto to the east, Caguas and Aguas Bue­nas to the south and Guayn­abo to the west. Cataño, while across the bay from San Juan, does­n’t have a phys­i­cal bor­der or coun­ty line with San Juan.

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Through­out the cen­turies Puer­to Rico has played a key role in migra­to­ry and colo­nial activ­i­ties. Pre-colo­nial tribes used it as a stopover point dur­ing their trav­els to and from the less­er and greater Antilles. Lat­er on the con­quer­ing Span­ish forces used it as a key nav­i­ga­tion point for the Situ­a­do Mex­i­cano, being the first port of call on the way from Spain to Amer­i­ca and the last on the way from Amer­i­ca to Spain.

Final­ly, in 1898 Puer­to Rico was invad­ed by the Unit­ed States and has since played a key role dur­ing two World Wars and sev­er­al con­flicts. In 1917 Puer­to Ricans were grant­ed U.S. Cit­i­zen­ship under the Jones-Shafroth Act and two moths lat­er 20,000 Islanders were draft­ed for World War 1. Coin­ci­dence? What do you think?

So what does all this have to do with a Mar­itime Muse­um in Old San Juan? Fur­ther­more, why do we even have one in Puer­to Rico when the Island doesn’t even have a navy. Well, as it turns out, much of Puer­to Rico’s his­to­ry actu­al­ly hap­pened at sea. In fact, many of history’s most respect­ed cap­tains were defeat­ed off the coast of San Juan. In many ways this had a rip­ple effect on sub­se­quent events that helped shape cities on both Amer­i­can continents.

Museum Sign, Museo del Mar, Maritime Museum | Puerto Rico By GPS | Orlando Mergal

Muse­um Sign
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On Sep­tem­ber 7 my wife Zory and I vis­it­ed the Mar­itime Muse­um (“Museo del Mar”) as guests of Mr. Manuel Minero (the Muse­um’s Direc­tor) and Mr. Car­los L. Vera (Muse­um Edu­ca­tor), our guide for the day. It was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence that last­ed well over two hours.

The Muse­um is the third or fourth build­ing on your left hand side after you pass the cor­ner of San Fran­cis­co and O’Donnel streets. It’s a nar­row build­ing, paint­ed in gray with white trim, that looks rather small at first glance. But don’t be fooled. The build­ing more than makes up in depth what it lacks in width. Besides, the Muse­um has so many items that it actu­al­ly holds a Guin­ness World Record. For what exact­ly? I’ll tell you in a minute.

When we got to the Muse­um Mr. Car­los Vera was already there wait­ing for us. So the tour start­ed imme­di­ate­ly. I could try to tell you word for word the many things that he told us, but that would be an exer­cise in futil­i­ty, because I could nev­er say things as well as he did. Besides, why would I even try when I spent well over a week edit­ing the accom­pa­ny­ing video where he says things in his own words.

Instead, the pur­pose of this post is to show you some pic­tures of the Muse­um and tell you about my expe­ri­ence. Para­phras­ing Mr. Vera’s words, the Mar­itime Muse­um (“Museo del Mar”) caters to any­one remote­ly inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of Puer­to Rico (in par­tic­u­lar) and of Amer­i­ca (in general).

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There was a time in my life when I was a “pro­fes­sion­al stu­dent”. That’s what they called stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico that enrolled but nev­er seemed to grad­u­ate. In my case, I held a job at our local phone com­pa­ny and stud­ied most­ly at night. Oth­er times I was forced to drop out because my day job didn’t allow me to keep up with my col­lege courses.

Dur­ing that time there were also times when I couldn’t find the cours­es that I need­ed, so I took his­to­ry cours­es instead. Not that I need­ed them, but I just liked his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture. The fun­ny thing was that I was enrolled in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ence fac­ul­ty. By the time I grad­u­at­ed I had more cred­its in his­to­ry than in Sci­ence. I also had dozens of cred­its in Span­ish and Eng­lish literature. 

Museum of History, Anthropology and Art Of The University Of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus | Puerto Rico By GPS | Orlando Mergal

Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art Of The Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico
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By the way, there’s an excel­lent Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico’s Río Piedras Cam­pus that I cov­er quite exten­sive­ly in a pre­vi­ous article.

As you might imag­ine, none of that knowl­edge went to waste dur­ing my 25+ years as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor (some day I’ll tell you about that). Nei­ther did it go to waste dur­ing our vis­it to the Mar­itime Museum.

Carlos L. Vera Santiago, Museo del Mar, Maritime Museum | Puerto Rico By GPS | Orlando Mergal

Our host for the day Car­los L. Vera
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Mr. Vera is a walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia when it comes to Puer­to Rico’s his­to­ry and the way it inter­weaves with that of North, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca. So we were able to explore intri­cate angles and take unex­pect­ed turns dur­ing our 2+ hour conversation.

U.S. Spanish Heritage Map, Museo del Mar, Maritime Museum | Puerto Rico By GPS | Orlando Mergal

U.S. Span­ish Her­itage Map
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Accord­ing to Vera, some vis­i­tors to the Muse­um are sur­prised to learn how inter­con­nect­ed the his­to­ry of Puer­to Rico is with that of the Unit­ed States. And they’re even more sur­prised that it would still be inter­con­nect­ed even if the island-ter­ri­to­ry nev­er had a polit­i­cal rela­tion­ship with the Mainland.

The Mar­itime Muse­um (“Museo del Mar”) is filled to the brim with authen­tic doc­u­ments and arti­cles as well as exact repli­cas made by the world’s most renown experts. There are also dozens of sto­ry­boards and pho­tos to illus­trate every event and every era. But the key ele­ments in the Muse­um expe­ri­ence are the atten­dants. They actu­al­ly breath life into every piece through their pro­found knowl­edge and sto­ry­telling abil­i­ties. My atten­dant in par­tic­u­lar was Mr. Vera, but I was told that there are oth­ers that are just as knowledgeable.

So why is this muse­um wor­thy of a Guin­ness World Record? Well, if you have ever been on a boat of any size (a ship is just a very big boat) you’ll know what a “throw­able flota­tion device” or PFD is. They are those round float­ing devices that they throw at you when you’re try­ing to keep your head above water in the mid­dle of the ocean. Most of the time they’re orange, but they also come in white. Oh, and the let­ters “PFD”? Glad you asked! Those stand for “Per­son­al Flota­tion Device”.

Well, the Mar­itime Muse­um (“Museo del Mar”) has over 100 PFDs. The record is for 100, but they actu­al­ly have 101. Talk about over­achiev­ers! They have “throw­ables” or PFDs from many of mod­ern history’s most mem­o­rable ships.

Throw­ables or PFDs aren’t a new thing. The fact is that they’ve been around since 860 BC. So why didn’t I ask Mr. Vera which one was the old­est they had? I guess I had to leave some­thing for you to ask! Right?

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If you’re stay­ing in Old San Juan your best bet will be to walk to the Muse­um. Pas­sen­gers arriv­ing on cruise ships will find the walk easy and enter­tain­ing. Just check out the map below for the exact location.

If you’re com­ing from the Isla Verde or Con­da­do areas, and you have a rental car, just fol­low the direc­tions in our accom­pa­ny­ing video. The “Cov­adon­ga”, “Galería Paseo Por­tu­ario” and Munic­i­pal Park­ing garages are all excel­lent options. And final­ly, if you’re com­ing by taxi or Uber just ask your dri­ver to leave you at #360 San Fran­cis­co Street.

Final­ly, the Mar­itime Muse­um (“Museo del Mar”) should take between 11/2 and 3 hours to explore it thor­ough­ly. That means that you’ll have plen­ty of time to vis­it oth­er attrac­tions in San Juan.

 

And talk­ing about San Juan, if you’re plan­ning to vis­it the Old City, save your­self the has­sle of tra­di­tion­al city tours. They’re expen­sive and you’ll be herd­ed along with peo­ple that won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly share your interests.

Instead, order The Old San Juan Walk­ing Tour. It’s packed with use­ful infor­ma­tion about all the main attrac­tions, as well as every GPS coor­di­nate and two hours of exclu­sive online video. That way you’ll be able to —vis­it before you vis­it— and hit the ground run­ning when you arrive in the Old City.

See you next time!

Orlando Mergal | Puerto Rico By GPS

©2024,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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