WHEREAS, The Spanish galleon San Salvador was explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo’s flagship vessel, and during his 1542 expeditionary voyage, the San Salvador, in the company of two other ships, landed at what is now the City of San Diego and established first contact with the indigenous peoples of the California coast, and Cabrillo and his crew became the first Europeans to set foot on the Pacific coast of the United States; and

WHEREAS, The Maritime Museum of San Diego’s mission is to serve as the community memory of our seafaring experience by collecting, preserving, and presenting our rich maritime heritage via a world-class collection of 10 historic vessels, exhibitions, public events, and educational programs; and

WHEREAS, In pursuit of this mission, the Maritime Museum of San Diego sought to build a full-sized, fully functional, and historically accurate replica of the San Salvador to create a living link between California’s past and present, that would serve as a community memory of the region’s seafaring experience and present its rich and diverse maritime heritage and historic connections to the Pacific world; and

WHEREAS, After years of research and fundraising for the construction of a functional and historically accurate replica of the San Salvador, the Maritime Museum of San Diego hosted an international symposium in 2004, at which time experts were enlisted to evaluate the design of the vessel, and in the spring of 2011, construction began in full view of the public at Spanish Landing Park in the City of San Diego; and

WHEREAS, The construction of the San Salvador replica is based on painstaking research in the fields of early modern Spanish and Portuguese maritime history and maritime archeology, and experts have scoured volumes of historical narratives, examined all the available images of early 16th century sailing vessels, and surveyed the remains of contemporary shipwrecks; and to execute this vision, the Maritime Museum of San Diego engaged a group of skilled professional boat builders, who were assisted by scores of regular volunteers; and

WHEREAS, Most of the labor was performed by volunteers who believed they could learn to build a ship and almost 500 volunteers from around the world devoted their time, energy, and talents to building the ship; and

WHEREAS, On September 4, 2015, during the Festival of Sail, the San Salvador replica was commissioned; and

WHEREAS, The San Salvador replica will function as the origin symbol ship for California and commemorate the voyage of the original San Salvador which, through its voyage into the unknown parts of the ocean, provided vital geographic, climatic, and oceanographic information on the Pacific Ocean; and

WHEREAS, Beginning in the fall of 2016, as an operational vessel, the San Salvador replica will be used in Cabrillo discovery reenactments and outreach voyages to other ports and the museum will partner with other educational facilities and museums, and the ship’s presence will also enable the Maritime Museum of San Diego to implement a teacher training institute, where teachers can attend California standards-based seminars on the discovery of the western coast and the age of exploration; and

WHEREAS, The vessel’s maiden voyage will be known as the San Salvador Pacific Heritage Tour and will travel from San Diego to other California ports of call in Ventura, Monterey, San Francisco, Vallejo, Jack London Square, Old Sacramento, Morro Bay, and the Channel Islands; and

WHEREAS, The mission of the San Salvador replica is to embody our community origin story by presenting the life and times of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the historic voyage of the San Salvador, our place in the beginnings of the modern world, and first contact between Europeans and Native American peoples of the west coast of North America; now, therefore, be it