The Ship of Light

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1962

Because the electrical supply was not sufficient to meet the needs of the population of Tenerife, in September 1962 the Empresa Nacional de Electricidad sent the ship Nuestra Señora de La Luz to the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which was moored in front of the Farola del Mar, to function from there as a genuine power station supplying the demanded energy. 

The vessel was an old frigate built in 1943 in a Massachusetts (USA) shipyard, specialised in anti-submarine warfare during the Second World War. It was later ceded by the United States to the British Royal Navy, which used it as an escort ship. The ship was definitively acquired by the Instituto Nacional de Industria of Spain in February 1949, becoming a power station, supplying electricity first to Cartagena (Murcia), then to Barcelona, later to San Fernando (Cádiz) and, finally, in 1962 it arrived at the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

From the port of Tenerife it began supplying electrical energy to the cities and towns of the island, becoming for 11 years a fundamental element for the daily life of all the inhabitants. In April 1973 it was sold to the Termoeléctrica de Lanzarote company, in order to supply electricity to the water treatment plant, and in 1975 it went on to provide its services to UNELCO, from its mooring in Puerto Naos.

The Ship of Light, as it was familiarly known, was an element that, apart from its functional character, became, during a little more than a decade that it was active, a true landmark for Santa Cruz of that time.

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