Dom Fernando II e Glória is a wooden-hulled, 50-gun frigate of the Portuguese Navy. She was launched in 1843 and made her maiden voyage in 1845. Built at the shipyard of Daman in Portuguese India, it was Portugal’s last sailing warship to be built and also the last ship that undertook the Carreira da Índia (India Run), a regular military line that connected Portugal to its colonies in India since the beginning of the 16th century.
The ship remained in active service until 1878, when she made her last sea voyage, having travelled more than one hundred thousand miles, the equivalent of five circumnavigations of the world.
After long service it was almost destroyed by a fire in 1963 with the burned wooden-hull remaining beached at the mud-flats of the river Tagus for the next 29 years. Finally in 1990 the Portuguese Navy decided to restore her to her appearance in the 1850s. During the World Exhibition of 1998 the ship remained in Lisbon as a museum ship on the dependency of the Navy Museum, being classified as an Auxiliary Navy Unit (UAM 203). Since 2008, the ship lies on the southern margin of the Tagus river in Cacilhas, Almada.
In October 1990 the Portuguese Navy and the National Commission for the Commemoration of the Portuguese Discoveries initiated efforts in order of restoring the frigate as she was in the 1850s. On 22 January 1992, the wooden hull was removed from the mud-flats and set floating again, placed in a floating dock and transported to the dry dock of the Arsenal of Alfeite first, and in 1993 to the Ria-Marine shipyards in Aveiro, where it remained for the next 5 years being restored, receiving widespread public and private support. On 27 April 1998, Dom Fernando II e Glória was reinstated in the Portuguese Navy as an Auxiliary Navy Unit (UAM 203).
On 12 August 1998, it was delivered to the Navy Museum after being considered by Decree an Historical Navy Ship on 18 July 1998.[1] During its stay at Expo ’98 that marked the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, she was a major attraction being visited by almost 900,000 people.