LISBON — The keel of a grounded boat and the structure that holds it upright frame an interesting view of the Tagus River from a small shipyard that I’ve been meaning to visit for a long time.
This is not your typical scene along Lisbon’s waterfront.
The brutal increase of tourism over the past decade has transformed my hometown in many ways. The Tagus shoreline hasn’t been immune to the changes. New restaurants, hotels and nightclubs now dominate an area that used to be the home of maritime and commercial businesses.
But this little patch of land where boats get fixed up in the Bélem area has been here for as long as I can remember.
It is full of all sorts of boats in need of repair, from yachts and motorboats to wooden sailboats that seem to have been here for years.
The day I arrived to document the scene, it was almost deserted. I saw a person working under one of the boats, cans of paint, and tools from repair jobs waiting to be completed.
When I was making this drawing, someone asked me who I was and “why are you drawing those cans?”
I was told that permission is required to take pictures, but when I showed my sketchbook, they left me alone with a smile.
The big cranes that transport boats to land for repairs caught my eye right away. Another person I showed my sketch to commented “it looks like a boat funeral,” adding that even the mast of the sailboat resembled a cross.
I stumbled upon some traces of Lisbon’s history: two stone columns from the 1940 Portuguese World Exhibition, a fair which aimed to celebrate the “Estado Novo” regime — a dictatorship that lasted 41 years in Portugal — and its imperial dream.
Hidden among the big sailboats and motorboats, I spotted a small boat in pretty bad shape. The hull, full of holes, had lost its paint a long time ago. Unlike other boats with handpainted names still showing, this one had lost its name.
A boat without a name is a boat that doesn’t exist. Maybe that’s why I wanted to draw her and the rest of the shipyard in my notebook. So this place can be remembered before it disappears.
