Chapel of Espírito Santo dos Mareantes

The Chapel of the Holy Spirit of Mariners — Capela do Espírito Santo dos Mareantes — is a small, plain, easy-to-miss chapel a couple of streets back from the harbour. It is part of what was once a medieval hospital and confraternity for the town's sailors, founded in the fourteenth century. The hospital is long gone; the chapel survives.

The exterior is unremarkable. The interior is whitewashed and simple — a single nave, a Mannerist altarpiece, a few painted azulejos. The real interest is the walls: scratched into the plaster behind the altar, on the columns, and around the doorways are dozens of faint outlines of ships from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries — caravels, naus, galleons — carved by sailors hoping that the Holy Spirit would bring them back from the next voyage. Some did not. The chapel is normally open only on Sunday mornings; the parish office across the square will open it on request.

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A story
In the late Middle Ages and into the seventeenth century, sailors departing Sesimbra would scratch the outlines of their ships into the chapel walls — a votive plea for safe return. Many never came back; the ship drawings remain. Some are detailed enough that maritime archaeologists have used them to identify hull types of vessels that fished the West African coast in the sixteenth century. The graffiti is faint and easily missed; bring a torch.