The school ship RKI Bima Suci (2017) This detailed 1:1250 scale miniature of the RKI „Bima Suci“ was built by the CSC workshop and is on display on deck 9 of the museum.
The Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia Angkatan Laut, TNI-AL) has its origins in Indonesia’s war of independence against the Dutch colonial power. It took place between 1945 and 1949, directly after the country had left behind the occupation by the Japanese Empire (1942-1945) during the Second World War. The navy is an extremely important branch of the Indonesian armed forces for obvious geographical reasons, and shortly after independence a major effort was made to develop it into a modern naval force.
An emblematic part of this effort was the commissioning in 1953 of a sail training ship, the barquentine KRI “Dewaruci”, the prefix KRI standing for Kapal Republik Indonesia (Ship of the Republic of Indonesia). The ship was built in Hamburg at the H.C. Stülcken shipyard. Her construction was started in 1932, delayed and abandoned after the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite a damage the ship was completed and commissioned in 1953 after the shipbuilding restrictions on Germany were lifted. She has had a long career in the meantime and because of her age the Indonesian Navy began planning the construction of a successor: the KRI „Bima Suci“.
The „Bima Suci“ was built at the Freire shipyard in the northern Spanish city of Vigo, launched on 18 September 2017 and commissioned shortly afterwards. She completed her voyage to Indonesia with 119 cadets on board. This magnificent sailor is rigged as a barque with 3,351 square meters of sails. She is 111.2 meters long and 13.65 meters wide. She has a MAN auxiliary engine with 1,754 hp. The main improvements compared to her predecessor are the navigation and communication systems and the desalination plants for the use of seawater on board. She is operated by a crew of 80 and 120 cadets in training. Although the „Bima Suci“ has been fully operational for over four years now, to our knowledge the „Dewaruci“ has not yet been decommissioned.