A Tall Ship in Lisbon: INS Sudarshini's 22,000-Mile Argument for Sail Training

On 26 August 2026, the Ministry of Defence announced that the Indian Navy's sail training ship INS Sudarshini had concluded a three-day port call at Lisbon, Portugal on 25 August, as part of her ongoing Lokayan 26 transoceanic expedition. Her Commanding Officer called on Rear Admiral Miguel Bessa Pacheco, Commandant of the Portuguese Naval Academy, and Rear Admiral Joao Paulo Silva Pereira, Deputy Fleet Commander. Indian sea trainees visited the Escola Naval, the Portuguese Naval Academy, and the visit included a deck reception for Portuguese officials, the diplomatic corps and the Indian diaspora. Sudarshini had earlier called at Ponta Delgada in the Azores.

The obvious question is the interesting one. Why does a navy that operates nuclear submarines and supersonic cruise missiles still send officers to sea on a sailing ship?

What sail training actually teaches

The answer is not nostalgia, and a candidate who says "tradition" has missed the argument.

A sailing ship removes the machine from between the sailor and the sea. On a modern warship, the relationship between a decision and its consequence is mediated by engines, gyros, computers and a chain of specialists. On a square-rigged vessel, a trainee who misjudges the wind feels the ship respond within seconds, in their hands and under their feet. Weather stops being data on a display and becomes the thing that decides whether the day is possible.

Three specific competencies follow, and they are worth naming:

• Seamanship in its literal sense — an intuitive grasp of wind, sea state, momentum and the handling characteristics of a hull, which is precisely the intuition that modern automation lets an officer skip.
• Teamwork under physical risk. Setting or furling twenty sails is not an individual task. It requires a crew working aloft, at night, in weather, where an error is immediately dangerous to someone else. That is a leadership laboratory of a kind no simulator reproduces.
• Endurance and independence. A long ocean passage under sail imposes weeks of routine, discomfort and enforced self-reliance, far from shore support.

This is why almost every major navy — the United States with Eagle, Russia with Kruzenshtern, Portugal itself with Sagres — maintains a tall ship. It is a shared professional judgement, not a national eccentricity.

The ship and the squadron

Both ships belong to the First Training Squadron, based at Kochi — which is the reason to fix the naval commands in memory as a set: Western at Mumbai, Eastern at Visakhapatnam, Southern at Kochi as the training command, plus the tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command at Port Blair. A sail training ship belongs to the training command by definition.

Lokayan 26 is the current expedition: a roughly ten-month global voyage begun on 20 January 2026, planned across about 22,000 nautical miles, 13 countries and 18 ports, carrying over 200 Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard trainees. The name — lok plus ayan, a journey among people — states the purpose. Earlier legs took her to the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic; Lisbon is one port in a long chain.

The second job: a warship that is also an argument

A tall ship in a foreign harbour does something no destroyer can, and this is the part worth developing in an answer.

It is naval diplomacy without threat. A guided-missile destroyer entering a foreign port is a capability statement, and is read as one. A sailing ship is unarmed in any meaningful sense, is beautiful, and is open to visitors. It invites the public aboard rather than warning them off. The professional exchange still happens — cadet-to-cadet, academy-to-academy, as at the Escola Naval — but the register is cooperative rather than deterrent.

Three constituencies get reached in a single port call, and the release names all three: the host navy (institutional ties), the diplomatic community (the deck reception), and the Indian diaspora (a visible national presence). For a country pursuing influence in maritime regions, that is an efficient instrument.

And the Portugal connection carries its own weight. Portuguese and Indian maritime history is entangled from Vasco da Gama's arrival at Calicut in 1498 through four and a half centuries of Portuguese presence on the Indian coast, ending with Goa's liberation in 1961. That history is not uncomplicated, and a training ship exchanging courtesies at the Portuguese Naval Academy is a reasonable illustration of how states manage a shared past without pretending it was simple — a point worth making carefully in an interview rather than avoiding.

Placed in the wider frame, this is the soft end of the same maritime posture that runs through SAGAR and India's first-responder role in the Indian Ocean, and it belongs with the institutional material in the NDA general knowledge syllabus.

🔑 Revision block

The event. 25 August 2026 — INS Sudarshini concluded a three-day port call at Lisbon, Portugal during her Lokayan 26 transoceanic expedition (announced by MoD on 26 August). She had earlier called at Ponta Delgada in the Azores.

Who was met. Rear Admiral Miguel Bessa Pacheco, Commandant, Portuguese Naval Academy (Escola Naval); Rear Admiral Joao Paulo Silva Pereira, Deputy Fleet Commander.

The ship. Sail training ship, a barque; commissioned 27 January 2012; built by Goa Shipyard Limited; based at Kochi under Southern Naval Command; about 54 m, steel-hulled, 20 sails, roughly 1,035 sq m of sail area.

The sister ship. INS Tarangini, commissioned 1997 — the Navy's first sail training ship. Both are in the First Training Squadron at Kochi.

Lokayan 26. Began 20 January 2026; about ten months, roughly 22,000 nautical miles, 13 countries, 18 ports, over 200 Navy and Coast Guard trainees.

Why sail training survives. It removes the machine between sailor and sea. Teaches seamanship (intuition for wind, sea state and hull behaviour), teamwork under physical risk (working aloft at night, where error endangers others), and endurance and self-reliance on long passages. Major navies all maintain tall ships — US Eagle, Russia Kruzenshtern, Portugal Sagres.

Naval commands. Western — Mumbai · Eastern — Visakhapatnam · Southern — Kochi (training); tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command — Port Blair.

The diplomatic function. A tall ship is naval diplomacy without threat — unarmed, open to visitors, cooperative in register. One port call reaches three audiences: the host navy, the diplomatic corps, and the Indian diaspora.

The historical note. India–Portugal maritime history runs from Vasco da Gama at Calicut, 1498 to Goa's liberation in 1961.

🎯 Practice MCQs

Q1. INS Sudarshini is a: (a) sail training ship (b) guided-missile destroyer (c) survey vessel (d) diving support vessel → (a).

Q2. INS Sudarshini was commissioned in: (a) 2012 (b) 1997 (c) 2026 (d) 2005 → (a) — on 27 January.

Q3. The Navy's first sail training ship, sister to Sudarshini, is: (a) INS Tarangini (b) INS Nistar (c) INSV Tarini (d) INS Sagardhwani → (a) — commissioned in 1997.

Q4. INS Sudarshini was built by: (a) Goa Shipyard Limited (b) Mazagon Dock (c) Cochin Shipyard (d) Hindustan Shipyard → (a).

Q5. The First Training Squadron of the Indian Navy is based at: (a) Kochi (b) Mumbai (c) Visakhapatnam (d) Port Blair → (a) — under Southern Naval Command.

Q6. The Southern Naval Command is primarily the Navy's: (a) training command (b) submarine command (c) western fleet command (d) tri-service command → (a).

Q7. Lokayan 26 is planned to cover approximately: (a) 22,000 nautical miles across 13 countries (b) 2,200 nautical miles across 3 countries (c) 12,000 nautical miles across 5 countries (d) 50,000 nautical miles across 30 countries → (a).

Q8. A 'barque' is a sailing vessel with: (a) three masts, square-rigged on the forward two (b) a single mast (c) no square sails at all (d) five masts → (a).

Q9. The Portuguese Naval Academy visited by Indian trainees is known as: (a) Escola Naval (b) Sagres (c) Ponta Delgada (d) Torre de Belém → (a) — Sagres is Portugal's tall ship.

Q10. Vasco da Gama reached the Indian coast in 1498 at: (a) Calicut (b) Goa (c) Cochin (d) Surat → (a).

Q11. Which of these is a tall ship of another navy? (a) USCGC Eagle (b) INS Vikrant (c) HMS Queen Elizabeth (d) Charles de Gaulle → (a) — the United States Coast Guard's sail training ship.

Q12. The principal training value of a sail training ship is that it: (a) makes the consequence of a seamanship decision immediate and physical (b) is cheaper to operate (c) can carry more cadets (d) is faster than a warship → (a).

📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)

Naval-platform questions arrive in four shapes, and a training-ship item touches all of them. The ship-type item — matching a vessel to its role, where Sudarshini and Tarangini (sail training) are set against Nistar (diving support), Sagardhwani (research) and INSV Tarini (the sailing vessel used for women officers' circumnavigation) — the last being the most common confusion, since Tarini is an INSV, not an INS. The command item — naval commands and their headquarters. The shipyard item — Goa Shipyard, Mazagon Dock, Cochin Shipyard and HSL matched to their products. The expedition item — named voyages and what they commemorate.

The fresh 2026 hook is Lokayan 26 and its scale — 22,000 nautical miles, 13 countries, 18 ports, 200-plus trainees. A statement pair on Sudarshini's builder and base is the likeliest single item. As always, we describe the recurring pattern, not any exact past question.

Preparing for the NDA? Naval questions cluster around four attributes — type, yard, base and role — and a training ship is the easiest place to fix all four. Build the framework with our NDA general knowledge notes, follow the daily NDA current affairs, and train with our ex-officer faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.

✍️ Written by Col Vijyanat Thakur — Defence & strategic affairs faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk. The Cavalier, founded by ex-Army officers, has trained NDA/CDS/SSB aspirants since 2001 (Facebook · YouTube).

Source: PIB / Ministry of Defence, 26 August 2026. Ship particulars and expedition details cross-verified with independent sources.