Maritime Museum of San Diego: Star of India, HMS Surprise and Submarines

Lined up bow-to-stern along the North Embarcadero right between Waterfront Park and Broadway Pier, the tall wooden and iron masts of the Maritime Museum of San Diego form one of the finest floating collections of historic vessels in the world. While the neighboring USS Midway Museum focuses on twentieth-century naval jet aviation, the Maritime Museum lets you walk across interconnected wooden floating docks to board nearly a dozen ships spanning centuries of maritime exploration, merchant sailing, steam luxury, and Cold War submarine history. Best of all, your single admission ticket covers boarding every stationary vessel docked along the pier.

The 1863 Star of India and the HMS Surprise Frigate

The flagship of the fleet is the Star of India, built on the Isle of Man in 1863 as the full-rigged iron merchant ship Euterpe. Having sailed around the globe twenty-one times carrying emigrants to New Zealand and salmon from Alaska without ever having an engine installed, she is the world's oldest active sailing ship, still taken out to sea under full canvas by volunteer crews of San Diego sailors. Walking her teak weather deck and descending into the cramped tween-deck emigrant cabins and cargo hold gives a vivid sense of nineteenth-century ocean crossings.

Docked right alongside her is the HMS Surprise, a meticulous wooden replica of an eighteenth-century twenty-four-gun British Royal Navy frigate. Film fans immediately recognize her decks as the hero ship from the Academy Award-winning film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World as well as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Next door sits a full-scale floating reconstruction of the San Salvador, the sixteenth-century Spanish galleon that Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542 when he landed at Point Loma.

The 1898 Berkeley Ferry, 1904 Steam Yacht Medea and Submarines

Your ticket entry gate actually sits aboard the 1898 steam ferryboat Berkeley, which carried commuters across San Francisco Bay for sixty years, including evacuating thousands of survivors after the 1906 earthquake, before being towed south. Her ornate Victorian upper passenger deck with stained-glass clerestory windows now houses maritime exhibitions and ship models.

Walk down the gangways to inspect two completely different eras of marine engineering:

• The 1904 Scottish Steam Yacht Medea: One of the last surviving luxury Edwardian steam yachts in the world, featuring polished mahogany salons and brass boiler machinery that served in both World Wars.
• The USS Dolphin (AGSS-555): A deep-diving U.S. Navy research submarine commissioned in 1968 that holds the world depth record for conventional submarines and the deepest torpedo launch in history. Stepping down the hatch lets you walk through a genuine Cold War control room packed with analog dials, sonar consoles, and periscopes.

Getting There and Optional Historic Bay Boat Rides

The museum sits on North Harbor Drive at Ash Street, a five-minute walk west from the County Center/Little Italy or Santa Fe Depot MTS Trolley stations and ten minutes from the cafés of Little Italy. Visitors can also add an optional forty-five-minute bay cruise aboard the 1914 Harbor Pilot boat or a Vietnam-era Navy Swift Boat.