San Diego Maritime Museum - Ships from Different Seas, Centuries

SAN DIEGO - The bay is filigreed with all variety of Navy ships and pleasure craft. Since 2004, the decommissioned USS Midway - a 972-foot aircraft carrier - has been permanently in the mix.

But the coolest thing to board might be the Maritime Museum of San Diego: You can tour a multivessel collection in just a couple of hours and come as close as humanly possible to stepping into a Joseph Conrad novel, being with Russell Crowe in "Master and Commander" and getting a feel for Cold War submarine duty.

The Maritime Museum is walking distance from many downtown hotels and just a stroll up Harbor Drive from Seaport Village and other waterside attractions. By the time you reach the beautiful old Amtrak station, you'll be drawn to the enormous white sails.

That billowing sight is the Star of India, the museum's star attraction. The three-masted barque was constructed on Britain's Isle of Man in 1863 as the Euterpe, a wood-and-iron trader fit for the open seas. After a few hair-raising voyages - it was heavily damaged in a storm off the coast of India - the ship specialized in hauling people and freight from Britain to New Zealand.

It was built for speed, was never fitted with backup engines, and managed to hold its own while the sea lanes were increasingly dominated by motorized ships. Its fastest passage to New Zealand was 21 days.

Different adventures followed. Between 1900 and 1920, rechristened the Star of India, it hauled fishermen and supplies from Oakland, Calif., to the Bering Sea, returning with tons of canned Alaskan salmon. Having outlived its usefulness, it was acquired in 1926 by the organization that runs the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park. After decades of decaying on the San Diego docks, the ship was restored and made seaworthy in 1976.

How seaworthy? It goes out two days a year - to keep its Guinness Book of Records status as "oldest active sailing ship" - manned by a volunteer crew.

The sails, unfurled from their masts and rising 21 1/2 feet, gleam in the sun; the rigging looks fresh and tight; the wooden decks scrubbed, the wheel and capstan polished. The stairway down from the main deck has a Victorian elegance, and the officers' polished-wood quarters and mess area have the feel of a floating B&B, not a rough-and-tumble freighter.

The good looks can be deceiving, though. The below-deck hold, devoid of cargo or passengers, doesn't convey how much the ship could transport nor how miserable life was for people packed like cattle on their long voyage to a new land.

But knowledgeable volunteers who swarm this ship and the others here are quick to tell you all you need to know and then some.

The dock to the Star of India takes you past the HMS Surprise, the full-size replica of a 24-gun British frigate that dates to the Napoleonic Wars. It was built in Nova Scotia in 1970 and eventually became a U.S. Coast Guard training vessel and PR photo op on the East Coast.

Decades later, it was spotted by 20th Century Fox, which bought it and sailed it to Southern California through the Panama Canal when the studio was laying plans for filming "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," based on the swashbuckling best-sellers by novelist Patrick O'Brian..

The main deck is the star - where Captain Jack Aubrey (Crowe) and others headed when scenes called for all hands aft. The obligatory figurehead perches on the prow; the ship's name is boastfully painted in gold on the stern. Walking it from end to end, below shadows cast by the sailcloth and webs of rigging, your imagination is ready for adventure.

Which is more than the ship physically is. The HMS Surprise floats but does not sail.

Boarding the B-39 Soviet submarine is different. You must pass through a Hula-Hoop-size opening to gain entrance: Space on the early '70s attack sub is so limited that the museum can't risk tubby tourists getting stuck.

The sub was decommissioned in 1994 and passed through Finnish and Canadian hands; a decade later it ended up here.

You don't realize how short 300 feet can be until you climb down the hatch into a slim thicket of pipes, wires, levers and spigots - it resembles a dingy clarinet turned inside-out. Torpedoes with "CCCP" (translation from Russian: USSR) line the sides, with work stations and bunks wedged here and there. This sub was diesel-electric powered, so it had that diesel odor and was louder than heck inside.

It was considered large in its day, but with 24 torpedoes and a crew of 78, every space was in use. The captain and the political officer had private cabins, each the size of a coat closet. Common seamen shared "hot bunks": When you woke up to start the workday, a crew member coming off duty would take the bed you kept warm. Only the paper sheets were changed occasionally.

The B-39's Foxtrot class was made outdated by the Soviet's Typhoon-class subs - the ones in the Tom Clancy novel-turned-movie "The Hunt for Red October." But subs like this one were front and center in Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" novel.

via azcentral.com

Posted via email from RealtorPeg