San Diego Maritime Museum

The Star of India, the keystone of the San Diego Maritime Museum,

with Soviet Submarine and the ferry Berkely in the background

On the Sunday of our San Diego trip, we had planned a quick trip to the San Diego Maritime Museum to get some pictures of the passenger quarters of the Star of India, followed by lunch at Anthony's Fish Grotto next door and a whirlwind tour of the Wild Animal Park on the way home. The Maritime Museum has added some features since the last time we saw it, when it had only the Star of India, the Berkely and the Medea, so we scrapped the Wild Animal Park plan in favor of spending the afternoon at the museum, as well.

The Star of India began life as the Euterpe and transported passengers from England to New Zealand. The below-decks area has sections fitted out to represent the various passenger accommodations on the trip. Since our ancestral Isaacs family made a similar voyage from England to Australia, the bunks are probably very much like the ones they used, so I got some photos for my family history project.


Single passenger bunks were very narrow and separated by a low divider from the adjoining bunk. When Martha traveled with her two daughters, she may have had a double bunk like the one on the bottom left. It's about the width of a modern twin bed. Samuel would have had a single.

View from a porthole of the Star of India: the Soviet Sub and the HMS Surprise from the movie Master and Commander

After lunch, Evan and I went aboard the Soviet Sub. It is marginally more spacious than WWII era American submarines we've toured, but not as well appointed as more recent American subs. (If you ever find yourself anywhere near Groton, Connecticut, you should go see the US Navy Submarine Force Museum, which is where they keep the historic USS Nautilus, among others.) Ducking through the oval hatches gracefully required a bit of a knack, which I never quite got.

Torpedo tubes

The HMS Surprise was originally built as a training vessel, the Rose, and was acquired for the purposes of making a movie. Changes made for filming rendered it unseaworthy, so the museum's staff is working on restoring it to sail with the Star of India and the Californian, a replica revenue cutter.

The HMS Surprise

In the meantime, the museum has fitted up the below-decks areas with tableaux and displays to take advantage of some of the movie props they got along with the ship.

Cannon, run out

Another notable addition to the museum package is a harbor tour aboard a pilot boat appropriately dubbed "Pilot." For aircraft carrier afficionados, especially a San Diego Harbor cruise is a treat. Three nuclear flattops were berthed at North Island Naval Air Station, and the World War II carrier the Midway is a permanently-docked museum at Navy Pier, right next to the cruise ship ports.

The Midway, with the San Diego Skyline in the background