Museum ship
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- This article is about original ships that are preserved and can be toured by the public. For ships that are not original see Ship replica. For preserved incomplete ships or and smaller boats see Ships preserved in museums.
A museum ship, or sometimes memorial ship, is an old ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public. There are several hundred of these around the world, often associated with maritime museums.
Despite the long history of sea travel, the ravages of the elements and the expense of maintenance has resulted in the destruction of nearly all the ships that were ever built, usually by being broken up and sold for scrap. Only a few have survived, sometimes because of historical significance, but more often simply due to luck and circumstance.
Since an old ship tied up at dockside, without attention, will still decay and eventually sink, the practice of recent years has been to form some sort of preservation society, solicit donations from governments and the wealthy, organize volunteer labor from the enthusiasts, and open the restored ship to visitors, usually for a fee.
The restorations have presented an interesting set of problems for historians, who are frequently asked for advice, and the results periodically generate some controversy. For instance, the rigging of sailing ships has almost never survived, and so the rigging plan must be reconstructed from various sources.
Typically the visitor enters via gangplank, wanders around on the deck, then goes below, usually precariously down the original stairways, giving a sense of how the crew got around. The interior features restored but inactivated equipment, enhanced with mementos including old photographs, interesting pages from the ship's logs, menus, and the like. Some will add recorded sound effects to heighten the sense of "being there."
A number of the larger museum ships have begun to offer hosting for weddings, meetings, and other events, sleepovers, and on a few ships still seaworthy, cruises. In this category is the Constitution's annual "turnaround," where the old ship is towed out into the harbor and brought back in facing the other way, so as to weather evenly. A place on the deck is by invitation only, and highly prized.
The tourism appeal of a city waterfront graced by an interesting old vessel is such that most port cities of the world now have at least one museum ship, even if it has meant building a replica ship at great expense.
The first museum ship is reported to be Jason's Argo, which after his expedition for the Golden Fleece, was preserved on a beach and shown to visitors for ages afterwards.
[edit] Notable museum ships
- Main article: List of museum ships
- RMS Queen Mary - Long Beach, Ocean Liner
- HMS Belfast - London, cruiser
- USS Constitution - Boston, oldest commissioned warship afloat
- Cutty Sark - Greenwich, only surviving clipper ship
- Mayflower - Plymouth, Pilgrims ship (replica)
- USS Midway - San Diego, largest aircraft carrier museum.
- USS New Jersey - Camden, New Jersey, one of the longest-serving battleships of the 20th Century.
- USS Missouri - Pearl Harbor, battleship where Japanese signed their surrender of World War II
- USS Nautilus - Groton, Connecticut, first nuclear-powered submarine
- USS Hornet - Alameda, California, aircraft carrier that served in WWII and Vietnam; served as recovery ship for Apollo 11
- USS Yorktown - Charleston, South Carolina, air craft carrier, launched in 1943.
- Star of India - San Diego, oldest active tall ship (1863)
- Elissa - Galveston, Texas, one of the oldest active tall ships (1877) and a U.S. National Historic Landmark
- Regalskeppet Vasa - Stockholm, the worlds only preserved 17th century warship
- HMS Victory - Portsmouth, like museum ships, HMS Victory is open to the public, but she is the flagship of the Royal Navy and the oldest ship in commission in any navy [1].
- Bluenose II - Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
- USCGC Taney - Last U.S. ship still afloat that was present during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
- USS Texas (BB-35) - La Porte, Texas, Oldest surviving dreadnought battleship, and one of only two ships remaining to have served in both World Wars .
- USS Intrepid - New York City, aircraft carrier
- Peking, a four masted barque, Flying P-Liner, South Street Seaport, New York
- HNoMS Rap - Horten, Norway, first torpedo boat
- USS Lexington - Corpus Christi, Texas, United States, World War II aircraft carrier
- HMY Britannia - Edinburgh, the last Royal Yacht of United Kingdom
- HMCS Sackville - Halifax, the last remaining WWII escort corvette
- Russian cruiser Aurora - St. Petersburg, Russia, fired the first shot of the October Revolution
- SS Great Britain - Bristol, a Brunel design, the first ocean-going ship to have a screw propellor and iron hull.
- USS North Carolina - Wilmington, North Carolina; a World War II battleship that served in every campaign of the Pacific Theater.
- USS Massachusetts - Fall River, Massachusetts
- Hiddensee - Fall River, Massachusetts; the only Tarantul I class Russian missile corvette on public display in the world.
- USS Slater (DE-766) - The USS Slater is currently the only memorial/museum Destroyer Escort ship still afloat.
- USS Wisconsin (BB-64) - The USS Wisconsin is currently on loan to Nauticus, The National Maritime Center located in Norfolk, Virginia.
- USS Cod located in Cleveland,Ohio
Life Cycle of a Navy Ship |
Service Life |
Ship naming and launching | Ship commissioning | Ship decommissioning |
After Decommissioning |
Reserve fleet | Scrapping | Recycling | Scuttling or Weapons testing | Museum ship |