Maritime Museum of San Diego

Founded in 1948, the museum's centerpiece is the Star of India, an 1863 iron barque that the museum describes as both the oldest ship still sailing regularly and the oldest iron-hulled merchant ship still afloat anywhere. Alongside it sits the Berkeley, an 1898 ferryboat that now houses the museum's library and research archives, the steam yacht Medea from 1904, which served in both World Wars, and the Cold War-era submarine USS Dolphin.

The fleet also includes two well-known replicas: HMS Surprise, a 1970 frigate replica that appeared in the films Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean, and the San Salvador, a galleon replica launched in 2015 that reconstructs the ship Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542, an event also commemorated at Cabrillo National Monument across the bay. Because most of the vessels can be boarded and walked through, the museum tends to work well for visitors who prefer seeing and touching real ships over reading exhibit text.