From sails to subs: San Diego museum hosts ships from different seas and 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 hours and come as close as humanly possible to stepping into a Joseph Conrad novel, being with Russell Crowe on "Master and Commander" and getting a feel for Cold War submarine duty.

If your time is limited and your agenda in San Diego is filling fast — it always does — this is an easy side trip. 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 a mere 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 trio of masts and rising 21½ feet, gleam bleached-white 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. Quite grand for an old lady that circled the globe 21 times and was once trapped in ice off the coast of Alaska.