Wednesday, March 16, 2011

San Diego Maritime Museum

As we posted in our last blog we spent part of a nice sunny day on the waterfront in San Diego to view the ships that are part of the floating San Diego Maritime Museum.  It's quoted as being "one of the world's finest collections of historic ships."

Because Dick sailed in a submarine when he was in the Navy, our first stop had to be the USS Dolphin, SS 555.  The Dolphin is shorter and a little older than the boat Dick sailed on but it was exciting for him to go aboard and remember how tight things are in a submarine.


The control room was a lot different than the boat Dick was on.  Both are extremely crowded with little room to move around but this is the heart of the submarine operations.


The Dolphin has a very small galley and one table to feed the crew.  This is the mess hall and what you see is the cooking and cleaning area with the table on the left.

Down the wharf moored to another pier was a Soviet Attack Submarine B-39.  Quite interesting to see how the other side of the world sailed in a submarine.  This boat was commissioned in 1974 and was built in Sudomekh shipyard near Leningrad.  This boat was only 30' longer that the Gudgeon that Dick sailed on.

She had 6 torpedo tubes forward and 4 aft.

Just looking down through one of the compartments.


An interesting photo of the Star of India with the backdrop of San Diego, a little of the old and new.  The Star is the world's oldest active ship and has an all steel hull.  She was launched in 1863 and made 21 trips around the world.

Blue skies, white sails and lots of rigging on her 3 masts.

The Captain's stateroom was small but a lot larger than some of the few cabins in this deck of the boat.


Are you ready to climb the mast and rig the sails?  They take her out about two times a year.
H.M.S. Surprise (replica) is a 179' full rigged ship.  Her designers and builders made a painstaking effort to recreate a 24 gun frigate of Great Britain's Nelson era Royal Navy.


Glad we don't have to buy the rope in her rigging.

Ready to hoist the sails and sail away.

  We  walked through town, caught our trolley back to the car and headed home after another great day seeing another portion of our great Country.

To be continued...

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