Museum Ships Locations Locator Map and Directory

A museum ship or a memorial ship is a historically significant boat that has ben preserved and/or restored in order to allow visits from the general public. Visitors flock to museum ships for both educational purposes (e.g. school trips and academic research) and memorial purposes (e.g. to commemorate fallen soldiers). Some museum ships are still operational and allow visitors to sail them, experiencing the ship as it was originally intended to be used. Other memorial ships, such as aircraft carriers and battleships, are sometimes used for recruitment and training purposes.

There are hundreds of museum ships in the world, including around 170 in North America. Many of them are former Navy vessels that have been classified under the Historic Naval Ships Association (HSNA). However, a good number of museum ships had no military purpose and were privately owned for commercial or recreational purposes, including merchant ships, tugboats, lightships, and sailboats. Most of the ships mapped here are associated with a maritime museum or serve as a maritime museum themselves. Maritime museums such as Mystic Seaport, Historic Ships in Baltimore, and the San Diego Maritime Museum own entire fleets of museum ships.