Museum

Edwin Fox Maritime Museum

An 1853 teak sailing ship in dry dock on the waterfront — one of the oldest surviving merchant hulls anywhere.

Photo: Szilas / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

The museum is built around the hull of the Edwin Fox, which carried Crimean War troops, convicts to Western Australia and immigrants to New Zealand. Indoors, at Dunbar Wharf on the foreshore.

Rainy-day option
Good with kids
Near the ferry
No car needed
History

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At a glance

Cost: Admission charged — see the museum's own site for current prices and hours
Getting there: On foot from the ferry terminals and town centre
Address: Dunbar Wharf, 1 Auckland Street, on the Picton foreshore
Indoors: Yes — the ship sits under a protective roof
Owner: Marlborough District Council

The timber hold of the Edwin Fox, showing the lines of the old hull — Inside the hull of the Edwin Fox, launched 1853. Nickm57 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

About Edwin Fox Maritime Museum

The Edwin Fox was built of teak in 1853 and is recognised by the World Ship Trust as among the oldest surviving merchant ship hulls in the world (a claim not entirely uncontested — a handful of other historic ships make similar ones — but her age and survival are not in doubt). She carried troops in the Crimean War, convicts to Western Australia and immigrants to New Zealand before ending her days in Picton, where she is now dry-docked under cover and owned by the district council.

You walk through and around the hull itself, which is the point: the hold, the timbers, the copper sheathing. It is a few minutes on foot from the Interislander terminal, which makes it the obvious thing to do with an hour before or after a sailing, in any weather.