Essex Shipbuilding Museum

Essex Shipbuilding Museum is a maritime history museum and preservation campus on the Essex River, centered on the historic A.D. Story shipyard. Essex became one of North America’s best-known centers of wooden vessel construction, especially fishing schooners, and the shipyard site has been used for shipbuilding since at least 1813. The museum developed from the Essex Historical Society, added its shipbuilding mission in 1976, and later brought the Story shipyard into its campus.

Visitors can explore exhibits, tools, ship models, photographs, archival material, and traditional boatbuilding work that connect local craftsmanship with the wider maritime economy of New England. The museum also preserves historic Essex-built vessels, including the 1927 schooner Evelina M. Goulart. Because the collections and demonstrations occupy an authentic working waterfront, the site offers a particularly tangible view of how wooden ships were designed, built, launched, and used.