The GCW Tour, Sydney & New Zealand: Museum Day, Part 1 -- The Edwin Fox Maritime Musuem

The Edwin Fox was a sailing ship built in the last decades of sailing ships. It went around the world thirty-four times and carried tea from Calcutta to London, booze from London to Calcutta, soldiers to the Crimean War, injured veterans back from the Crimean war, and immigrants and convicts from England to Australia and New Zealand. 

Eventually, shipping technologies got better and the Edwin Fox was retrofitted to provide refrigerator storage for slaughtered sheep awaiting shipment from New Zealand to England. When refrigeration technology improved to the point that refrigeration buildings were built, the Edwin Fox was again retrofitted, this time stripped of pretty much everything save for its hull which allowed it to be used to store coal for the refrigerators.

And in the 1960s it was sold for a penny to a group that wanted to preserve it. They, of course, had no money for the preservation, the hulk was dragged around the New Zealand for a few more decades until a home was found and it could be permanently landed and turned into a museum.

It's a pretty cool museum. There's a small building that shows a movie about the boat and has a few bits and pieces, but it's the dry dock with the boat that's worth seeing. They've restored a small portion of the bow to give a sense of life aboard, but the rest has been left as it was found. Well worth $15 and ninety minutes...

A model of the Edwin Fox in its day

Steerage class -- as many as six people would sleep in each box

Iron straps were added for the Crimean War

All the wood is Indian teak, and the timbers are huge when they
aren't rotted