Tall Ship ELISSA
1877 Tall Ship ELISSA at Texas Seaport Museum Credit Galveston Island CVB
Experience Galveston's maritime history daily.
Sitting snugly in the Galveston Historic Seaport your group will find the 1877 Tall Ship ELISSA, the 3-masted barque ship that is considered to be one of the oldest ships still sailing today.
Your group will be able to explore this ship plus its adjacent museum, Texas Seaport Museum, full of exhibits on sea commerce and immigration. In 2021 this museum is featuring a new interactive experience called Ship to Shore, which tells Galveston's rich immigration history through a new state-of-the-art experience. There are daily museum tours as well as daily tours of ELISSA and Galveston Harbor.
When touring Tall Ship ELISSA you will learn all about how she is one of only 3 ships of her kind in the world to still actively sail, a popular piece of history that welcomes over 40,000 guests annually. The square-rigged iron barque came from a scrapyard in Piraeus Harbor in the early 20th century, traveling from Greece to Galveston and undergoing a complete restoration. The ship was transformed from a rare, historic vessel into a floating museum that actively sails, allowing guests to actively 'explore the world of 19th-century sailing ships'. Allow yourselves to be immersed in ELISSA's history, the ship 'having visited Galveston in 1883 with a load of bananas from Tampico, Mexico'.
There are plenty of resources for teachers and field trip groups, with an onsite curriculum focus on history, math, and science.
