One day last week we visited the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro.
Allow plenty of time when visiting this Museum  for there is much history of Los Angeles Harbor and San Pedro to be discovered  here.  It is located in what originally was the Ferry Building that for  22 years moved people, from 1941 to 1963, to Terminal Island.
 Now it is home to one of the largest maritime  museum in California.  
With its long naval tradition there is, naturally enough, one whole room devoted to carefully accurate models of  the warships that once had their home berths in San Pedro.   And a special exhibit of the USS Los Angeles, a World War ll heavy cruiser which was built in San Pedro.This room devoted to the U.S. Navy  is currently being redone.
Movie buffs will enjoy a model of the S S Poseidon which was used in the making of the film "The Poseidon Adventure".  The model is 22 feet long,  battery powered, and cost $30,000 to build.   After the movie was completed it was donated to the museum by 20th Century Fox.
There are also photos and models from other Hollywood films that were filmed around San Pedro.
San Pedro was once the center of a large fishing industry and canneries were there to process the catch of the fishermen.  Large photos show the  men and women cannery workers of an earlier era .
There is a large exhibition displaying how the Los Angeles Harbor was created and also a study of the early days of commercial diving and the equipment used at that time.
Clustered around the museum there is the American Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial, and the Memorial for the Fishermen who were lost at sea. 
The Los Angeles Maritime  Museum is located at Berth 84 at the Foot of Sixth Street in San Pedro and is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  For more information check the web at www.lamaritimemuseum.org.