Star of India descriptive plaques at the San Diego Maritime Museum

Descriptive plate illustrating the decks and structure of the Star of India (originally Euterpe) at the San Diego Maritime Museum. Euterpe was built on the Isle of Man in 1863, during the same time as the US Civil War, and was initially used to take immigrants from England and Europe to areas such as Australia.

This plaque on board the Staar of India showed her sail plan. Dividing up the sail plan into a number of manageable sails helped a limited size of crew to handle them, but even so, furling sail in rough conditions was dangerous and exhausting work.

This cross-sectional view of the Star of India in another way of looking at her. After becoming less suited to the immigrant trade because of competition from steamers, the ship wound up in the Pacific northwest in the logging and salmon trades.