Essex Shipbuilding Museum, Maritime museum in Essex, United States.

The Essex Shipbuilding Museum documents shipbuilding in a New England harbor town through ship models, historical tools, and photographs. The collections show how craftspeople there built wooden vessels, many of which fished on the open ocean.

Essex built more wooden fishing schooners between 1668 and the twentieth century than any other place in America, and the museum keeps that record through models, half hulls and shipyard dioramas. The Evelina M. Goulart, an Essex-built schooner launched in 1927, survives as an example of the trade.

The museum's name comes from the town's trade: between 1668 and the twentieth century Essex built more wooden fishing schooners than any other place in America. Displays of antique tools, photographs and shipyard dioramas show that work, and the schooner Evelina M. Goulart, built in Essex in 1927, is part of the collection.

The location offers visitors a chance to learn traditional building techniques through interactive demonstrations and programs held from late spring through fall. Comfortable walkways connect the exhibition space with the workshops of the adjacent active boatyard.

A working boatbuilding shop run by the Story family operates right next to the exhibitions, practicing the same craft maintained for centuries there. Visitors can watch actual craftspeople at work from the pathways.