Berkeley, Museum ship at Maritime Museum of San Diego, United States.

The Berkeley is a former ferryboat now preserved as a museum ship at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. The vessel features multiple decks with exhibits on maritime history and displays the machinery that powered early 20th-century passenger travel.

The ship was built in 1898 and served as a ferry between Oakland and San Francisco for the Southern Pacific Railroad until 1958. After leaving active service, it was preserved and became a lasting record of early 20th-century transportation.

The ship is named after Berkeley, the city on the bay's east shore, not after a city it served from the water. In Sausalito it housed a gift shop called "Trade Fair", and actor Sterling Hayden rented one of its pilot houses as an office while writing his autobiography Wanderer, published in 1963.

The ship is accessible via a walkway from the Maritime Museum and allows visitors to explore the interior of the former ferry. Plan enough time to walk through the different decks and view exhibits, especially if you want to see the restored machinery in detail.

Berkeley was the first propeller-driven ferry on the US west coast, and when launched on 18 October 1898 she was the largest commuter ferryboat in the United States, licensed for 1,700 passengers. Below deck, compressed air now drives much of the original machinery so visitors can watch it work, and one boiler is cut away to show its interior.