Star exhibit

Port Chalmers Maritime Museum curator Norman Ledgerwood (right), of Dunedin, and model maker John Harrison, of Arrowtown, examine the detail on a model of the French Corvette Astrolabe at the Port Chalmers museum yesterday.

The $700 model was the final piece to be installed in the museum’s "Last Port to Antarctica" exhibition.

Mr Harrison said the model, which featured 814 clove hitch knots, took 700 hours to make.

"Basically, it was a year in progress putting it together.

"It is all made from timber."

French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville sailed the real Astrolabe to Otakau, in Otago Harbour, on March 30, 1840, on his return from the Antarctic.

He was the first Antarctic explorer to visit Otago Harbour.

The exhibition also included a typewriter believed to have been used by Ernest Shackleton, and a  bottle from the Richard Byrd exploration.

It was "fantastic" the ship had arrived to make the exhibition complete, Mr Ledgerwood said.