TSS Earnslaw History

The lake’s lifeline

Her first job had nothing to do with tourism. The high-country stations around the lake had no road access, so the Earnslaw carried everything they needed and everything they produced: passengers, sheep, cattle, mail and supplies. Walter Peak High Country Farm, where the BBQ is held today, was one of those stations.

That work is where her nickname comes from. For decades she was the Lady of the Lake, the ship that kept the far shore connected to Queenstown and to the railway at Kingston.

Nearly scrapped, then saved

As roads reached more of the lake in the mid-twentieth century, her cargo work dried up. By 1968 she was close to being scrapped.

Fiordland Travel, the company now called RealNZ, leased her in 1969 and bought her in 1982. She has been restored since then with a light hand. In RealNZ’s words, “everything you see is pretty much like it was 100 years ago.” You can see what that means on the 90-minute TSS Earnslaw cruise, which gives you time to explore the whole ship.

A national landmark

Her heritage credentials are unusually strong for a working vessel:

• 1990: the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand recognised her as nationally significant engineering heritage.
• December 2017: the Ministry for Culture and Heritage named her a Tohu Whenua, one of twelve significant sites in Otago.

She also has a small film career. She played an Amazon riverboat in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and parts of the trawler SS Venture in Peter Jackson’s King Kong were inspired by her. The composer Ron Goodwin wrote his “Earnslaw Steam Theme” to the rhythm of her engines. Her passengers have included Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Bill Clinton.

Why she still burns coal

Yes, she is still coal-fired in 2026, and RealNZ is open about it being a problem.

An Otago Regional Council greenhouse gas inventory, prepared by Ernst & Young and reported by RNZ in June 2021, estimated her emissions at 4,076 tonnes CO₂-e between July 2018 and June 2019. That was about 1% of the Queenstown Lakes District’s transport emissions.

In October 2021 RealNZ’s then-chief executive, Stephen England-Hall, told 1News that “the boilers in this old girl do need to be replaced,” and that the company wanted to replace them with zero-emission technology. Wood pellets, biofuel, electric and hydrogen were all studied. A BusinessDesk report quoted a target of new boilers by summer 2026. That has not happened, and there is no public timeline for it now.

In November 2023 chief executive Dave Beeche called decarbonisation “an ongoing project” with “a bit of a tail on that.” The 2025 survey, the longest in her history at almost 20 weeks, took both 16-tonne engines out of the ship for the first time, re-tubed the existing boilers with 300 new tubes and fitted sealed roller bearings to improve efficiency. RealNZ’s sustainability page still calls the steamship “our biggest barrier to reaching our carbon reduction goals.”

If the emissions trouble you, the Spirit of Queenstown BBQ package reaches the same farm on a modern catamaran. Our vessel comparison covers what you give up and what you gain.

What you can still see on board

Most of her history is still working. On the crossing you can:

• Watch the engine room. You look down from a gallery onto the twin engines while the stokers feed the fireboxes. RealNZ says it is the part guests mention most, and the crew down there are the engineers who actually keep her running, not a display.
• Visit the Fo’c’sle Gallery, a small museum of historical photographs from her cargo years.
• Look into the bridge and listen to the skipper’s commentary on the peaks and stations along the shore.
• Stop at the Promenade Café and bar, and on some sailings join the singalong at the piano.

Her maiden-voyage anniversary falls on 18 October, a good day to be aboard if your dates line up.

The lake she sails

Lake Whakatipu is about 80 kilometres long and up to 380 metres deep, which puts its floor below sea level. The water in Queenstown Bay rises and falls by about 200 millimetres every 26.7 minutes, a seiche rather than a tide. Māori tradition explains it as the heartbeat of the giant Matau, whose burning body is said to have formed the lake’s shape.

The two peaks you cross beneath, Cecil Peak and Walter Peak, were named by William Rees, Queenstown’s first European settler, after his son Cecil Walter Rees.

For the full visitor guide to the ship, see our complete TSS Earnslaw guide. For departure times and the 2026 maintenance closure, see the TSS Earnslaw timetable. When you are ready to sail her, check availability.