VANCOUVER – Visitors at the Vancouver Maritime Museum can take the St. Roch schooner for a spin through an Arctic pass in a new simulation exhibit.

The Wheelhouse Experience recreates the existing St. Roch wheelhouse, with five screens in place of the ship’s windows showing computer-generated imagery of the hull amid ice floes.

Visitors can steer the vessel past walruses and polar bears at a simulated speed of 14 knots, more than double the average speed that the St. Roch took in its journeys through the Northwest Passage, the museum says.

As well, a touchscreen offers an in-depth look at the ship, including areas below deck that are usually not open to the public.

Students from the master’s of digital design course at Vancouver’s Centre for Digital Media worked with U.K.-based exhibition designers Haley Sharpe Design to create the exhibit, located inside the museum beside the actual St. Roch.

Bill Haley of Haley Sharpe Design said the display brings the museum gallery to life “with the sounds and views of the sea.”

In a 1940-42 voyage, the B.C.-built St. Roch became the first vessel to sail the Northwest Passage from west to east.