Container vessel motions need to be small when loading and offloading cargo while moored to wharfs. Waves and their reflections from structures can induce ship motions. These motions are characterized by six degrees of freedom, including translations of surge, sway, and heave and rotations of pitch, roll, and yaw. Monitoring and quantifying these motions offer a reference for design and selection of the mooring system and wharf types. To measure the six degrees of freedom motions of a container ship moored to a dock, a 1:50 scale model is moored to two types of dock, solid wall dock and pile supported dock. Irregular waves of TMA spectrum with various periods, heights, and directions are generated in the wave basin to induce the motions of the model container ship. Optical motion capturing cameras are used to measure and quantify the six degree of freedom motions. Results of the effects of wave period, significant wave height, and wave direction on the motion characteristics of the model container ship moored at the solid dock and a pile supported dock are described in detail. A numerical simulation called aNySIM is applied to numerically predict the motion characteristics of the container ship moored to a solid wall dock only. The physical model experimental results of solid dock are also compared with the numerical simulation. These comparisons indicate that the motion characteristics of the model container ship represent similar trends for both rotations and translations. The experimental and numerical prediction values of motions of the ship moored to a solid wall dock display the same tendencies while differing in magnitude.