Aiming at the problem of inaccurate positioning caused by nonlinear model and multi-source disturbance of dynamic positioning (DP) vessel model, a robust adaptive anti-disturbance control method based on passive elegant extended state observer (PEESO) was proposed, which takes into account the characteristics of different disturbances and their responses in the nonlinear model. Firstly, the DP vessel model and multi-source disturbance model were established, and a PEESO was designed to estimate the vessel states and multi-source disturbance in real time according to the system model. Secondly, based on the model and estimated values of vessel state and disturbance, the dynamic surface control technique was introduced and the robust adaptive term was designed in the control law to compensate the estimation error. Finally, it was proven that all error signals of the DP closed-loop cascade system are consistent and ultimately bounded. The simulation results showed that the method is superior to the traditional ESO in disturbance estimation and state estimation, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed control method.