Maritime and city heritage

The Maritime and City Heritage collections cover different aspects of the city’s history and relationship with the sea. Highlights include the bone ship models and model guillotines, and an extensive collection of photographs.

The collections showcased are one of the new galleries created as part of our 2007 to 2008 ground floor refurbishment scheme. Visit our permanent galleries area now for more information about Plymouth: Port and Place.

The following are examples of some of the notable parts of the collections.

• The Harmsworth (1946) collection of ship models, including some exceptional Napoleonic French prisoner of war bone models (8) and straw-work boxes (6).
• There are a few notable objects associated with Robert Falcon Scott and Drake, including Scott's ski's from his 1902 Antarctic expedition and Drake's Drum, dating to the late 16th/early 17th century, it is the oldest side drum surviving in Britain.
• The Museum also has a fine range of Police equipment consisting of 12 truncheons, three beadle staves, 18 maces of offices and assorted material.

Maritime heritage

Plymouth has long been a maritime community with an international significance and outlook in terms of trade, emigration, conflict, exploration, ocean science, and has a culture grounded in the maritime tradition.

Maritime history is concerned with a three-way relationship between people, the sea and the land. Because of this, it encompasses many subject disciplines including art, archaeology, social history, natural history and science and technology.

Much of the maritime heritage collection is distributed within other subject specialism's and museum collection areas.