Posted at 26th March 2008 22:11Maritime Museums
A natural break in the Parliamentary progression of the Broads Authority’s Private Bill provides a decent interval to look around at a few other topics. There have been several comments on a Speaker’s Corner thread about the contribution that museums make to preserving our maritime heritage and this seems as good an opportunity as any to express my own, entirely personally held observations about maritime museums in general.
Wooden structures are by definition renewable and where salt is a decent preservative; museums steadily destroy wooden craft. They either dry out in public viewing galleries and get brittle or suffer rain water incursion when displayed outside. If any of you have trouble following this, you may like to consider Cutty Sark. Before the fire, the Museum Service had allowed the old tea clipper to deteriorate appallingly; embarrassingly … there just aren’t enough adjectives to express my utter disgust. Her masts had worn their way through the keel to rest on the concrete base of her dry dock. A new and entirely unsympathetic plywood based deck replacement dating from the 1970s leaked and permitted unnoticed rainwater incursion. This isn’t such a problem in an operational vessel – in the words of the prophet – the best cure for a deck leak is to put a bunk underneath. The rainwater incursion into Cutty Sark caused the iron frames of her composite construction to deteriorate and rust badly – without effective remedial action. As the frames rusted and expanded, they pulled the fastenings through the planking, leaving holes large enough for pigeons to enter. This was both a national disgrace and a thoroughly undignified process for either a fine ship or a Grade 1 listed building. Then they managed a bonfire, which should have been the saving grace of this most elegant vessel. Not a bit of it. After promises of funding in the region of £35m, mainly apparently from the Heritage Lottery, the best the museum service can come up with is a tourist attraction, which must eventually suffer just the same fate. The caff under an old hull hoisted ten feet in the air doesn’t impress greatly either. £10m less than the available funding would have provided an entirely rebuilt seaworthy version. How proud would you feel if, whilst you were on holiday abroad, this magnificent vessel sailed into harbour wearing her red ensign? The ship would have lasted longer too.
There are of course some archeological exceptions, such as the Mary Rose or the Bronze Age boat in Dover museum that have to remain static exhibits. But as far as modern craft are concerned, unless museums manage to use their vessels, all are guilty of gradually destroying the very exhibits that they are charged with preserving. Bad enough in itself but it gets worse. Museums, custodians of our heritage, only manage to pass on a fraction of the heritage that any vessel has to offer. Boats on land don’t even closely resemble the same thing afloat. In the civilized surroundings of a museum, you can see them and if you’re lucky, touch them but everything beyond that point is overlooked by the museum. Put a boat in the water, the sails fill, it moves; it lives. Handling skills need to be learned and preserved - how many individuals today know how to tack for example a large, dipping lug? Beyond that, we also need to preserve the skills that built and maintained our national stock of historic vessels to ensure authentic renewal. None of these are addressed by museums pretending to preserve our maritime heritage.
Who still feels like handing over hard-earned cash to maritime museums? It’s much better both for the boat and its associated heritage if you wait until you can find a worthy cause run by an organisation actually prepared to use the craft. Did anyone mention a Great Yarmouth one design that wasn’t being looked after properly?
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Category: Tourism.