Inside the Maritime Collection Tour

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Enjoy exclusive guided access inside the Museum’s storage facilities at Wharf 7 (adjacent to the Museum) to explore, up-close and personal, fabulous hidden gems that are part of the 160,000 objects in the National Maritime Collection, and which are not on general public display.

Wearing white cotton gloves, experience the unique opportunity of handling a four-hundred-year-old legendary silver “piece of eight” together with other iconic salvaged artifacts and coins from the “1600s to 1800s age of sail”.

Just recently added to the tour, peruse up close, scores of amazing ship and boat models representing navy, commerce, sport and exploration, from the early days of sail through to the 2000s. See shipbuilders’ marvellous half-block models used to determine hull design details, schooner “America” of 1851 Americas Cup fame, Flinders’ “Investigator”, Darwin’s “Beagle”, legendary clipper “Cutty Sark”, HMAS”Sydney I” and SMS”Emden”, container ship “Tampa” of 2001 refugee rescue drama, an incredible 1800s model made from mutton bones by POWs of the Napoleonic Wars, and so much more.

The IMC tour covers over a hundred historic large and small objects from a broad range of maritime interest areas, and includes a fabulous delicate hand embroidery of Cpt Cook’s famous voyages attributed to his wife Elizabeth, scrimshaw from the 1800s, and salvaged artifacts from the legendary “Batavia”, “Endeavour” and “Dunbar”, together with a selection of coastal Indigenous objects.