The National Maritime Museum

Abstract

When the Society for Nautical Research was founded in 1910, one of its objects was to work for the foundation of a National Maritime Museum. To many this must have seemed an unattainable star on which to focus their hopes, especially when a few years later the First World War broke out. However, fortune changed, and in 1928 the great Macpherson Collection of maritime prints and drawings came on the market. A fund was started to purchase it for the nation, but Sir James Caird, a wealthy shipowner, stepped in and bought the entire collection. Matters now really began to move. The Admiralty was anxious for more space in the Royal Naval College at Greenwich and this could only be obtained by removing the Royal Naval Museum, which had been transferred from Somerset House, and the Greenwich Hospital collection of paintings, which had been started in the Painted Hall in 1824. A new home was needed for these and for the Macpherson Collection, and then in 1933 the Greenwich Hospital School was moved to Holbrook, and the great range of buildings just across the road from the Royal Naval College became available. In the next year the National Maritime Museum was established by Act of Parliament and the conversion of the buildings was begun; but already fresh acquisitions had begun to come in. Sir James Caird bought such treasures as came on the market and, capably advised by the distinguished naval historian, Sir Geoffrey Callender, who was to become the first director of the museum, laid the foundations of a collection which has become the envy and admiration of maritime nations.