The National Museum of the Royal Navy museums and attractions are now open - please check museum pages for opening times.
Pre-booking is essential and we encourage visitors to wear masks for their safety and the safety of others.
HMS Caroline remains temporarily closed. Find The Latest COVID-19 Updates Here.
Get into the spooky spirit with spine-chilling storytelling this October half term at the Fleet Air Arm Museum
Aviation enthusiasts, young explorers and Halloween lovers will be chilled to their bones this October half term by the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s (FAAM) family activities.
Alongside the four under cover halls, packed full of historic aircraft and thought-provoking exhibits, visitors can also climb aboard some of the aircraft.
Little-known story of the Royal Navy’s heroic coastal forces in both World Wars told for the first time in major new gallery at Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower
Eliza Bunt was one of the many women of the 1800s who lived on board Royal Navy ships with their husbands, without actually being listed as crew.
She was married to a boatswain called John Bunt who in 1816 was appointed boatswain for the Royal Navy dockyard in Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
With the figureheads safely transported to their temporary homes for conservation the hard work was about to begin.
From the surface alone it was clear that many of the figureheads would need extensive work before being fit for display.
Experts at Orbis Conservation decided to trial the use of sonic tomography, a method normally applied for measuring decay cavities within living trees. Using King William and Topaze, they concluded suitable accuracy from their results.
For years, Devonport’s figureheads had stood proudly in the old dockyard fire station at Devonport Naval Heritage Centre.
A main attraction, visitors would be led into the building where they would walk between the figureheads, gazing up at them in their magnitude as sailors would have once done as they walked along the quayside, some 200 years ago.
As wooden vessels were broken up and figureheads removed from the bow of the ship, many were absorbed into the Royal Navy collection. In Plymouth, several were housed at Devonport Naval Heritage Centre on public display.
But while protected from the coastal elements inside the old Fire Station, the building was not fit for purpose. Gradually the figureheads began to degrade amid growing concern that they and their stories, some of which feature below, would be lost to the collection forever.
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