Maybe I'm saying this because a friend of mine works here, but this is a fabulous museum. It would take many hours to see everything. The museum is about life at sea from time immemorial to the present time.
But the most spectacular display is the USS Monitor, one of the first ever ironclad warships built during the US Civil War in the 1860s. Most famously, a duel between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia/Merrimack, the first ever fight between ironclads that was fought as a result of the Confederate States's attempt to break the Union blockade that was slowly strangulating the South. (The Battle of Hampton Road, March 9, 1862)
The fight ended with a draw: both ships were so heavily armoured, neither ship could sink the other. Still, it was a strategic win for the Union, as the Rebel ironclad could no longer sink Union ships with impunity. On the previous day of the battle, before the Monitor showed up, that's what happened.
Anyway, some months after the battle, both the ironclads sunk due to bad weather or accident. Recently, the Monitor was finally located. The Monitor at the bottom of the sea was slowly but surely decaying due to corrosion. So it was a race against time to preserve something of this sunken ship. They show a film about the effort to raise the turret of the ship in one of the theatres in the museum.
Just outside the main building of the museum, you'd find a mock up of the Monitor, giving you a good idea about the scale of the ship. We are so used to looking at 10,000 ton destroyers or even 100,000 ton cruise liners these days; so this ship might look tiny. And yet, this small vessel is no joke. She is a full blooded warship, designed purely from the point of functionality. In a way, both the Monitor and the Merrimack resemble today's stealth warships. The Merrimack's sloping armour made her very difficult to inflict any damage, as shells simply bounced off of it. The Monitor, with such a low silhouette, almost that of a submerged ship, could not easily be targeted. That the Merrimack managed to knock out the pilot house at all is incredible.
The Monitor mock-up. To uninitiated eyes, this ship might look boring, but she was meant to impress people solely by her fighting capabilities...
The above is a model showing what the turret from the USS Monitor was like when found. The real turret that was raised is preserved in a water tank at the back of the museum. I shd have taken a pic...
Another fabulous section was that of model warships by August and Winifred Crabtree. Meticulously built, they are a class of their own. Here is an ancient Egyptian ship I liked.
