Established | September 29, 2018 |
---|---|
Location | Morro Bay, California |
Coordinates | 35°22′13″N120°51′20″W / 35.37034°N 120.85547°W |
Type | Maritime museum |
Founder | Brent Roberts |
President | Bonnie Jones |
Owner | Morro Bay Maritime Museum Association |
Website | morrobaymaritime |
The Morro Bay Maritime Museum is a maritime museum in Morro Bay, California. It contains a variety of historic boats and items, some recording the history of Morro Bay itself. It has free entry but mainly supports itself via donations and sales from its merchandise shop. [1]
The museum was founded by Brent Roberts, in the early 1990s, who gathered a group of maritime history enthusiasts, calling them the Central Coast Maritime Museum Association (CCMMA). The association was incorporated as a public-benefit and non-profit organization in 1995. The board of trustees worked with the city leaders to find feasible areas in Morro Bay for a museum. The association also sponsored visits of large ships to the Morro Bay harbor. These ships include Hawaiian Chieftain , Lady Washington , and replicas of Niña , HMS Endeavour, and San Salvador . [2] The CCMMA also collaborated with NOAA and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to initiate the first manned dive on the SS Montebello. It now does business as the Morro Bay Maritime Museum.
The offices of the CCMMA were relocated to the museum in 2016 [3] and the interior of the museum officially opened on September 29, 2018, with the exterior being already available to the public for some time earlier. During the opening ceremony, the site was blessed by members of the Salinan tribe. [4] On October 6 of that same year, a weather balloon was launched by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company at the site, making it an official weather station. [5]
The museum was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, having to close its indoor exhibits. Despite this, it still was able to recuperate due to the presence of its outdoor ones. [1]
The museum's organization also hosts annual marine swap meets, in which members of the community can sell items such as kayaks and surfboards. [6]
Large boats are displayed outside and include the vessels: Alma , DSRV-2 Avalon, a 30' surf rescue boat, Spindrift , [5] a Salinan tule boat, [7] a replica two-person abalone submarine, and a bathysphere. [8]
The museum also contains displays of Morro Bay's military history and status as the former "Abalone Capital of the World," along with a 27 ft (8.2 m) long whale skeleton found on a beach in the 1970s [7] and mooring buoys. [8]
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was an Portuguese maritime explorer best known for investigations of the West Coast of North America, undertaken on behalf of the Spanish Empire. He was the first European to explore present-day California, navigating along the coast of California in 1542–1543 on his voyage from New Spain.
HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small number of museum ships that are still operational and thus capable of regular movement.
A maritime museum is a museum specializing in the display of objects relating to ships and travel on large bodies of water. A subcategory of maritime museums are naval museums, which focus on navies and the military use of the sea.
Mystic Seaport Museum or Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea in Mystic, Connecticut is the largest maritime museum in the United States. It is notable for its collection of sailing ships and boats and for the re-creation of the crafts and fabric of an entire 19th-century seaport village. It consists of more than 60 historic buildings, most of them rare commercial structures moved to the 19-acre (0.077 km2) site and meticulously restored.
Salcombe is a resort town in the South Hams district of Devon, south west England. The town is close to the mouth of the Kingsbridge Estuary, mostly built on the steep west side of the estuary. It lies within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The town's extensive waterfront and the naturally sheltered harbour formed by the estuary gave rise to its success as a boat and shipbuilding and sailing port and, in modern times, tourism especially in the form of pleasure boats and yachting. The town is also home to a traditional shellfish fishing industry. The town is part of the electoral ward of Salcombe and Malborough, for which the 2011 census recorded a total population of 3,353.
San Diego Bay is a natural harbor and deepwater port located in San Diego County, California near the U.S.–Mexico border. The bay, which is 12 miles (19 km) long and 1 to 3 miles wide, is the third largest of the three large, protected natural bays on California's 840 miles (1,350 km) of coastline, after San Francisco Bay and Humboldt Bay. The highly urbanized land adjacent to the bay includes the city of San Diego and four other cities: National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and Coronado. The bay is considered to be one of the premier natural harbors on the West Coast.
The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park is located in San Francisco, California, United States. The park includes a fleet of historic vessels, a visitor center, a maritime museum, and a library/research facility. Formerly referred to as the San Francisco Maritime Museum, the collections were acquired by the National Park Service in 1978. The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park was authorized in 1988; the maritime museum is among the park's many cultural resources. The park also incorporates the Aquatic Park Historic District, bounded by Van Ness Avenue, Polk Street, and Hyde Street.
The landing craft, vehicle, personnel (LCVP) or Higgins boat was a landing craft used extensively by the Allied forces in amphibious landings in World War II. Typically constructed from plywood, this shallow-draft, barge-like boat could ferry a roughly platoon-sized complement of 36 men to shore at 12 knots. Men generally entered the boat by climbing down a cargo net hung from the side of their troop transport; they exited by charging down the boat's lowered bow ramp.
Morro Rock is a volcanic plug in Morro Bay, California, on the Pacific Coast at the entrance to Morro Bay harbor. A causeway connects it with the shore, making it a tied island. The rock is protected as the Morro Rock State Preserve.
The Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) is a federally operated maritime museum in Darling Harbour, Sydney. After considering the idea of establishing a maritime museum, the federal government announced that a national maritime museum would be constructed at Darling Harbour, tied into the New South Wales state government's redevelopment of the area for the Australian bicentenary in 1988. The museum building was designed by Philip Cox, and although an opening date of 1988 was initially set, construction delays, cost overruns, and disagreements between the state and federal governments over funding responsibility pushed the opening to 1991.
The Maritime Museum of San Diego, established in 1948, preserves one of the largest collections of historic sea vessels in the United States. Located on the San Diego Bay, the centerpiece of the museum's collection is the Star of India, an 1863 iron bark. The museum maintains the MacMullen Library and Research Archives aboard the 1898 ferryboat Berkeley. The museum also publishes the quarterly peer-reviewed journal Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History.
The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde is Denmark's national ship museum for ships of the prehistoric and medieval period.
The National Museum of the United States Navy, or U.S. Navy Museum for short, is the flagship museum of the United States Navy and is located in the former Breech Mechanism Shop of the old Naval Gun Factory on the grounds of the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., United States.
TitanicBelfast is a visitor attraction opened in 2012, a monument to Belfast's maritime heritage on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard in the city's Titanic Quarter where the RMS Titanic was built. It tells the stories of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank during her maiden voyage in 1912, and her sister ships RMS Olympic and HMHS Britannic. The building contains more than 12,000 square metres (130,000 sq ft) of floor space, most of which is occupied by a series of galleries, private function rooms and community facilities.
The Ma'agan Michael Ship is a well-preserved 5th-century BCE boat discovered off the coast of Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael, Israel, in 1985. The ship was excavated and its timber immersed in preservation tanks at the University of Haifa, undergoing a seven-year process of impregnation by heated polyethylene glycol (PEG). In March 1999, the boat was reassembled and transferred to a dedicated wing built at the Hecht Museum, on the grounds of the university. The boat has provided researchers with insights into ancient methods of shipbuilding and the evolution of anchors.
Trillium is a side wheeler ferry operated by the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Now 114 years old, she is one of several Toronto Island ferries operating between the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal at Bay Street and Queens Quay and three landing points on the Toronto Islands. She is the last sidewheel-propelled vessel on the Great Lakes.
The National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico opened on September 26, 2015, is a non-profit interactive maritime museum dedicated to the maritime heritage and culture of the Gulf of Mexico. The 120,000 square foot museum, located on the riverfront in downtown Mobile, Alabama, is designed to look as if it were a ship headed into Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The museum features 90 interactive exhibits, simulators, theaters and artifact displays, complemented by artifacts and memorabilia displayed throughout "multiple decks" inside a full-sized replica of a container ship, displayed as if dockside. GulfQuest also features a museum store, a museum café and several event spaces.