The South Australian Maritime Museum is a state government museum, part of the History Trust of South Australia. The Museum opened in 1986 in a collection of historic buildings in the heart of Port Adelaide, South Australia's first heritage precinct.
The SA Maritime Museum's offices in Lipson Street, built in 1888.
The Museum presents exhibitions in a pair of adjoining stone bond stores, built in the 1850s.[1] It offers visitors the opportunity to climb the Port Adelaide lighthouse that was built in 1869 and originally stood at the entrance to the Port River. Cruises are provided for school groups in the naval launch Archie Badenoch (built 1942) and periodically for the public in the steam tug Yelta (built 1949). The Museum presents an active program of changing exhibitions, tours of the museum and of the Torrens Island Quarantine Station, vacation performances, schools programs and events including historic dinners, music and theatre. It has a reputation as an interactive museum that delivers imaginative programming.
Exhibitions focus on the exploration of the southern coast and the voyages of Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin, the experiences of immigrants coming to Australia in the 1830s, 1910s and 1950s, health and medicine at sea, the colonial navy of South Australia of the 19th century, the world wars of the 20th century, the ketch traders that served southern ports from the 19th century to the 1960s, life in port, and the ecology of the Port River dolphins. Among its many artifacts is Matthew Flinders' "Best Bower" anchor, which was lost in 1803 and recovered by the Underwater Explorers Club in 1973.
The Maritime Museum also preserves the Weman Sailmakers loft (1864), and has its offices in the former Commercial Bank building (1888), both in Lipson Street, across from the Museum.
Collection
The Maritime Museum builds on the legacy of previous organisations including the Port Adelaide Institute. The Museum holds in trust, a collection that the Institute founded in 1872 and is now the oldest nautical collection in Australia.
Today, the Museum's collection includes more than 20,000 objects that represent voyages that shaped the map and moments that shaped daily life. The collection includes Captain Cook’s travelling chest, the plaque that Matthew Flinders left at Memory Cove in 1802 to mourn the loss of seafarers, the trophy that Hilda Harvey won for the 1930 Swim Through the Port, and the boots that once belonged to ketch skipper Skug Cutler.
Exploration is one of the strengths of the collection with objects from the voyages of Macasssan seafarers, Nicolas Baudin, Matthew Flinders, and John Franklin. The colonial navy of South Australia is another strength including the contingent that took HMCS Protector to the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The Museum preserves 17 figureheads, the largest collection in Australia with the earliest being the Ville de Bourdeaux, built in 1836. The Museum holds very good collections of vintage swimwear, material from the Adelaide Steamship Company, from the Gulf Trip that offered tours from 1906 to 1955, and the grain trade which delivered wheat and barley to Europe by windjammers rounding Cape Horn in sail up until 1949. It also holds an extensive maritime archaeology collection which has been transferred to it by the South Australian government's Heritage Unit.
Exhibitions
In 2016 the Museum hosted the inaugural showing of a two-year national travelling exhibition from the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle du Havre, celebrating the French explorer Nicolas Baudin's 1800—1804 voyage, which included his mapping of the southern coast of Australia, and his meeting with Matthew Flinders at Encounter Bay in present-day South Australia.[2][3]
Vessels
The Maritime Museum provides cruises on two vessels: the steam tug Yelta and the navy work boat Archie Badenoch. Yelta was built at Cockatoo Island Dockyard in 1949 and fitted with a steam engine that had been built for a corvette but was left surplus when the war ended. Archie Badenoch was built by GMH's Birkenhead factory in 1942 for the Royal Australian Navy and was later used as South Australia's police rescue launch. The oldest vessels in the collection are the timber ketch Annie Watt that was built in 1870 and the iron trader Nelcebee that was shipped from Scotland in parts and launched in Port Adelaide's Inner Harbor in 1883. Both are stored on hard stand. The collection also includes Sir James Hardy’s championship sailing dinghies, fishing cutters and a naval whaler.
Couper-Smartt, J (February 2003). Port Adelaide: Tales from a "Commodious Harbour". Friends of the South Australian Maritime Museum Inc. ISBN0-646-42058-5.
Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet was a French Navy officer. He circumnavigated the earth, and in 1811 published the first map to show a full outline of the coastline of Australia.
Nicolas Thomas Baudin was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer.
Gulf St Vincent, sometimes incorrectly referred to as St Vincent Gulf, St Vincent's Gulf or Gulf of St Vincent, is the eastern of two large inlets of water on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, the other being the larger Spencer Gulf, from which it is separated by Yorke Peninsula. On its eastern side the gulf is bordered by the Adelaide Plains and the Fleurieu Peninsula. To the south it is defined by a line from Troubridge Point on Yorke Peninsula to Cape Jervis on Fleurieu Peninsula. Its entrances from the southwest are from Investigator Strait, and to the southeast from Backstairs Passage, which separate Kangaroo Island from the mainland. Adelaide, the South Australian capital, lies midway along the gulf's east shore. Other towns located on the gulf, from west to east include Edithburgh, Port Vincent, Ardrossan and Port Wakefield and Normanville.
Encounter Bay is a bay in the Australian state of South Australia located on the state's south central coast about 100 kilometres (62 mi) south of the state capital of Adelaide. It was named by Matthew Flinders after his encounter on 8 April 1802 with Nicolas Baudin, the commander of the Baudin expedition of 1800–03. It is the site of both the mouth of the River Murray and the regional city of Victor Harbor. It is one of four ‘historic bays’ located on the South Australian coast.
City of Adelaide is a clipper ship, built in Sunderland, England, and launched on 7 May 1864. It was built by William Pile, Hay and Co. for transporting passengers and goods between Britain and Australia. Between 1864 and 1887, the ship made 23 annual return voyages from London and Plymouth to Adelaide, South Australia and played an important part in the immigration of Australia. On the return voyages she carried passengers, wool, and copper from Adelaide and Port Augusta to London. From 1869 to 1885 she was part of Harrold Brothers' "Adelaide Line" of clippers.
American River is a town in the Australian state of South Australia located on the western shore of Eastern Cove on Kangaroo Island.
Baron Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin was a rear admiral of the French navy and later a Baron. He commanded numerous naval expeditions and battles with the British Navy as well as exploratory voyages in the Indian Ocean and the South Seas.
Captain Matthew Flinders was an English navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of the landmass that is now known as Australia. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land, a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.
The Baudin expedition of 1800 to 1803 was a French expedition to map the coast of New Holland. Nicolas Baudin was selected as leader in October 1800. The expedition started with two ships, Géographe, captained by Baudin, and Naturaliste captained by Jacques Hamelin, and was accompanied by nine zoologists and botanists, including Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour, François Péron and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur as well as the geographer Pierre Faure.
The New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui A Tangaroa is a maritime museum in Auckland, New Zealand. It is located on Hobson Wharf, adjacent to the Viaduct Harbour in central Auckland. It houses exhibitions spanning New Zealand's maritime history, from the first Polynesian explorers and settlers to modern day triumphs at the America's Cup. Its Maori name is 'Te Huiteanaui-A-Tangaroa' – holder of the treasures of Tangaroa.
HMS Investigator was the mercantile Fram, launched in 1795, which the Royal Navy purchased in 1798 and renamed HMS Xenophon, and then in 1801 converted to a survey ship under the name HMS Investigator. In 1802, under the command of Matthew Flinders, she was the first ship to circumnavigate Australia. The Navy sold her in 1810 and she returned to mercantile service under the name Xenophon. She was probably broken up c.1872.
Géographe was a 20-gun Serpente-class corvette of the French Navy. She was named Uranie in 1797, and renamed Galatée in 1799, still on her building site. Her builder refused to launch her, as he had not been paid to that time. Finally launched in June 1800, she was renamed Géographe on 23 August 1800.
Naturaliste was one of the two-vessel Salamandre-class of galiotes à bombes of the French Navy. Under Jacques Hamelin, and together with Géographe she took part in the exploration of Australia of Nicolas Baudin.
Port Victoria Maritime Museum is a maritime museum in the Australian state of South Australia located on the west coast of Yorke Peninsula in Port Victoria. It is housed in the original general cargo shed which was brought out from England in kit form in 1877 and was erected at the landward end of the jetty. The jetty took only seven months to build and was completed in January 1878. Household goods for the early settlers in the town and surrounding farmlands were brought by steamers from Port Adelaide and stored in the cargo shed until the settlers’ homes were completed.
Allen Island is one of the South Wellesley Islands, in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria. It was named by Matthew Flinders after John Allen, a Derbyshire miner who was a member of the party of naturalists that accompanied the 1801–1803 voyage of HMS Investigator under Flinders. Flinders landed a party of botanists on the island on 20 November 1802 to search for plants.
The HMS Investigator Anchors are the two anchors that jettisoned from HMS Investigator on the morning of Saturday 21 May 1803 by her commander, Matthew Flinders, in order to avoid running aground on Middle Island in the Archipelago of the Recherche on the south coast of New Holland. In 1973, the anchors were located and recovered by members of the Underwater Explorers Club of South Australia (UEC). The recovered anchors became the subject of an ownership dispute between various governments, particularly those of South Australia and Western Australia due to their historic significance as artefacts of a major voyage of European exploration. The dispute was resolved with the ownership of the anchors going to the Australian Government who subsequently gifted one of the anchors to the South Australian Government. The pair of artefacts is also known as Flinders' Anchors.
The MV Nelcebee is an auxiliary schooner that served the South Australian coastal trade from 1893 to 1982.
Yelta is a steam tug which operated in the Australian state of South Australia from 1949 to 1976 within both the Port River and the waters of Gulf St Vincent immediately adjoining the river's mouth. After being laid up for about nine years, she was purchased in 1985 by the Government of South Australia for addition to the collection of the South Australian Maritime Museum as a museum ship. As of 1985, she was considered to be the only remaining steam-powered tug operating within Australian waters.
The Mosquito Fleet was the fleet of small ketches and schooners operating in the shallow coastal and gulf waters of South Australia, from the colony's establishment in 1836 until 1982.
Peter David Monteath is an Australian historian and academic. He is a professor in Modern European History at Flinders University in South Australia. Monteath's research interests are in modern European and Australian history. He has a particular interest in prisoners of war, internment, and the German presence in Australia and has written extensively on these subjects.
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