Maritime history at maritime museums

The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines museums as buildings in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic or cultural interest are stored and exhibited. ¹ The aimless collection of curiosities and bric-a-brac brought together without method or system was a feature of certain famous collections of bygone days. They were miscellanies with little didactic value; their arrangement was unscientific, and the public gained little or no advantage from their existence. The modern museum differs essentially from its earlier prototypes. It is organized for the public good, and should be a fruitful source of amusement and instruction for the whole community. The remarkable growth and development of museums in the late nineteenth century, and more especially in the twentieth century, synchronized with the advance of education. Besides famous art galleries, like the Tate in London and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, and traditional ‘supermuseums’ like the British Museum in London, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the Haus der Geschichte in Berlin, with their wide-ranging collections, the second half of the twentieth century saw the establishment of many specialized museums like agricultural, mining, transport and maritime museums, to name a few. This new type of museum required a new type of curator with special knowledge and special training. At the same time, collecting items and exhibiting objects was no longer deemed sufficient. Conservation, restoration of objects and research into their origin and their history, as well as embedding them into the national and international context are today’s requirement. Modern museums have specialised libraries and lecture halls, arrange conferences and invite scholars to make use of their collections and different facilities.

Adopted in 2007, the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) definition of a museum states that:

a museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.

Today more than ever, museums are at the heart of cultural, social and economic issues in contemporary societies.

They must face unique challenges related to their social, political and ecological environment.

Museums play a key role in development through education and democratisation, while also serving as witnesses of the past and guardians of humanity’s treasures for future generations.

ICOM’s vision is a world where the importance of natural and cultural heritage is universally valued.

The International Council of Museums ensures the protection, conservation and transmission of cultural goods.

The organisation shares with Humanity the universal value of collections conserved in museums. ICOM contributes to the knowledge and transmission of identity and heritage values specific to each culture. ²

Research is a requirement for every museum that adheres to the demands and vision of the ICOM. The extent, width and depth of research differ, of course, from museum to museum, as does the organisational structure. Much depends on a variety of factors like vision, scope, size, personnel and financial backing. A national museum has many more possibilities than a local or regional museum with a limited mission.

Looking closely at museums that have specialized maritime or naval missions, one has to take into account the different function, whether they are topical, or local, regional and national, players. ³ The local museums, for example, in Stavanger, Hull, Kiel and Flensburg concentrate on the maritime past and present of these towns. The research conducted in these museums is devoted to their collections and the presentation of the exhibits. But they are quite often not very successful in placing their theme in a broader historical context. If they manage to produce a catalogue, the distribution of these publications is limited. Seldom do they reach the review section of the major historical and/or maritime journals The same holds true for the private naval museum in Wilhelmshaven, where a collection of naval items relating to Germany’s naval past are presented and managed by just two full-time scholars. Therefore, cooperation with other institutes and scholars is part of the academic programme. The museum, however, has its own publication series, which comprises monographs and conference proceedings. ⁴ The smaller museums rarely have the personnel, time or expertise to lift their research to a national or even international level. This observation holds true for museums in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

With the establishment of Maritime History as an academic sub-discipline in various countries, and the growing recognition of the importance of these studies at some universities, maritime research has improved in quality. Very important in this context was the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project at Memorial University of Newfoundland in the 1970s and 1980s. In six consecutive conferences, a large number of scholars, university historians and museum curators documented impressively that maritime history had moved far away from the antiquarian approach that still dominated the work of many maritime museums. For the next four decades, one of the most successful stimulating, energetic and challenging promoters of this new approach was Skip Fischer, who should have been here at this conference in Rethymnon, but to our great sorrow passed away two months ago. We all do miss him very much as a friend and as a leading maritime historian of our time. He was a good advisor to many of us here in the audience, and helped with our academic careers where he could. Whatever we owe him personally he was the master of ceremonies for the subject of maritime history as such.

For almost 25 years Skip was, as the founding member, the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Maritime History, and from 1991 he was the series editor of ‘Research in Maritime History’, which extended to more than 50 volumes. In the preface to the first issue of the new Journal Skip and Helge Nordvik reminded readers that it was at the 9th International Congress of Economic History in Berne in 1986 that the group of scholars present discussed the historical profession and the place of maritime history in this context. In particular, the group identified a number of problems that imposed constraints on the development of maritime history as a viable sub-discipline. One of the main problems was the lack of communication between practitioners scattered throughout many different types of institutions and in many countries. Several measures to alter this state of affairs were taken. But the most important issue raised was the request for a journal that could serve as a medium through which the growing number of maritime social and economic historians could communicate the results of their research to colleagues. Right from the beginning, scholars based at maritime museums were invited to serve on the editorial board as an indication that maritime history as an academic research subject had reached the maritime museums. Universities and museums were moving closer to each other. Especially in Britain there existed a longer tradition of close cooperation between these two institutions than on the continent. The Liverpool University influence on maritime economic historians and the Liverpool Maritime Museum, as it was called in those days, is well known. Scholars like Francis Hyde, Sheila Mariner, Peter Davies, Robert Lee on the one side, and Mike Stammers, Adrian Jarvis and others tied strong bonds between maritime history at the university and the museum. This model of cooperation influenced the new directions in maritime history in Britain, Europe and North America. In 1996, the Centre for Port and Maritime History was set up as a collaborative venture between Liverpool John Moores University, Merseyside Maritime Museum and the University of Liverpool. The Centre undertakes historical research on port cities and examines their relationship to maritime ventures and entreprises. It conducts research into:

urban history especially the history of Dublin;

marketing and advertising in the British merchant marine;

Liverpool shipping and Empire in the twentieth century;

collaboration with the Elder Dempster Pensioner’s Association. The aim is to create a collection of oral histories and ephemera, which will record the history of the Elder Dempster Lines and the British shipping to West Africa during the twentieth century.

Visual Voyages. This Merseyside Maritime Museum funded project analyses the marketing strategies of the British shipping companies from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries through the industry’s poster art. ⁵

In the late 1970s, maritime museums on the continent made serious and successful attempts to catch up with the standards and quality of maritime research at university level. In Germany, a new name was created for museums with a special focus on academic research. After hiring more than half a dozen scholars in various disciplines, the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven applied sucessfully in 1980 to be recognised as a Research Museum by the so called ‘Blaue Liste’, a forerunner of the Leibniz Association of 1990, finanzced by the Federal Government. Showcasing science was, and remains, in the interest of the state.

The Leibniz Association connects 93 independent research institutions that range in focus from the natural, engineering and environmental sciences via economics, spatial and social sciences to the humanities. Leibniz Institutes address issues of social, economic and ecological relevance. They conduct knowledge-driven and applied basic research, maintain scientific infrastructure and provide research-based services.

The Leibniz Association identifies focus areas for knowledge transfer to policy-makers, academia, business and the public. Leibniz institutions collaborate intensively with universities – in the form of ‘Leibniz ScienceCampi’ (thematic partnerships between university and non-university research institutes), for example – as well as with industry and other partners at home and abroad.

They are subject to an independent evaluation procedure that is unparalleled in its transparency. Due to the importance of the institutions for the country as a whole, they are funded jointly by the Federation and the Länder, employing some 18,700 individuals, including 9,500 researchers. The entire budget of all the institutes is approximately 1.8 billion Euros. ⁶

In Bremerhaven a research program was decided upon and overlooked by an Advisory Board comprising about 10 scholars, mainly university teachers and colleagues from other relevant museums, such as those in the Netherlands and Denmark. Cooperation with the universities of Hamburg and Hannover started, with members of the scientific staff regularly holding lectures. In 2002, the Board of Trustees, the Advisory Board and the University of Bremen appointed in a selective process a new Director, Lars U. Scholl, who was to become the first holder of the newly created Chair in Maritime History, the first of its kind in Germany. Taking advantage of the possibilities opened up by this new role, four major research fields were defined: the ‘Hanse Cog’, ‘German maritime activities during the Age of Discovery’, the ‘Interwar period 1919-1939’, and ‘Marine Art’, together with the establishment of a PhD programme. Within the first decade, more than a dozen researchers were awarded doctorates, their research having been initiated by the museum/Bremen University, or in collaboration with the University of Hamburg. One major project was a new business history of the Rickmers Shipbuilding and Shipping Company, with three PhDs meeting international standards of business history in the first project of its kind in Germany. Another project that was international in scope was the two-volume History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, which involved contributors from many maritime museums and British, Danish, Icelandic German and American universities. The results were published in the German Maritime Studies series, in conjunction with the North Atlantic Fisheries History Association, with David J. Starkey of Hull University and Ingo Heidbrink the driving forces behind this project. Heidbrink started his academic career at the German Maritime Museum before moving to Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, to become a professor of maritime history.

The dissemination of knowledge is an important aspect of research in museums. At Bremerhaven, the permanent exhibition was overhauled to focus on making research activities transparent and understandable for visitors, while special exhibitions dealt with various topics in more depth. External experts handled didactic aspects, and the museum’s publications were available in several corners of the building for visitors to study and deepen their knowledge. The museum provided intensive support to schoolteachers and university colleagues to enable them to disseminate knowledge generated by its national and international projects to the pupils and students they taught.

From 2013 onwards, under a new director, the main theme of the museum’s research became ‘Men and the Sea’. The focus is now on the variable and far reaching consequences of humankind’s relationship with the sea, mainly from the perspective of disciplines other than History. Research and communication emphasize value and social importance. New scholars were hired each for two or three years according to the needs of a particular project, and a new position of a junior professor at Bremen University was created. Staff have published articles in various journals, but monographs are no longer produced in Schriftenreihe, the museum’s publication series, which was founded in the 1970s. ⁷

Another scholar who started his academic career as a curator at a museum is Poul Holm, now Professor of Environmental History at Trinity College Dublin. His current research interest is North Atlantic fisheries c.1400–1700, and more generally the interdisciplinary combination of marine science and history. He started his career at the Fisheries and Maritime Museum in Esbjerg, Denmark. Like Bremerhaven, this museum joined forces with high education institutes, firstly the University of Ǻrhus and later with the University of Southern Denmark in the 1990s, with which it founded the Centre for Maritime and Regional Studies, with Jaap Bruijn and Lars U. Scholl serving as external advisors on the advisory board. More than half a dozen PhD theses were completed up to 2012. In 2016, the centre changed its name to The Centre for Maritime and Business History, on the basis of a new partnership between the University of Southern Denmark, the Fisheries and Maritime Museum and the Danish Museum of Industry in Horsens. Researchers at the centre are working on a variety of different topics in the fields of maritime and business history, with an emphasis on Danish cases in an international perspective. The methods applied are drawn from a range of different traditions, from economic history through political history to cultural and intellectual history. The centre has a particular focus on the strengthening of national networks and cooperation within the fields, and not least between researchers in museums and university departments. Sǿren Byskow and Mette Guldberg are the two senior researchers in the fields of maritime, fisheries and cultural history. Current research projects deal with the Danish-Dutch trade relations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but unfortunately the extensive PhD programme of the centre’s first decade has shrunk considerably. The history department has been moved to Odense, where Martin Rheinheimer still studies maritime and regional history. ⁸ The former Director of the Fisheries and Shipping Museum, and driving force behind the foundation of the centre, Morten Hahn-Pedersen, has retired.

Morten, together with Harald Hamre from Stavanger Maritime Museum, initiated the North Sea Society, an organisation that embraces more than 10 maritime museums around the North Sea. The idea was to find out if there were enough common themes that were worth pursuing together. Regular conferences were held at which papers of common interest were presented, with PhD students and other younger scholars invited to take part in poster sessions. The foundations were laid in Norway in 1978–1979 with two historical conferences, the proceedings of which were published in 1985. ⁹ The 8th North Sea History Conference was held in Bremerhaven in 2005, with the papers published as volume 5 in the German Maritime Studies series. ¹⁰

It is quite astonishing that the Danish National Maritime Museum in Elsinore, which was known as Handels og Søfartsmuseet until 2011, was not pursuing research in Maritime History. Perhaps its removal from Elsinore Castle to new premises, designed around a former dry dock in Elsinore in 2013, left no time for the type of academic research that had formerly been undertaken by Henning Henningsen, Hanne Poulsen and colleagues. Within a short time, the new museum, which is now named M/S Museet for Søfart, had three directors. The present director Ulla Tofte, a trained historian with a longstanding family background of seafarers from Marstal on isle of Ærø, arranged an exhibition for children of the age between 3 and 12 called Drømmeskibet (Dreamship), which opened on 2 October 2018. The idea is that children, with grandparents and other adults, come to the museum and learn much about their seafaring ancestors. ¹¹ Seafaring is presented in a game-like and adventurous manner at a child’s level.

Even a relatively small museum like the Bergen Maritime Museum is proud of its research tradition and has been involved in several large research projects. The museum aims to strengthen its research activities by collaborating with the Norwegian School of Economics and University of Bergen, as well as other relevant research institutions nationally and internationally. The museum has published the Norwegian Yearbook of Maritime History since 1965, with Lauritz Pettersen and Atle Thowsen as editors. Their books on the Norwegian merchant fleet during the war, 1939–1945, are important contributions to Norway’s maritime history.

Since 2010, Leos Müller has been Director of the Centre for Maritime Studies, Stockholm, a joint centre of Stockholm University and the Swedish Maritime Museums (SMM; the Maritime Museum, Naval Museum and Vasa Museum form part of the Swedish National Museum). The Centre carries out research, supervises PhD projects and collaborates closely with the maritime museums in Stockholm. It co-organizes the Maritime Seminar Series at the SMM, and has an external expert role in SMM exhibitions. Current research projects focus on early Nordic shipping, different concepts of neutrality, and the so-called Leagues of Armed Neutrality, 1780–1783 and 1800–1801.

Research constitutes an integral element of the SMM’s activities. It is primarily the Cultural Heritage Unit that works with matters relating to research, and it endeavours to develop partnerships with higher education institutions, supports the production of exhibitions, assists in putting together the museums’ lecture programmes and acts as an internal support in matters concerning knowledge and scientific approaches. The SMM’s research has recently focused on submarines (from both historical and archaeological perspectives), waste in the sea, modern shipwrecks and the impact of the Cold War on Blekinge. Historical archaeology research is also being conducted into the wreck of the Vasa, in conjunction with universities in Sweden, Denmark, the United States and the UK, while scientific research into the technology used in the Vasa’s long-term preservation is being undertaken in close collaboration with Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. ¹²

Looking at the Netherlands, one is surprised to note that the Maritime Museum Prins Hendrik in Rotterdam is not involved in maritime research according to its website. It takes prides in its large collection of ship models, printed sea maps and its collection of approximately 850,000 objects. Until recently, the museum was engaged in a five-year research initiative with Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which entailed the appointment of a research position at the University. This was initiated by Frits Loomeijer, the Museum’s Chief Executive Officer, who retired in July 2018. What plans his successor, Bert Boer, has for the future remains to be seen. ¹³ As a curator, Jeroen ter Brugge was responsible for the research programme in the Maritime Museum Rotterdam, all of which relate to its extensive collection, which reflects Dutch maritime activity and culture in the past and present and through which new insights and surprising stories are shared with a wide audience.

The situation at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam is somewhat chaotic and it is very difficult to predict further developments. After 2013, the number of visitors started to decline and director Willem Bijleveld, who had supervised the renovation of 2011, departed after a tenure of eighteen years. The museum was criticised for having become too commercial for a cultural institution and having been turned into an amusement park. The ‘Raad van Cultuur’ – a government board that monitors cultural activity in the Netherlands and advises the government on subsidies for museums – judged that the Scheepvaartmuseum had focused too much on entertainment and not enough on its task as a museum.

The next director was Pauline Krikke, the former mayor of Arnhem and a prominent member of the VVD, a centre-right political party that was senior partner in the second Rutte cabinet. Krikke came into conflict with the management team of the museum and the ‘Raad van Toezicht’ (Board of Supervision) concerning a perceived lack of communication. During a confrontation on 15 November 2015, the management team expressed its lack of confidence in Krikke, who resigned. The former director of the Rembrandt House Museum, Michael Huijser, was appointed as the new director of the museum. Several senior members of the staff resigned and left the museum, which is struggling to get back on its feet again. Joost Schokkenbroek, who left the museum after 26 years, began his curatorial career in 1988 at the Kendall Whaling Museum in Sharon, Massachusetts. Later, he became the curator of material culture and then, as Head Curator, he was responsible for the science programmes at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. He initiated an innovative collaboration with the Vrije University in Amsterdam, whereby he retained his curatorship at the Museum and was appointed Professor of Maritime History and Maritime Heritage at the university. He was one of the senior editors of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History. In 2018, he was appointed Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. He was succeeded in Amsterdam by Jeroen ter Brugge.

Research at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich (NMM) ranges from curatorial research on new acquisitions, online projects, publications, galleries and exhibitions to the specific project research of its many doctoral students and research fellows (funded by the Museum’s own Fellowship programme). There are also major funded research projects, such as the Longitude Project, and smaller funded schemes to digitize and catalogue sections of the NMM’s vast collections. There exists a vibrant programme of conferences, lectures and seminars, often in partnership with a wide range of external institutions, ensuring that the research being undertaken at NMM is disseminated to a wide audience. At the same time, the NMM keeps up with the latest academic thinking in the Museum’s various subject areas of maritime history, science history and technology and art. Each year, its Research Newsletter is published in print and online, which gives a very good overview of all this varied research activity.

The Museum’s publications are of a high standard, examples being Margarette Lincoln’s Naval Wives and Mistresses, and the excellent catalogue Turner & the Sea, which accompanied the 2013 exhibition of the same title. ¹⁴ Christine Riding’s Art and the War at Sea is a very important contribution to the largely neglected cultural history of maritime conflict, while Nigel Rigby, Pieter van der Merwe and Glyn Williams have co-authored two scholarly books on Cook and Pacific exploration. ¹⁵ Nigel – who, like Margarette Lincoln, has recently retired from the NMM – has led a number of research initiatives relating to Pacific exploration, the most recent being an investigation into ‘Joseph Banks, Science, Culture and the Remaking of the Indo-Pacific World’. This project is led by the NMM and University College London (UCL), and includes partners such as the Royal Society, the National Portrait Gallery, the Natural History Museum, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, whose collective aim is to bring together international, interdisciplinary scholars to explore new avenues of research into Joseph Banks and the Indo-Pacific World. ¹⁶

The NMM is closely linked to UCL, but does not seem to have close contact with the Greenwich Maritime Institute, which existed from 1998 to 2014 and was superseded by Greenwich Maritime Centre, based in the Old Naval College, in 2015.

Summary

Let me summarize. The European maritime museums considered above claim to be conducting academic research in Maritime History. In some cases, it is not clear whether that is a quite correct, or whether it is more or less paying lip service to the notion. That all museums do research into their holdings and try to collect as much information as possible about their objects goes without saying. This is a unique starting point for research as the sources are right at hand. Ideally from this point, their research interests need to be raised to a level that matches the quality of the research conducted at universities in order to get away from the outdated and sometimes antiquarian approach to Maritime History.

In the late twentieth century, some museums entered into close collaborations with universities to undertake multidisciplinary research projects, inaugurate PhD programmes and join the ranks of international maritime history centres. I have given some examples. What becomes obvious from looking back is that much depends on individual engagement. When energetic, research-active maritime historians retire from a museum it is not sure, per se, that the research will continue. Continuation is the biggest problem in the museum world. In some cases, new directors are not trained maritime historians. In these instances, one has to give them a chance to develop a genuine interest in maritime history. The biggest challenge for museums and their trustees is to find adequate replacements and guarantee that our sub-discipline is not sacrificed for entertainment and and event culture. For museum-based researchers, it is very attractive to move to a university position, but they leave gaps behind, which often cannot be filled easily.