Museum blog

This item of the month is a 1970s journal kept by the Merchant Navy's first female navigating cadet, 18 year old Nina Baker on board British Petroleum (BP) Tanker Vessel British Willow. Nina's journal influenced me to explore women's developing role in the Merchant Navy during the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.

Learn how explorer Robert Falcon Scott's ski overshoes were prepared for display in the new Polar Worlds gallery

Publishing company Bamforth and Co. depicted the seaside in bright, often lewd postcards. Their cartoonish images became part of the quintessentially British experience, exploring the ridiculous side of the seaside and pushing humour to the limit of acceptability. The company made numerous court appearances during the 1950s - but how do we view these images today?

It will be five years this July that our team of Navy Board In-letters volunteers: Derek, Roger, Terry, David, John and Fred, have so far provided full page summaries to seventy-six of our volumes from the archive. This is over more than double what had been achieved only two years ago.

In July 1988, the National Maritime Museum purchased the papers of William Schaw Lindsay. Comprising an extensive collection of journals, diaries, newspaper cuttings and correspondence, it covers the period throughout his life and relates mostly to matters nautical. The Caird Library is grateful for this guest-authored piece, written by Lindsay’s great-great-grandson, William Stewart Lindsay, who is researching his illustrious forebear.

A Royal Navy officer's personal illustrated account of a long surveying voyage mapping the African coast, 1821-1826.

In a world of bright deckchairs and beach huts, black and white photographs demand that we look at the seaside differently.