Museum blog

What was the legacy of the defeat of the Spanish Armada and Elizabeth I's famous Tilbury speech, and what can the Armada Portrait tell us about it?

Curator Andrew Choong tries to make sense of the First World War's greatest sea battle.

Our Librarian Penny Allen gives advice on researching passenger information using the museums library and archive.

Thanks to the work of librarians and curators at the Osher Map Library in Maine, USA, we now know a lot more about the range of women’s involvement in the map trade. Their work highlights the variety of roles women occupied, working as surveyors, compilers, engravers, publishers, and sellers. Looking at the chart trade in earlier nineteenth-century London similarly reveals women were involved in a number of ways, all integral to the provision of navigational information to seagoing vessels. Our Curator of Cartography, Megan Barford, reveals the vital role women played in aiding navigation at sea.

Maritime history has always influenced fashion - and no object more so than the Breton Top. But where did the history of the famous stripes begin?

Curator Kristian Martin looks at the notorious sex life of the famous diarist Samuel Pepys.

As part of LGBT History Month author and LGBT/gender historian, Jo Stanley, discusses queer history in the navy.