Maritime
Museum of the Atlantic
The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is a
Canadian maritime museum, and the oldest and biggest maritime
museum in Canada, with a magnificent collection of more than
30,000 relics that also include 70 small craft and a ship, the
CSS Acadia, a 180 foot steam powered hydrographic survey ship
that was launched in 1913, and the HMCS Sackville, a WWII
Flower-class corvette is docked next to the museum and open for
viewing in the summer months, and neither owned or administered
by the museum. The museum was founded in 1948, and became the
Maritime Museum of Canada, sitting alongside HMC Dockyard, the
navy base in Halifax, on the harbor; and would have numerous
naval officers serving as volunteer chairpersons of the museum
until 1959, when Niels Jannasch would become the founding
director until 1982. The museum would move a few times during
the next thirty years before the present building was built in
1981 as part of a waterfront development project, and it would
acquire the Acadia in 1982. The superb location on the
waterfront near the southern part of the Historic Properties
gives the museum numerous docks and boatsheds, along with a
splendid view of the harbor looking towards the sea, and
includes a restored 1880s Robertson Store ship chandlery, and a
modern displays in the Devonian Wing. The museum is continuing
its restorations on the Whim, a 1937 C Class sloop in one of the
boatsheds along the wharf, behind the museum; while other
boatsheds housing some of the smaller crafts. Its exhibits
include galleries about the Halifax Explosion, Shipwrecks, the
Age of Sail, and includes the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The
museum contains the world's foremost collection of wooden relics
from the Titanic, that includes one of the few surviving deck
chairs. It also has a pair of child's shoes that would help
identify the Titanic's unknown child. The Age of Steam gallery
includes a unique display on Samuel Cunard, the Nova Scotian
that began the Cunard Line.
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