The Mariners’ Museum and Park maintains a vast collection of objects, books, and archival materials that we display and use in our programs. Additionally, we support a wide range of research requests from people in our local, national, and global communities.

We're on a mission to uncover the stories behind photos from the Ellis Parker Griffith Collection that were taken in Newport News, VA. 

At The Mariners’ Museum and Park, we believe that we are all connected by the water and by our shared maritime heritage. And through that connection, we are every one of us, mariners. That’s what we say. I’ll be honest with you, though. I didn’t really feel that.

Several years ago, I first learned of USS Mayflower, a presidential yacht. I was studying about the 1905 Portsmouth Peace Conference at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine. I was curious but didn’t have time to delve into the ship’s history.

The museum would like to take this opportunity to share that May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. As May draws to a close, please take a moment to reflect on the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who have contributed to our understanding of the Pacific Ocean, ocean navigation, and maritime knowledge in general.

Having outside experts use our collection to research their own projects is a great thing because even though it’s sometimes inconvenient and frequently time consuming it ALWAYS yields some new information about an object or image in our collection. This was especially the case in November when two researchers, Kevin Foster and Emir Yener, showed up to research Civil War era blockade runners and nineteenth century warships.

Well…probably not the kind of Amazons you’re thinking about, these were the Amazon-class steam screw sloop’s HMS Daphne, Dryad and Nymph of the Royal Navy and the “hunt” occurred off the East Coast of Africa as they worked to suppress the African slave trade.