National Museums Maritime Treasures
To step inside No.1 Smithery is to glimpse heritage in the round
Compelling stories are unearthed within the main gallery, Maritime Treasures, which houses the cream of the national museums’ model collections – remarkable exhibits which give penetrating snapshots of the people who made them such as prisoners-of-war and lighthouse keepers (as well as the shipwrecks and the sort of heroic actions at sea that excite the imagination).
Exquisite models and the stories they tell
Take, for example, the intricate and particularly fine 18th century model of Admiral Balchen’s flagship HMS Victory 1737 – lost at sea in one of history’s most spectacular shipwrecks - or the prisoner-of-war model of HMS Victory 1806. These Napoleonic models are exceptional, both in terms of the material used (in this case bone) and the conditions in which they were made. This is the work of Sir George Grey – commissioner of Portsmouth Dockyard.
