Two Maritime Museums Into One Won't Go
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 30, 1988
THIS is a tale of two maritime museums. One has lots of boats and little money; the other has lots of money and few boats. Both are in Sydney.
One is the Sydney Maritime Museum, the other is the Australian National Maritime Museum. When the latter opens at the end of this year, maritime history enthusiasts will be faced with a dilemma: which museum do you visit if you can't visit both?
With its Darling Harbour building nearing completion at a cost of $10 million, an annual budget of the same figure and a staff which will number 110 when the museum opens, the National Maritime Museum is the new kid on the block. Conceived in Canberra less than two years ago, it was born with a silver spoon in its mouth.
The sweeping arcs of white roofing designed by Phillip Cox that rise from the Harbour foreshore will cover a broad collection of maritime artefacts and thematic exhibitions likely to be one of Darling Harbour's major attractions. Yet this museum has only a small collection of boats.
Just a few kilometres around the Harbour, at Birkenhead Point, the Sydney Maritime Museum has a collection of 55 boats. Many need restoration and there is nowhere big enough to display them all.
Sydney Maritime Museum is run by a dedicated band of maritime enthusiasts who began it 23 years ago. It has a paid staff of 12. For funds it relies on donations, sponsorship and lotteries.
To an outsider, an amalgamation between the two would appear to make sense- the Sydney museum's fleet would add historical depth to the national collection.
The Sydney museum's showpieces include its first acquisition, the Lady Hopetoun, a VIP steam yacht built in 1902; Waratah, a steam tug from the same era; Gretel II; and Protex, a small Sydney ferry that operated in the 1920s. Last year the museum obtained the larger Sydney ferry Kanangra and it is restoring a nine-metre ex-Manly joyride speedboat, Kookaburra.
Best known of its fleet is the James Craig, a three-masted, 50-metre iron barque built in England in 1874, which traded around the Australian coast and the Pacific. But its restoration cost has leapt from $1 million to $10 million.
The general manager of the Sydney Maritime Museum, Mr Harlan Hall, said: "Without a doubt our historic ship collection is the most important in the country. It is recognised around the world as an excellent collection as vessels are representative of the country, showing the development of maritime transport through the ages."
Others have called it "a nice hotchpotch of collectibles, but not part of a coherent whole". (The national museum says it is only seriously interested in a handful of the fleet.)
The National Maritime Museum's own floating collection will include HMAS Advance and Vampire; an early 18-footer, Britannia; the Krait, which was used in Operation Jaywick against the Japanese in World War II; and an 1887 yacht, Akarana, which was built in Auckland and raced in Australia's Centenary Regatta. Akarana is a Bicentennial gift from New Zealand.
Sometime in 1990, the museum will also have the use of a full-sized replica of the Endeavour being built by Alan Bond as a Bicentennial gift at an estimated cost of $14 million.
While it supported the establishment of a new National Maritime Museum in Sydney, it was the dream of the Sydney Maritime Museum that some agreement would be reached to incorporate its activities with the new institution to their mutual benefit.
But negotiations towards this end have achieved nothing.
In 1986 the Sydney Maritime Museum proposed that it have some minimal accommodation at the new museum's Darling Harbour site where it could restore its ships. It wanted to retain its identity as an independent organisation, and it asked for a share of income in return for the use of its entire collection.
This option was particularly attractive, not only to the Sydney museum, but to the NSW Government, which had long been lobbied by it for restoration funds and a permanent exhibition site. The arrival of a federally-funded maritime museum was seen as a convenient opportunity to hand the bills on to Canberra.
But the National Maritime Museum rejected the offer on the grounds that it couldn't provide the necessary room or finances. It made a counter proposal offering $1 million for the Sydney museum's entire fleet, excluding the James Craig. It further proposed that the Sydney museum's staff and its quarterly magazine, Australian Sea Heritage, be incorporated in the new museum. The offer was rejected.
"We're not interested in selling the collection," said Harlan Hall. "Our task is to look after it and preserve it. It was an inappropriate offer. The ships are worth much more."
With the options for some sort of amalgamation dwindling, the Sydney Maritime Museum came back last May with an offer to lease its entire collection of ships and artefacts, excluding the James Craig, to the national museum for $500,000 a year. A counter offer was rejected ... and there the relationship ends.
Interim director of the National Maritime Museum, Sergio Sergi, defends his museum's position and says an amalgamation between the two museums, which appear to have so much in common, is unworkable. The complications of having an independent organisation supported through a government institution are too great.
"The arithmetic simply didn't work out," said Mr Sergi. "I don't see the benefit of spending taxpayers' money to maintain a collection which the taxpayer does not own."
But the greatest obstacle to an amalgamation between the two museums is the simple reality that they are fundamentally different organisations, despite sharing a common interest in maritime history.
While the Sydney Maritime Museum is basically a ship restoration society, the National Maritime Museum has a much broader charter to chronicle the entire maritime history of Australia.
"To me the ships are merely exhibits we happen to keep outside in the water. They're not what we're about exclusively," said Mr Sergi.
"We're not a ship restoration and preservation society although we do have a fleet we will maintain and keep in perpetuity. We're about scholarship, education, preservation of the whole spectrum of objects relating to our maritime heritage."
By way of comparison, he points to England's National Maritime Museum in Greenwich - widely regarded as one of the finest maritime museums in the world- which has no ships. The task of ship restoration and preservation is handled by an entirely separate organisation, the National Maritime Trust.
"I think it is important you compare like with like," said Mr Sergi. "Our mandate is to collect, conserve, display and maintain the objects with the view to educate the taxpayer who supports this institution.
"The Sydney Maritime Museum does sterling work in restoring and preserving vessels. It's not that we're better than they are, they're simply quite different. There's certainly room for both in Sydney."
Harlan Hall from the Sydney Maritime Museum agrees with the distinction. The establishment of the national museum will encourage his own organisation to focus more attention on its fleet of historic ships, their restoration and display.
Neither museum rules out the possibility of co-operating in the future. Mr Sergi says his museum remains open to any offers of buying, leasing or borrowing some of the Sydney Maritime Museum's collection.
© 1988 Sydney Morning Herald