Vancouver Maritime Museum

Vancouver Maritime Museum

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Established	1959
Location	1905 Ogden Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6J 1A3
Type	Maritime museum
Director	Mr Wesley Wenhardt
Website	www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com

The Vancouver Maritime Museum is a Maritime museum devoted to presenting the maritime history of Vancouver, British Columbia, and the Canadian Arctic. About to celebrate its 50th year of operating it is located just west of False Creek on the Vancouver waterfront. The main exhibit is the St. Roch, an historic arctic exploration vessel used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The museum also has extensive galleries of model ships, including one with historic model ships built entirely from cardboard or paper as well as a particularly fine bone model of the French warship "Vengeur de Peuple which was built around 1800 by French prisoners of war, a Children's Maritime Discovery Centre, a recreation of the forecastle of Vancouver's ship "Discovery", an extensive collection of maritime art, and a large library and archives. It displays outside the NASA undersea research vessel "Ben Franklin" and the boiler of the "Beaver", the first steamship in the Pacific NW; it also has a small heritage harbour. There is a workshop where visitors can watch craftsmen build models. Of particular significance is the extensive Chung collection of material relating to Canadian Pacific Steamships and original hand drawn charts from Captain Cook's exploration of the Pacific.

The St. Roch is enclosed in an A-frame, which, unfortunately, has not proven to be the ideal structure for her preservation or display. The St. Roch needs some conservation work and her protective structure needs to be replaced with a larger structure with better climate control.

Captain George Vancouver Special Exhibit

In 2007, the museum featured a special exhibit of a series of paintings documenting Captain George Vancouver's famous voyages to the Pacific Northwest. The exhibit was in honor of the 250th anniversary of Vancouver's birth. The current (2008) main exhibition is on oceans and global warming.

Collection

• St. Roch
• RV Ben Franklin — Vancouver Maritime Museum, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada — 1968 Deep Submergence Vessel [1]

Image

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  Vancouver maritime museum
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  Vancouver maritime museum
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  Vancouver maritime museum
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  Vancouver maritime museum
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  Vancouver maritime museum
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  Exterior at night

Plans to Move the Museum

After a number of attempts to move to a more ideal location in Vancouver itself, the museum now supports a new site in North Vancouver, which is considering the creation of a National Maritime Centre for Pacific and the Arctic on the city's waterfront.

Affiliations

The Museum is affiliated with: CMA, CHIN, and Virtual Museum of Canada.

See also

• Maritime Museum of British Columbia
• Museum ship
• List of museum ships
• Ship replica
• Ships preserved in museums

External links

• Official site