You might wonder what can you see at The Shipwreck Museum? My husband and I did too, this is why we’ve decided to visit it. The one we went to is in Cornwall, in Charlestown. Charlestown is a lovely village, that is also the place where Poldark is filmed. Sadly I’ve lost some pictures, and I can’t blog about the harbour nor the pub we’ve went to.
The Shipwreck Museum has artefacts from ships that were wrecked maybe hundreds of years ago. If you want to find out a bit more, make sure you are checking their website. They said that there are nearly 8,000 items from over 150 shipwrecks.
This map shows how many shipwrecks happened in Cornwall, quite an impressive number, isn’t it?
From the museum, we went on this tunnel to get to a balcony from where we could see the harbour from above. The tunnel was dug up in 1900s, to make it easier to transport china clay.
The ship can be visited too. Sorry, I don’t have any pictures from the ship.
The diving helmet was designed in 1830 by Siebe Gorman. It still is the prototype for all modern diving helmets.
Ships wrecked from Roman times, hence these Roman artefacts on display.
These are medieval.
A few items are from Mary Rose. I want to visit the Mary Rose museum too.
elephant tusk
The Admiral Gardner wrecked in January 1809. It was retrieved in the 1980s.
This is a collection of brass manilla tokens. The ship carrying them sank after hitting a rock in 1843. It left from Liverpool and going to Oporto. Considering this cargo, it means it was involved in the slave trade.
This pocket watch is from RMS Lusitania, sunk in 1915 by a German U-boat.
Not expected to see something so new in a shipwreck museum, but these were recovered from Thames. The ship transporting them struck rocks and 98 containers fell into the sea. All sort of items were recovered from the sea, like: tobacco, nightdresses, shoes, dresses, golf-bags, computers, cables, aerials, toilet seats, doors, Toyota car parts, tyres, “lucky Irish” key-rings, fridge magnets, swimming-pool cleaner, seatbelts, Actionman kits, gravestones.
The people who recovered the goods received a financial settlement or were able to keep what they salvaged.
This is the original “Heart of the Ocean”, from Titanic. There wasn’t a necklace like this on the Titanic though. The design was based on the Hope Diamond.
The Shipwreck and Heritage Centre is on Quay Road Charlestown St. Austell Cornwall PL25 3NX.
Love seeing all these artifacts – such a wide variety over a tremendous time-span! I read a novel once, that featured the Mary Rose.
Sounds interesting. Can you tell me the name of the book? Did you make a review about it?
The title is “Heartstone” by C.J. Sansom. It’s the fifth book in his excellent Matthew Shardlake series. If you’re interested in it, I’d suggest going back to the first book and beginning there. They’re very good, written with intelligence and historical accuracy. I’ve read all but the latest (#7) which isn’t due to come out in the US until next year.