The Ramsgate Maritime Museum is a maritime museum

Maritime museum

A maritime museum is a museum specializing in the display of objects relating to ships and travel on large bodies of water...

 in Ramsgate

Ramsgate

Ramsgate is a seaside town in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century and is a member of the ancient confederation of Cinque Ports. It has a population of around 40,000. Ramsgate's main attraction is its coastline and its main...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 that describes the maritime history of East Kent. The museum is situated in the Clock House on the quayside of Ramsgate harbour.

The Clock House was built in 1817 by Benjamen Wyatt and George Louch. It was later altered by John Rennie

John Rennie (naval architect)

John Rennie was a naval architect born in Stranraer.Rennie became an apprentice shipwright on the Clyde at Govan but, determined to better himself, studied naval architecture in the evening...

 and has now been designated as a Grade II* listed building.

Exhibits

There are four permanent galleries covering the development of the harbour, navigation, fishing, lifeboats and shipwrecks. A fifth exhibition space houses a 17th century 32-pounder demi-cannon raised from the wreck of the Stirling Castle. A number of artefacts come from the nearby Goodwin Sands

Goodwin Sands

The Goodwin Sands is a 10-mile-long sand bank in the English Channel, lying six miles east off Deal in Kent, England. The Brake Bank lying shorewards is part of the same geological unit. As the shoals lie close to major shipping channels, more than 2,000 ships are believed to have been wrecked...

 which is responsible for numerous of shipwrecks.

Exhibits include two museum ship

Museum ship

A museum ship, or sometimes memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public, for educational or memorial purposes...

s: the 1946 steam tug Cervia

ST Cervia (1946 Tugboat)

ST Cervia was built in 1946 as a sea going tug for use as a fleet auxiliary by Alexandra Hall & Company Ltd of Aberdeen, Scotland. Today she is a floating Museum still undergoing restoration in Ramsgate, Kent.-Design and construction:...

 and Sundowner

Sundowner (yacht)

Sundowner is a motor yacht, formerly owned by Charles Lightoller, 2nd Officer of . One of the "little ships", she participated in the Dunkirk evacuation, and is now a museum ship at the Ramsgate Maritime Museum in Southern England.-Construction:...

, a 1912 Dunkirk little ship

Little ships of Dunkirk

The little ships of Dunkirk were 700 private boats that sailed from Ramsgate in England to Dunkirk in France between May 26 and June 4, 1940 as part of Operation Dynamo, the rescue of more than 338,000 British and French soldiers, who were trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk during the Second World...

.

The museum closed in 2009.

External links

• Ramsgate Maritime Museum - archived website