Maritime History collection

The Marine Engine, Science and Technology Collection comprises of marine steam machinery, pumps and generators used on ships that operated off Western Australia’s coast.

The collection includes combustion engines made in Western Australia, and Australian engines with a strong Western Australian provenance. The Maritime History department also collects imported marine engines that have a strong Western Australian marine history or represent major trends in the history and development of marine engineering in this State.

The Maritime History Art Collection comprises of paintings, etchings, watercolours and other art works representing maritime scenes and subjects, particularly ship portraits, that relate to Western Australian maritime history, or Western Australian maritime history in the context of the Indian Ocean.

The Museum’s Watercraft Collection comprises of around eighty watercraft, ranging from a freezer lid that was used as a life raft to an Oberon submarine, HMAS Ovens.

The collection is one of the largest in Australia and has been loosely classified into four main collecting areas:

The Maritime History department maintains an extensive Immigration Collection that documents maritime immigration into Western Australia.

This collection includes artefacts such as: documents, on board images, clothes, shipboard newsletters, posters and postcards of ports visited during the voyage, crossing the line certificates, menus, tableware, table and bathroom linen, memorabilia, personal souvenirs, commercially produced souvenirs, cabin luggage, trunks and suitcases and shipboard games.

The Maritime History department focuses on Western Australian maritime history within the context of the Indian Ocean. The Maritime History department’s Oral History Collection holds over two hundred interviews with people who are directly associated with the department’s collections, or who are associated with a specific area of research undertaken for publication or exhibitions.

Maritime History staff mostly conduct these interviews, however, sometimes volunteers from relevant fields perform the interviews on behalf of the Museum.