Ship Ahoy!

Anyone who likes boats should take a little visit to the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. It is a little gem of a museum in Stanley, Hong Kong. The section featuring the older period chronicling the early Chinese Voyages into the Far East and the Indian Subcontinent has to-scale models of the ships used. It dates all the way back to the early Chinese ships. The second gallery features the modern period, all steel and diesel engines. However it is the intricately carved wooden boats that really capture the imagination.

Hong Kong, at one stage, had its own ship-building industry, and the models were made by people in that industry, clearly with loving care. That era has now passed however so this museum is all that remains and Hong Kong is about to lose that too. The Murray House where these collections are kept is the perfect place for this as a colonial eara building of solid grey stone and the little jetty upfront and the tiny boats scattered like leaves in the bay outside.

Shanghai is about to take over these beautiful ships so fortunately they will find a good home there but it is sad that the Hong Kong Government could not find the funds or a suitable place to house these historic collections.