The National Museum of the Royal Navy is to spend £33m in telling the story of the Senior Service.
The plans were unveiled on the eve of a public consultation about the final resting place for the museum’s Landing Craft Tank LCT 7074 at the D-Day Story, Southsea. The £5m project secures the long-term future of the sole surviving landing craft from D-Day.
Nearly £100,000 has been invested in three exhibitions this year.
Silent and Secret at Gosport’s Royal Navy Submarine Museum will focus on the 50th anniversary of the Royal Navy’s first Polaris nuclear ballistic missile submarine.
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is also hosting a major new temporary exhibition for 2018; Tattoo: British Tattoo Art Revealed.
Opening in March is Shipyard by Lachlan Goudie. For the last seven years, renowned Scottish artist Lachlan Goudie has been sketching and painting in the BAE shipyards on the Clyde and Forth.
A new £1m permanent gallery on Coastal Forces, the Spitfires of the Sea, will also open in 2019 at Gosport’s Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower.
The plans follow last year’s record-breaking year for visitor numbers and economic impact figures that state that Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, which is managed by the NMRN, brings £110million per year for Portsmouth.
Professor Dominic Tweddle, Director General of the NMRN, said: “When the National Museum was established in 2009 we knew that we could be a great stimulus for growth and for broadening the story of the Royal Navy.
"What we are achieving in Portsmouth is being replicated at our other sites in Belfast, Hartlepool and Yeovilton and bodes well for the future.”
Over the next two years:
- The visitor experience will be boosted by a new Royal Marines Museum and the creation of the country’s newest national museum collection in the newly-named Storyhouse 12: The Navy Unlocked. Over two million artefacts, currently kept in 30 separate stores within 14 buildings across nine sites, will be brought together. Both projects have received funding totalling £18m from the National Lottery
- Work is underway on the £3m to re-support of HMS Victory, part of the ship’s larger £35m, 15-year conservation project.
- National Lottery support of £2.6m has enabled the restoration of the bulwarks on HMS Warrior 1860, the newest addition to the National Museum’s historic fleet. This is due to be completed this year.
Further information is available at www.nmrn.org.uk
