The National Maritime Museum Cornwall stands on the waterfront at Falmouth, in a building opened in February 2003. In Kernewek it is Gwithti Morek Kenedhlek Kernow. It grew out of a partnership formed in 1992 between the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the former Cornwall Maritime Museum, and it is an independent charity: unlike other national museums, it receives no direct government support.
The boats
The museum holds the National Small Boat Register and the small-boat collection: 103 boats from the Greenwich collection arrived from 2001, among them the Thames steamboat Waterlily of 1866 and Britannia, rowed across the Atlantic by John Fairfax in 1969. The boats are the permanent argument of the place.
The museum
The building was designed by M. J. Long after an open architectural competition, and cost £21.5 million to build, part of it from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It closed for six weeks in January 2025 for leak repairs, and the Bartlett Library inside it keeps over 16,000 books along with the original Falmouth port records.
Sources
Last checked: 2026-10-11