Hong Kong Maritime Museum

Hong Kong Maritime Museum (Chinese: 香港海事博物館) is a non-profit educational institution funded by the international shipping community and the government in Hong Kong. It is located at Central Pier 8, Hong Kong. The museum was reopened to the public in February 2013.

The museum illustrates how China, Asia and the West have contributed through the ages to the development of boats, ships, maritime exploration and trade, and naval warfare. While concentrating on the South China coast and its adjacent seas, it also covers global trends and provides a comprehensive account of Hong Kong's growth and development as a major world port and maritime centre.

The museum includes semi-permanent and special exhibitions, interactive displays, educational events, café and a museum shop.

The museum first opened to the public in 2005, under the leadership of a Board of Trustees. It was located on the ground floor of Murray House, a reconstruction of one of the first 19th century buildings of the British colonial period. The building had been dismantled stone by stone, stored in a rural site for an over a decade, and then reassembled around a modern reinforced concrete building overlooking Stanley Bay.

The museum was divided into two galleries, the ancient gallery and the modern gallery, displaying more than 500 items including models of ancient and modern ships, paintings, ceramics, trade goods and shipping documents. A model of a 2,000-year-old boat made of pottery from the Han Dynasty is one of the museum's highlights. Another treasure is the early 19th century, 18-metre long, ink-painting scroll, Pacifying the South China Sea, which relates how the Viceroy of the Two Guangs, Bailing, solved the problem of piracy on the Guangdong coast in 1809–1810. A featured highlight is the Battle of Lantau in which imperial naval forces battled Hong Kong's most famous pirate, Cheung Po Tsai (Zhang Baozai).

The ancient gallery portrayed the fortunes of Chinese shipping during ancient and dynastic times. It also illustrated how China's overseas neighbours and Western trading nations together shaped the maritime history of Asia and the regions beyond. The modern gallery explored the historical factors and the Chinese entrepreneurship that have made Hong Kong a maritime success. It covered developments in ship design, and specialisation that have changed the face of world's shipping industry and to which Hong Kong's port has had to adapt.

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