Museum blog

Women in 18th-century Britain did not have the vote, and their economic and legal rights were limited. However, they found many ways to exert social, cultural and even political influence.

William Bligh (1754-1817), Matthew Flinders (1774-1814) and Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) each had storied careers. Mike Bevan investigates the way these three careers overlapped and intertwined.

Documentations Officer Claire Denham takes us behind the scenes at Cutty Sark to give us an insight into the important daily research, documentation and maintenance work that keeps the ship preserved for many future generations to come.

Artist Alice Wilson, lives and works in London. She is interested in how we look and what we choose to record, often using landscape and nature as source material that provides her starting point. As part of the Endeavour programme Wilson has been working with Ben Weddell, the Museum's Formal Learning Producer to design and deliver a three-day project that interrogates Deptford’s place in Maritime history during the Tudor and Stuart time period. We have been working with year six at St Stephen's Primary School and have just come to the end of a series of sessions with the pupils.

Shortly after midnight on 15th February 1870, a new and unknown cargo ship sailed out of London on her maiden voyage. Bound for China, no one could have guessed that that ship - Cutty Sark - would one day be the sole surviving extreme clipper ship in the world. 

Archives Assistant Harriet Braine explores a collection of letters between John Short and Ella Ambrose, a couple who fell in love in 1931. Although they were separated after only a short time together, they continued getting to know one another through these letters.

Wife is the seventh post in our series exploring the many fascinating identities Emma Hamilton held throughout her life. It explores Emma's marriage to Sir William Hamilton, a marriage which defied the social conventions and snobberies of the age.