This April, the National Maritime Museum opens a small exhibition showcasing centuries of invaluable work by the Corporation of Trinity House to help sailors navigate safely at sea. Coinciding with the five hundred year anniversary of Trinity House, the gallery displays 70 rarely seen objects from Trinity House and the museum’s own collection, telling stories of the heroic and the extraordinary from throughout the organisation’s history as well as looking to its future.

Dangerous waters flow around our coastline, concealing shallow rocks and treacherous sandbanks. London can be particularly difficult to approach by boat with the fast-flowing twists and turns of the Thames Estuary often shrouded in fog and mist. In 1514, Henry VIII granted a charter to a fraternity of London mariners who became the Corporation of Trinity House, charged with improving the safety of navigation on the River Thames. Later in the 16th-century their remit expanded to setting up beacons and seamarks to help ships avoid dangers. Since then, Trinity House has looked after pilotage, buoys, beacons and lightvessels around some of the British coastline and has become the General Lighthouse Authority for England, Wales and the Channel Islands. The work of Trinity House over the last five hundred years has prevented countless shipwrecks and immense loss of life, and its employees have shown great skill, bravery and endurance. While Trinity House’s aims have remained constant its methods of achieving them have changed dramatically as new technology is adopted and developed.

Guiding Lights displays some of the museum’s exceptional collection of objects relating to maritime navigation, presenting stories of human fortitude in the face of the immense power of the sea. The history of Britain’s lighthouses is told through intricate models, dramatic film and the personal effects of lighthouse keepers. Lightvessels, buoys and yachts are illustrated through a selection of rarely-seen, beautiful watercolour sketches by accomplished marine artist William Lionel Wyllie. Tales of personal bravery include that of lighthouse keeper’s daughter and plucky heroine Grace Darling who became famous in the 1830’s for her role in a daring rescue mission of a group of survivors after she spotted the shipwrecked Forfarshire on nearby rocks. The story is told with prints depicting the dramatic rescue and a small carved alabaster statuette of Grace which has never been displayed before.

Guiding Lights is part of the National Maritime Museum’s on-going programme of small exhibitions covering both historic and contemporary issues, providing visitors with an opportunity to engage and reflect on maritime stories in a more intimate setting.

National Maritime Museum
Romney Road
Greenwich SE10 9NF United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 88584422
events@rmg.co.uk
www.rmg.co.uk

Opening hours
Daily from 10am to 5pm

Related images

  1. Watercolour sketch of the Nore light-vessel, by William Lionel Wyllie, early 20th century
  2. Oil painting of the Wolf Rock lighthouse by John Fraser, late 19th - or early 20th century
  3. Watercolour sketch of Maplin lighthouse, by William Lionel Wyllie, early 20th century
  4. Herbert's patent buoy model
  5. Oil painting of the Eddystone lighthouse, by Isaac Sailmaker, about 1709
  6. Eddystone lighthouse model, made by George Knott in or before 1865