Buchan’s Domestic Medicine and Thomas Huggan, drunken surgeon of the Bounty

The sixth-edition copy (1779) of William Buchan's Domestic Medicine that belonged to Thomas Huggan, surgeon of the Bounty (d.1788 at Tahiti), has been in the National Maritime Museum since 1963. This research note comments on the implications of annotations in it, briefly considers its owner in the context of the status of naval surgeons at the time, and provides hitherto unpublished information on his prior career history and connections.

The museum and the border: the Merseyside Maritime Museum and the construction of the migrant and refugee

This article examines how the state imagines and represents migration. Using the Merseyside Maritime Museum as a frame, it provides key insights into how perspectives of time and particular constructions of colonial history have contributed to a system of immigration law that is characterised by a policy of institutional forgetting.

Innovation in preservation

The preservation of a large and complex museum vessel is often demanding work in building good practices and beneficial networks among specialists, supporters, and the community. The grain elevator “Stadsgraanzuiger 19” that can be visited either at Maritime Museum Rotterdam or Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp is a case in point. It’s story exemplifies that challenges in museum collections and research work to permanently preserve such a spectacular and massive machine. In this article Richard Velthuizen revisits the history of grain elevators, the socio-technical change at Rotterdam port, and the preservation and cultural heritage efforts in saving this historic elevator. He also unentangles the social process with which the large, floating machine has been preserved.