About

Join an exciting performance and see maritime history brought to life.

Visit the Museum every Saturday to discover a different character from history with their own fascinating story to tell! 

Meet the Characters:
Meet Neptune, god of the oceans, as he tries to gather help from people across the earth to save the oceans that are his home. 
Discover more about the Great Map

John Simmonds (1783–1858), was a black sailor who served with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805. Developed with John’s descendants and using over 40 years of family research, the performance will take you on a journey through the museum, from Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare CBE to the Nelson, Navy, Nation gallery.
John Simmonds plays an important part in bringing hidden black British histories into the mainstream, and exploring the histories of the culturally diverse crews that the British navy relied upon.

Explore Traders: the East India Company and Asia gallery with James Robson, a Chinese sailor who served on the fastest and greatest of the tea clippers, Cutty Sark. Find out about the struggles of the tea trade between Britain and China on your journey, and the impact of the 19th-century Opium Wars on both countries.
James Robson is an important character in revealing hidden British Chinese histories, and his story relates to Traders, the permanent gallery on the British East India Company.

Meet Pearl Morris, a Caribbean woman who travelled to Britain in 1948 on the Empire Windrush, a passenger liner that brought one of the first large groups of post-war West Indians to the United Kingdom. A matron of the Windrush Generation, Pearl will tell you what life was like for a Caribbean woman in Britain in the 50s, and how she made this island her home.
What was the Empire Windrush?

Meet Alice Leghorn and find out about life at sea during the Golden Age of Piracy. Alice has found her way on board a pirate ship dressed as a man and will tell you what life is like as a woman disguised as a man at sea. 

Join Tamera the Time Traveller as she travels through time and place exploring stories of encounter, exploration and endeavour across the Tudor and Stuart Seafarers, Polar Worlds, Pacific Encounters and Sea Things galleries.

* Suitable for all ages and full of interactive fun, the free Character Encounters tours are a great introduction to the Museum's galleries.