Tamkang University Maritime Museum Audio Guide

Tamkang University Maritime Museum: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to The Maritime Museum

   Picture a ship that has run aground in the middle of a university campus. That is the best way to describe The Maritime Museum, known locally as 海事博物館. It stands inside the Tamkang University campus in Tamsui District, New Taipei City, at number 151 on Yingzhuan Road. As you walk through the campus, you will notice one building that looks like the superstructure of a merchant ship, with its decks and bridge rising above the ground. It covers 2,134 square meters across five floors. Inside, you will find nearly 60 handcrafted ship models, a simulated engine room and bridge, and a giant globe. Over the next few stops, we will look at how a campus building for training sailors became a museum, what you can see inside, and the unusual keepsake that links this place to a museum across the Pacific.

2. 02

   The Maritime Museum: From Training Hall to Museum

   This building was not designed as a museum. It began as the Merchant Marine Hall of Tamkang University, a cradle for training people in navigation and marine engineering. Chang Yung-fa, the head of the Evergreen Group, donated the funds to build it and also gave teaching equipment for seafaring and engine work. Then national education policy changed. The departments of navigation and marine engineering were ordered by the Ministry of Education to stop enrolling students. After the last graduating class was seen off, the hall's story took a turn. Equipment that once taught students became a collection for anyone who wanted to understand life at sea. Planning for the country's first dedicated maritime museum began in 1989, and the doors opened on the sixth of June, 1990, with free admission for all. Even the ship-like shape of the building has a story, because it belongs to the history of the campus itself.

3. 03

   The Maritime Museum: A Fleet in Miniature

   The heart of the collection is its fleet, nearly 60 ship models from many eras and many countries. Their range is wide. It runs from the sailing vessels of the Age of Discovery, in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, all the way to a future ship driven by superconducting electromagnetic propulsion. Every model is a scaled-down copy that follows the structure of the original vessel, and each one was built by hand. Among the famous names you may spot are the Santa Maria, a treasure ship of Zheng He, the Titanic, and the aircraft carrier Nimitz. Seeing a wooden explorer's ship and a modern carrier at the same scale makes you think about how much ships have changed. The first and second floors hold the historic and modern ship models along with old maps. The first floor also shows practical seafaring gear such as ropes, lamps and anchors.

4. 04

   The Maritime Museum: Bridge, Engine Room and a Bronze Keepsake

   Models are one thing, but the museum also lets you step into the working world of a ship. There is a simulated engine room and a simulated bridge, a reminder of the museum's past as a place where sailors and engineers were trained. On the third floor you will find navigation instruments. Then there is the globe. Its surface measures 3,200 square inches and it carries 20,000 place names, so it is a surprisingly deep way to explore the world's coasts and oceans. Look out, too, for a bronze plaque on the first floor. The museum has a sister relationship with the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, and this plaque is the document signed when the two museums were paired. It was cast from a five-inch gun of the battleship Missouri that had been melted down, and it is one of only three such victory commemorative bronze plaques in the world.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you leave, turn around and look at the building once more. A ship-shaped hall, planted in a university garden of lecture rooms and walkways, began as a place to train future mariners and now gives visitors a view of the sea without any need for a harbor. While you are here, you could compare a Great Age of Sail vessel with a modern carrier, and then look for the plaque that links Tamsui to Los Angeles. Every model is a small story about people who once set out toward the horizon, and there are many more of them than one visit can hold.