The SUNY Maritime Museum

The SUNY Maritime Museum is located on the end of SUNY Maritime campus in the Bronx. It is in a part of Fort Schuyler, which was a fort built for the War of 1812. However by the time it was completed, it was already considered outdated. During the American Civil War it was used for training, as a hospital and a prison. There were also different New York Infantry regiments stationed there, most notably the 69th NY infantry, and other Irish regiments. While the college was founded in 1874, they were allowed to use the fort in 1938. Later on, a section of the fort was allowed to be used for a museum in 1986. Now the fort is split between the library, the offices and other faculty buildings, college classrooms and the museum.

The purpose of the museum is to show the history of the fort, of the Maritime school, and of other various maritime history. It does so by separating each part of the museum to cover specific history. The top floor has the history of maritime travel, starting with sailboats from ancient and early colonial times on one end, and continues to modern ships on the other. This takes up the entire second floor of the museum. The first floor is split between the history of SUNY Maritime and the fort on one side, and the history of commercial shipping and ocean liners, as well as some other various exhibits.

Most of the items that the museum has on display are ship models, but there are also many paintings and pictures. The type and size of the ship models vary a lot, with some being shorter than a pen, and others being almost the size of a kayak. Most of these are donated to the museum by former students or by other maritime enthusiasts. One of the newest editions to the museum is a large model of the US St Marys, a sloop-of-war that was given to the school as their first training ship by the government. The pictures and paintings are of various types of ships, or are maritime related. There are also some items taken sunken ships and historical items from the ships that the college used and other items from non-college ships.

The museum is free to everyone and is run by a board of directors which include SUNY Maritime staff, and other volunteers. During the school year cadets from the College are able to work there as well.