The National Maritime Collection represents Australians' diverse experiences and perceptions of the sea and waterways. One of Australia's most recent major collections, begun in 1986, it already comprises some 38,000 items including 1,048 archive series. There are 52,228 individual archive items.

The Welcome Wall
More than six million people have crossed the world to settle in Australia and this new exhibit provides an opportunity for new Australians to register their names amongst the many on display who have come from distant shores.

The Welcome Wall is 100 metres long and aptly sits where millions of new settlers first stepped ashore in Australia.
As a truly national project, the Welcome Wall honours migrants wherever they landed and wherever they live.

An online database stores historical information about the people named on the wall: when and how they came, who they came with, and where they lived. These stories are also shared with visitors to the Australian National Maritime Museum on kiosks in the museum foyer.

Migrants can commemorate their family name in bronze on the Welcome Wall and record their family's story in the Australian National Maritime Museum database for a cost $105.

There are 10 collection areas that are considered most relevant to visitors.

• Exploration and European settlement - the discovery and exploration of the Australian continent prior to European settlement in 1788, subsequent charting and initial settlement 1788-1901. Both European and Asian contact, and the evolution of the navigational sciences, are included.
  
• Maritime technology - collecting in the area of ship technology targets ship and shipyard design and practice, operations, propulsion and equipment, and modern navigation systems.
  
• Maritime archaeology - the museum has an active maritime archaeology program that has cooperated with the States and Territories, advising on and upholding the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976. Archaeological material may be acquired under some circumstances, but preference is given to repatriating it to suitable state, regional or local repositories.
  
• Australian naval history - the history, life and experiences of the men and women of the naval services that have explored, charted and protected Australia are emphasised, covering the British Royal Navy in Australian waters 1788-1911, the Colonial Navies 1855-1911 and the Royal Australian Navy since its inception in 1911. It also includes visiting navies.
  
• Convicts, migrants and refugees - covering the experiences of people voyaging to Australia. The aim of this collection is to represent the experiences and stories of those who traveled to Australia voluntarily, involuntarily, and as assisted or unassisted migrants - under the many schemes which have existed. The broad categories range from convicts, free and assisted migrants, indentured workers and travellers to skilled migrants, displaced persons and refugees.
  
• Sport and leisure - Australians have long used the water for relaxation and competition. This area covers the history of sport, leisure and contemporary lifestyles.
  
• Shipping and trade - explores the importance of shipping and trade in the development of 18th and 19th century colonial economies to an Australian national economy. The movement of imports and exports by sea continues to be vital to Australia's national interests. This area includes the lives of those who built, worked and sailed on ships, who handled cargoes and who ran shipping lines and services. It explores the development of Australian ports and port workers, the changing role of unions and the Commonwealth Government's role in shipping and trade.
  
• Environment and industry - covers the interrelationship of industries and the environment in rivers, dams and oceans around Australia. This area takes in all non-shipping maritime industries which have played a role in Australia's development, from the 18th century to the present. It includes indigenous subsistence practices where relevant. Themes include whaling, sealing, fishing, pearling, oil exploration and more recent industries such as aquaculture.
  
• Indigenous communities - covers the history and contemporary life of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their maritime culture.
  
• Australian-American maritime experience - this collection was created in August 1987 when the Prime Minister accepted a gift for the Commonwealth of Australia from the United States of America for the 1988 Bicentenary of European settlement. This gift funded the establishment of a permanent gallery - the USA Gallery - to commemorate Australian-American shared maritime history. The collection focuses on historic material which reflects the common development of two nations and their maritime connections in commerce, culture, immigration, exploration, technology, defence, sport and marine science.

Endeavour is currently at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney, and is open to the public as as a museum ship.

Endeavour has now completed her 2008 voyage program. Are you interested in joining a voyage on Endeavour in 2009? The voyage logs from the 2008 voyages are available online. Our voyage logs from our 2006 and 2007 voyages are also available.

The magnificent replica of Captain James Cook's famous ship of discovery, HMB Endeavour, returned to Sydney in April 2005 having completed 11 years of world voyaging under the HM Bark Endeavour Foundation. The vessel was then transferred to the Australian Government and then to the Australian National Maritime Museum, where the ship is displayed as one of the nation's foremost historical exhibits. The museum maintains Endeavour and undertakes voyages to display the vessel to audiences in other ports, and to enable the public to experience 18th-century square-rig voyaging and seamanship.



The Endeavour experience
The guiding principle in building Endeavour was to produce as accurate a replica of Cook's ship as possible and the layout of cabins and attention to detail reflect years of dedicated historical research, considerable building skills - and a great deal of time and money!

Below decks you enter the 18th-century world of Captain Cook, his officers and seamen. As you descend to the crew's mess deck and pass the firehearth where John Thompson, the one-handed cook, prepared meals, you are immediately immersed in the crowded space where seamen ate, drank and slept amongst sea chests and hammocks. The rich smells of oakum, tar and canvas hang in the air and as you explore each cabin, it is easy to imagine that Cook and his men have just walked ashore.

Visitors see the cabins of the gentlemen who travelled with Cook - Joseph Banks and the famous botanist Dr Carl Solander; artist Sydney Parkinson and Charles Green the astronomer - their stories and those of the ship's officers are told and detailed with replica artefacts, uniforms, documents and equipment of the period. Perhaps more than any other area aboard the ship, Endeavour's Great Cabin evokes the atmosphere of scientific research which lay at the core of Cook's first voyage. For almost three years Endeavour's Great Cabin was at the forefront of natural history - a floating laboratory where over 1400 new plant species were documented and the first charts of Tahiti, New Zealand and the east coast of Australia were produced.

The Endeavour experience is essentially a self-guided tour and is enhanced by well-informed volunteer guides stationed throughout the ship to tell visitors more about the original Endeavour, the replica and the people who sailed onboard.