News
Our Annual 2024 Newsletter is now available to share. Send us an email and we will enclose it in our reply: info@museumofmaritimepets.org
Maine has a long and enduring maritime tradition, and we are proud to call the Pine Tree State our home. Since the Fall of 2021, we have been located on Rockland Harbor at the mouth of Penobscot Bay. Home to a Coast Guard station, an impressive group of museums and a lively art scene, Rockland is perfectly situated on Maine's mid-coast.
Find us at the Sail, Power & Steam Museum Complex at 75 Mechanic Street, adjacent to Snow Marine Park and the terminus of Rockland's Harborwalk.
Open hours: Saturdays and Sundays year-round from 12-4. Other hours by appointment. Please call ahead, since we are sometimes off-site doing programs! Our phone is 207-390-5909.
In Memoriam
Our dear friend, founding member and early advocate while in Annapolis passed away this past summer. Rear Admiral Peter Chabot enthusiastically participated in all of our events, and his wisdom and humor were always appreciated, especially during board deliberations! Pete and his wife often sailed with their cats.
In his honor, we created a memorial endowment fund with an initial pledge and matching funds. The P.G. Chabot Memorial Endowment Fund supports our educational programs.
Pete was an avid historian and animal lover, and he believed in the power of education to inspire and train future leaders. Read more about him here:
https://www.zeffy.com/donation-form/0c965c64-ce52-49a1-888b-9b219160b120
In addition to presenting on-line lectures, our staff contributes to blogs, book reviews and other services to the field. We also maintain our social media outreach and contacts with the wider maritime and scholarly communities.
Plans for 2025 include continuing with digitizing our library and photo archival collections. This is a major focus of our Second Decade Initiative and is accomplished with the help of graduate interns from around the country. We sponsor interns each school term, and expect Phase I of this multi-year project to conclude soon.
During the 2020-21 pandemic period, we expanded our virtual volunteer force and completed several projects as part of our Second Decade Initiative. These included cataloguing our Library and objects collections and developing resource lists of maritime organizations around the world by region.
In 2019, the Museum's founder participated in the first international Maritime Animals conference, held in Greenwich UK at the National Maritime Museum. Patricia Sulivan discussed the museum's mission and presented an overview of the types and functions of maritime pets throughout the ages.
Sullivan shared her east and west-bound ocean crossings with a Black Lab service dog who has accompanied her owner on several voyages. Many ocean liners roll out the red carpet for such dogs, and we salute them all!
During her time in the UK, Sullivan visited colleagues at various maritime museums and ports of call. Buster, the history dog from Plymouth University, and Hatch from the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth were just two of many furry and human friends she met up with.
The museum's dory, "Noah's Barque" found a new home in 2019. She performed very well on the water, but the boat was too unstable to use for pet demonstrations and educational events.
Podcasting gained in popularity in 2020-21 as museums and other organizations sought ways to keep their profiles and messages front and center in the public eye. We were featured on a May 13, 2021 episode of The Mariner's Mirror, devoted to maritime history. Visit the Society for Nautical Research and search the podcasts page. All episodes are available. www.snr.org
In recent years, we have been interviewed on one foreign and several national radio programs, and have been featured in comprehensive articles in Atlas Obscura, as well as Boating Times, Smithsonian Online Magazine, and the Washington Post. We contribute to several blogs on an invitation basis, and maintain an active exchange of information and images via social media.
In 2017, we circulated an exhibit on loan to us from CFB Esquimalt Museum (Canadian Navy) in Victoria BC. "Creature Comforts" featured mascots from the late 19th through mid 20th centuries. Our own maritime pets exhibit "All Paws on Deck" continues to travel on demand. It features several famous mascots, topical news and images, and a tribute to the pets who were aboard the Titanic on her fateful voyage in 1912.
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