page_title: Western Australian Museum
section_title: Maritime and Shipwrecks Museums
hierarchical_section_title: Western Australian Museum / Locations / Maritime and Shipwrecks Museums
caption_attribution_description: Western Australian Maritime Museum, Fremantle, Western Australia.
context_page_description: The Western Australian Museum is the state museum for Western Australia. It is a statutory authority within the Culture and the Arts Portfolio, established under the Museum Act 1969.
  The museum has six main sites. As of August 2020 the Perth museum is being rebuilt, and is due to open on 21 November 2020 in the Perth Cultural Centre. The other sites are: the WA Maritime Museum and WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, the Museum of the Great Southern in Albany, the Museum of Geraldton in Geraldton, and the Museum of the Goldfields in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
context_section_description: The Western Australian Museum has two branches in Fremantle: the WA Maritime Museum and WA Shipwrecks Museum (formerly known as Maritime Gallery and Shipwreck Gallery).
  The WA Maritime Museum is located on Victoria Quay, and contains galleries with themes such as the Indian Ocean, the Swan River, fishing, maritime trade and naval defence. One of the museum's highlights is the yacht Australia II, which won the America's Cup in 1983. The museum is located in the historically significant Maritime Heritage Precinct, which includes the entrance to Fremantle Inner Harbour and associated installations; Forrest Landing, the remnant of the original limestone bar used by Aboriginal men as a crossing point at the mouth of the Swan River; the migrant Welcome Walls memorial; and the World War II submarine slipway area.
  Immediately adjacent to the WA Maritime Museum on the WWII slipway is HMAS Ovens, an Oberon class submarine that is open for guided tours and commemorates the World War II Fremantle allied submarine base, which was the largest submarine base in the southern hemisphere, with 170 submarines of the British, Dutch and US navies conducting patrols from there.
  Nearby in Cliff Street, the WA Shipwrecks Museum, housed in the 1850s-era Commissariat Buildings, is recognised as the foremost maritime archaeology and shipwreck conservation museum in the southern hemisphere. The museum contains a reconstructed hull from Batavia, which was wrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1629, and several other relics and artefacts from ships wrecked along the WA coast. It also houses the horizontal trunk engine recovered from the iron steamer SS Xantho, which sank in 1872. This unit, the only known example of the first mass-produced, high speed and high pressure marine engine, can now be turned over by hand. The museum's CEO is also responsible for the historic wrecks off the coast of Western Australia, and many shipwrecks appear in the exhibits. In 1980, the museum also commenced the development of a "Museum-Without-Walls" program via its "wreck trail" or "wreck access" programs at Rottnest Island. These "trails" now appear at many places along the coast.
  The Maritime Archaeology department primarily researches shipwreck archaeology from the Western Australian coast, including the famous Batavia shipwreck. Its staff members are involved in developing artefact management and cataloguing strategies, outreach and wreck-access programs, site-inspection techniques, and studies of diverse maritime sites, such as iron ship archaeology, characterised by its SS Xantho program and underwater aviation archaeology. The department also conducts masters level programs in maritime archaeology in collaboration with University of Western Australia.
caption: WA Shipwrecks Museum
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