Maritime Museum and Occupation Tapestry Gallery
About
Jersey's Maritime Museum occupies a converted nineteenth-century warehouse on the New North Quay in St Helier, a few minutes' walk from the town centre and directly on the harbour it interprets. The island's relationship with the sea has never been incidental: Jersey built ships in numbers out of all proportion to its size, sent fleets to the Newfoundland cod fisheries for two centuries, produced merchant captains and shipowners who traded across the Atlantic, and depended on the sea for every connection it had with anywhere else. The museum sets out that history in a deliberately hands-on way, with displays that ask visitors to steer, lift, pump and build rather than only to read, which makes it one of the more family-friendly museums in the Channel Islands.
Galleries cover shipbuilding in the island's yards, navigation and the science of the sea, the Newfoundland trade, wrecks and rescue, and the island's more recent surfing culture in an exhibit called Wave Rider. Historic Jersey-built boats from the heritage fleet are displayed in and around the building, and the harbour setting means the working port is visible through the windows.
Under the same roof, and included in the same ticket, is the Occupation Tapestry Gallery. The tapestry was stitched by islanders to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Liberation in 1995 and runs to a series of large embroidered panels tracing the German occupation of Jersey from the evacuation and arrival of German forces in 1940, through five years of hunger, deportation, forced labour and resistance, to Liberation Day in May 1945. Because it was made by the people who had lived through it, or by their children, it is a memorial as much as an artwork, and the interactive screens and recorded first-hand testimony beside it carry that weight. The gallery can also be visited on a reduced-price ticket of its own.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Allow proper time for the Occupation Tapestry Gallery rather than treating it as an add-on to the maritime displays — for many visitors it is the more memorable half of the visit.
- If your interest is only the tapestry, there is a separate reduced ticket at £6.30 rather than the full museum admission.
- This is one of the best museums in the Channel Islands for younger children, because almost everything is designed to be handled or operated.
- Listen to at least one of the recorded occupation testimonies in full; they are short and they change how the panels read.
- The museum is on a working quay, so combine it with a walk along the harbour to see the fishing boats and the ferries.
- Check the season — the museum closes at 16:00 rather than 17:00 from 1 November.
- It is a five-minute walk from Liberation Station, where every LibertyBus route terminates, making it easy to reach without a car.
- If you plan to visit Elizabeth Castle, Mont Orgueil or La Hougue Bie as well, ask at the desk about a Jersey Heritage multi-site pass.
Highlights
The Occupation Tapestry
Stitched by islanders to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Liberation in 1995, the Occupation Tapestry runs as a sequence of large embroidered panels tracing Jersey's five years under German rule: the evacuation of 1940 and the arrival of German forces, the slow grind of shortage and hunger, the deportations to camps in Germany, the use of forced labour on the island's fortifications, quiet resistance, and finally Liberation Day in May 1945.
Because it was made by people who had lived through the occupation or by their children, it functions as a community memorial rather than a commissioned artwork, and it is displayed accordingly.
Recorded Testimony from the Occupation
Interactive screens and recorded first-hand accounts sit alongside the tapestry panels, letting visitors hear islanders describe the occupation in their own words: what was eaten when there was almost nothing, what happened to neighbours who were deported, what it felt like when the ships appeared in May 1945.
This kind of testimony is finite and irreplaceable, and gathering it while those who remembered were still able to speak was the point of the project. The combination of stitched imagery and recorded voice makes the gallery considerably more affecting than either would be alone.
A Genuinely Hands-On Maritime Museum
The Maritime Museum was designed around interaction rather than around cases, and the displays ask visitors to do things: steer a vessel, work a pump, test how hulls behave in water, build and balance structures, feel how rope and rigging take strain. That approach makes it one of the most successful museums in the Channel Islands for families with younger children, and it holds adults' attention better than the word interactive usually promises.
It also suits the subject, since seamanship was a matter of physical skill long before it was a matter of instruments.
Jersey Shipbuilding
For much of the nineteenth century Jersey built ships on a scale wildly disproportionate to its size, with yards along the St Aubin's Bay shoreline turning out merchant vessels for owners across the island and beyond. The displays cover the trades involved — shipwrights, sailmakers, ropemakers, blacksmiths — and the economics that supported them, including the island's tax position and its Newfoundland connections.
The industry collapsed with the shift from wood and sail to iron and steam, which Jersey had neither the coal nor the ironworks to follow, and the galleries are clear about that ending.
Collections
The Maritime Museum interprets Jersey's relationship with the sea from a converted nineteenth-century warehouse on the New North Quay in St Helier, using deliberately hands-on displays covering shipbuilding in the island's yards, navigation, the Newfoundland cod trade, wreck and rescue, and the island's surfing culture in the Wave Rider exhibit.
Historic Jersey-built vessels from Jersey Heritage's heritage fleet are shown in and around the building. Under the same roof, the Occupation Tapestry Gallery displays the large embroidered panels stitched by islanders to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Liberation in 1995, tracing the German occupation of Jersey from the evacuation of 1940 through hunger, deportation, forced labour and resistance to Liberation Day in May 1945, with interactive screens and recorded first-hand testimony alongside.
Occupation Tapestry Gallery
Embroidered panels made by islanders for the fiftieth anniversary of Liberation, with recorded first-hand testimony of the occupation.
Jersey and the Sea
Hands-on galleries on shipbuilding, navigation, the Newfoundland trade, wreck and rescue, and island seafaring life.
Wave Rider
Jersey's surfing heritage, from the mid twentieth century to the present, on the island's Atlantic-facing beaches.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.