« Back to Orkney Islands listings

Stromness Museum

Stromness

Orkney has a strong seafaring tradition, and Stromness Museum provides the visitor with vivid displays of the islands' maritime heritage. In the 18th and 19th centuries many Orcadians left the port of Stromness to join the ships of the Hudson's Bay Company bound for a new life in Canada. Whaling ships called for stores and men as they sailed to the Arctic seas to hunt the giants of the deep. The Sea Captain's Parlour illustrates the lives of the many Orcadians who spent their working lives on merchant ships sailing all over the world. There are tales of the shipwrecks that scattered the coast, and the lighthouses that were built to prevent them. A large display is devoted to the scuttling of the German Fleet in Scapa Flow after their surrender at the end of World War 1 . The natural history gallery contains Orkney birds, eggs, mammals, butterflies and moths, shells and fossils in a restored Victorian gallery.