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Welcome to Trinity House Maritime Museum.
My name is Nicola, and 'maritime' means 'the sea'.
And this building is full of objects brought back by sea captains,
whalers and sailors from all around the globe.
Leith was a busy port, with ships from all over the world.
Whaling ships would sail to the Arctic and the Antarctic.
Timber for building would arrive from Russia, Norway and Sweden.
There'd be tea all the way from China,
and rum, sugar and tobacco from the 'New World':
what we today call the Americas.
Trinity House is home to an organisation called the Master Mariners,
and a mariner is someone who goes to the sea.
Follow me to discover more.
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Trinity House is a very old organisation - goes right back to 1380,
and was formed to look after those who go to sea and their families.
If you look closely, you see the globes, the anchor, the rope, and the Latin:
'The earth, the sea, and the stars are conquerable by men of courage.'
Let's discover what's behind this door.
This is the Masters' Meeting Room, where the Masters still meet to this day,
for Trinity House still is a working organisation.
There is an Aged Mariners' Fund, where the organisation looks after
those who are too old or sick to continue in their profession.
They would also issue what were known as pilot certificates -
pilots would guide the big ships through the Firth of Forth.
Trinity House was a very wealthy organisation,
and behind this door is their safe, where they collected all their money
and their pilots' certificates.
There are many doors in this room, and behind this one
is a rather unusual filing system.
If you pull one of the drawers,
you will see it says: 'The key to His Majesty's landing in 1822'.
That Majesty was George IV, and if you know your Horrible Histories,
you'll know your Georges:
'The sad one, the bad one, the mad one and the fat one.'
Well, this was the fat one - and he was incredibly fat.
And he visited Edinburgh in 1822, and he was encouraged to wear a kilt during that visit,
which caused a great deal of excitement.
The Georges - or Georgians, as they were known -
like everything ordered, and symmetry.
And if you look at this room, you will see two doors on this side
and two doors on this side, just so that they're all the same.
But one of these doors is a magic door - a door to nowhere.
It is a false door, simply put there to add to the symmetry.
It doesn't go anywhere.
On the mantlepiece, you will see two whale's teeth
brought back from the Antarctic.
And between those teeth, a beautiful little carving
of a penguin made out of a whale's tooth.
These are known as scrimshaws,
and many men set sail from the port of Leith to hunt the whales.
And this scrimshaw was made in the 1930s.
Back in 1912, whalers from Leith went all the way to South Georgia -
8000 miles -
and they saw penguins, and they thought they were rather cute,
so they brought some penguins back with them.
When the penguin laid an egg,
they would make omelettes out of them, and they were very tasty.
When the whalers got back to Edinburgh,
they weren't quite sure what to do with these penguins.
So they gave them to Edinburgh Zoo, that had been newly opened.
So the first penguins at Edinburgh Zoo were brought back by the whalers of Leith.
And above the fireplace is a painting of Leith Sands,
and that is where they hanged the pirates in the old days,
between the high and the low water mark.
There are so many things to discover in Trinity House.
Follow me to find out more.
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On the wall here are a list of the names
of all the Masters of Trinity House going right back to 1684.
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They are all men,
but I will tell you the story
of the only female Honorary Member of Trinity House, a little bit later.
In order to vote for the Masters, they would use this beautiful ballot box
which is on this magnificent chest, the oldest object in Trinity House -
it goes right back to the 1600s.
In order to vote for the Master, members would use...
these, which look like coffee beans, but are in fact tamarind seeds.
They would take a tamarind seed,
and put their hand through the ballot box.
Move one way for yes, and another for no.
And at the end of the voting,
they would work out if the man who had put his name forward for Master
had got enough votes, by counting the number in each drawer.
There is the Masters' Toilet:
a magnificent Victorian toilet that only the Master himself is allowed to use.
And there are many stories of young boys - 14, 15 -
joining the Merchant Navy for the very first time,
and the first job they're given is to paint the toilet on the ship.
They would paint the toilet, they would be violently sick,
because the crossings were so rough.
And they'd carry on painting the toilet, and then they'd be sick.
And they'd keep going
until eventually they would get what was called their 'sea legs',
where the sea would no longer affect them.
The memorial window is dedicated to members of the Merchant Navy
who lost their lives in World War I and in World War II:
thousands upon thousands of men.
The bottom panel shows the port of Leith,
and you can make out the Martello Tower.
And then you have, in the centre, the fishwives.
These strong women selling their wares,
the Newhaven fishwives, the Fisherrow fishwives.
And then you have a ship
being torpedoed by a German submarine, a U-boat.
Because the Merchant Navy were responsible for carrying supplies, food,
to Britain, to keep Britain alive during the war.
And the German U-boats would attack those ships.
You have the captain in the centre,
and then ships coming back to port.
Along the sides you see all the roles that the men in the Merchant Navy served,
the cook, the signal operator, the stoker.
You also have details of ropes, and the Leith motto: 'Persevere'.
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This is the Convening Room, the grand meeting room of Trinity House.
This was the reason that this house was built in 1816,
because they had so many members, they needed a big meeting room.
It was at the height of their power and their wealth.
Money was coming in from the whaling,
and also from tobacco, sugar and rum.
While no slave ships came to the port of Leith,
tobacco, sugar and rum were the products of the slave trade.
The man whose name is above Trinity House, John Hay -
his picture is on the wall here.
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When the house was built, John Hay, the Master,
was very disappointed in the ceiling in this room.
He thought that it was far too plain,
and so he spent £50 on a new, spectacular ceiling.
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On the far wall, there is a very large painting,
but it is incredibly difficult to see.
It's of Vasco da Gama crossing the Cape of Good Hope.
He was a very famous explorer, and this was uncharted territory -
nobody had ever done this before.
It was a terrifying adventure, and many of the crew were dying of scurvy.
where restorers have come in to try and clean this painting.
The room is full of wonderful objects.
You will see a narwhal's tusk.
Narwhals were known as the unicorns of the sea,
and the tusk is actually a long tooth from the male narwhal.
You'll also see that there is a walking stick beside it -
and in the painting, Peter Wood,
a whale ship owner, is holding that walking stick.
He was a very wealthy man, and had a blubber smelting plant in Leith.
And if the wind blew in the wrong direction, the smell was horrendous,
and known as 'Wood's scent bottle'.
Beside the walking stick and the tusk is a harpoon,
which they used to kill whales.
Fortunately, that awful trade no longer is allowed.
We also have on this table a war instructions book,
given to every Merchant Navy ship in 1917, at the height of the U-boat warfare.
And the book is lined in lead,
so that if the ship is attacked, it can be thrown overboard.
You'll also see a logbook from the Southern Opal
that went all the way to the Antarctic.
There are models of ships throughout this room,
including one model of a whaling boat.
And the men would go into a much smaller boat,
armed with a harpoon to hunt the whales.
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On the wall, you'll see a portrait of Colina Grant,
the only female Honorary Member of Trinity House,
who was responsible for that wonderful memorial window.
There is also a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots,
for she allowed members to take money
from every ship coming in to the port of Leith.
This was known as 'prime gilt'.
Follow me down below to a place from the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots.
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So, welcome to the vaults beneath Trinity House Maritime Museum.
And these were storage areas for gunpowder and claret,
but they were also part of the almshouse and hospital
of the original building that was on this site from the 1560s.
That building was demolished in order to create the house that we have seen today,
and all that remained were these vaults.
Leith Academy began here.
The boys - and they were just boys in those days -
had their lessons in mathematics in these very vaults.
And it is here today that we store our objects for handling,
and we're going to show you a few of them now.
These are some of our object handling collection,
but before you touch any objects, you need to wear the white gloves,
because the objects are so old, we need to protect them.
This is what's known as a scrimshaw.
We're not exactly sure where this word comes from,
for, in some Nordic languages, 'scrimshaw' means to waste time,
to 'whittle away',
or it could even be the name of the first person to have created this.
But a scrimshaw is a carving on a bone or a tooth.
This is a whale's tooth,
and the whalers...
long journeys, and they would have very little to do on their journey back,
so they would take the teeth, and they would use a sharp needle -
sailors are very good with their hands, they were always sewing for the sails -
and they would scratch or etch onto the bone.
And then they... or tooth...
And then they would use boot polish, gunpowder, to add the detail.
And this is beautiful - this one is from 1832,
and it actually says on it: 'Dearest Rose',
and it has an image of a very beautiful young lady.
On the other side is the Romulus,
the whaling ship which the whaler was on.
If you look carefully at this scrimshaw,
you'll actually see it's carved into the head of a bird.
So it gives you an idea of how skilled these whalers were.
No mobile phones, no internet in those days,
8000 miles, long journey home,
and that's how they occupied their time.
This object is a spyglass.
It's dated 1917.
So this is World War I.
It's designed for very long distances.
This is a naval spyglass, for being used at sea.
Very grand, so possibly used by an officer.
So that is the end of our tour of Trinity House Maritime Museum.
We have shown you just a few of the many treasures here.
There is so much more to see.
And we look forward to welcoming you
to Trinity House very soon.
Goodbye.
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