Historic photographs
Historic photograph collection
The National Maritime Museum is guardian of the country's finest collection of historic maritime photographs, with prints and negatives dating back to the beginnings of photography in the 1840s.
The collection covers every maritime subject, from British and foreign warships and merchant ships, to seaports, river and coastal views, and shipyards when British shipbuilding was at its height. The collection includes work by photographers such as W.H. Fox Talbot, Alan Villiers and Bedford Lemere with portraits of the world's most famous ships, from Aquitania to Zweena.
- Search the historic photographs catalogue
Please note: this is a negative-based catalogue and the images are not available to view online. A number of images are available via the links at the end of the page and in the right-hand margin.
The historic photograph collection comprises of approximately 270,000 negatives including glass, nitrate and safety film negatives, one million prints and 1463 albums.
A large proportion of the printed photographs in the collection are reference material that due to copyright restrictions cannot be copied.
Copies are available to the public of all photographs for which there is a negative or where copyright permission can be obtained.
Every sphere of maritime life is recorded in the collections, from the very beginnings of photography with Fox Talbots studio's hazy photograph of Brunel's iron screw steamship Great Britain taken in April or May 1844 to the present day.
The strongest areas of the collection are:
- warships and naval life
- merchant shipping
- shipbuilding
- topographical photographs
- portraits and individuals
Whether your research is for personal interest or more academic study, we would like to help if we can.
Contact the Historic Photographs Section at:
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London SE10 9NF
Tel: +44 (0)20 8312 8600
Fax: +44 (0)20 8317 0263
E-mail: plansandphotos@nmm.ac.uk
For more information about the historic photographs at the Museum, see Research guide J1.
Useful pages
- Buy a print from our Picture Library
- Explore our collection of photographs taken by Bedford Lemere & Co, the most productive architectural photographers of their age. These striking images vividly recapture the splendour of the golden age of ocean liner.
- View some of the earliest photographs of the Arctic, its landscape and people in Freeze Frame
- See our online feature about Alan Villiers
- See over 200 historic photographs on the Search Station website
- Buy the book Waterline: Images from the Golden Age of Cruising by John Graves, signed by the author
- Find out more about our vast collection of ship plans
