A great spot for fans of Patrick O’Brian

One of my passions is the Fighting Age of Sail. I love the Aubrey/Maturin series and have read tons of books around the topic. One of these days I will write a book on management, “the Captain Jack Aubrey way”, but that’s another story.

A few years ago, my wife and I were in Chesapeake for a weekend sail. We had an afternoon at the end before heading home so we visited the US Naval Academy. Well-worth a visit. The highlight for me was the USNA Museum. It’s one of the best curated maritime museums I’ve visited. The collection is much smaller than the Greenwich Maritime Museum, but it does a wonderfully focused job of telling the story of the US Navy.

The jewel in the crown of the museum is in the basement – the Rogers Ship Model collection. It’s the best collection of ship’s models I have ever seen. My wife had to drag me out of the place.

When I was there, one of the Academy’s professors was taking a very earnest group of naval cadets midshipmen (as old lemming pointed out in comments) around the collection and telling them about life in the British Navy during the Napoleonic War. I listened intently as he told them about hard tack, weevils, the origins of grog and the cat, holding myself back from embarassing my family and generations to come by joining in and embelishing the professor’s stories.

Here’s more about the collection In their own words. If you happen to have a couple of hours to spare in Annapolis one winter’s afternoon, I strongly recommend the place.

“The Rogers Ship Model Collection includes 108 ship and boat models of the sailing ship era dating from 1650 to 1850.  It contains scale models built for the British Admiralty and original display cabinets from the 17th century.  The collection, bequeathed to the Naval Academy in 1935 by Colonel Henry Huddleston Rogers, is one of the most valuable of its type in the world.  Since 1993 the models have been exhibited in The Class of 1951 Gallery of Ships, located on the ground floor of
Preble Hall.”