National Maritime Museum. The National Maritime Museum is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. The historic buildings form part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, and it also incorporates the Royal Observatory and 17th-century Queen's House. In 2012, Her Majesty the Queen formally approved Royal Museums Greenwich as the new overall title for the National Maritime Museum, Queen's House, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and the Cutty Sark. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, the National Maritime Museum does not levy an admission charge, although most temporary exhibitions do incur admission charges. The museum was created by the National Maritime Act of 1934 Chapter 43, under a Board of Trustees, appointed by H.M. Treasury. It is based on the generous donations of Sir James Caird. King George VI formally opened the museum on 27 April 1937 when his daughter Princess Elizabeth accompanied him for the journey along the Thames from London. The first Director was Sir Geoffrey Callender. Since earliest times Greenwich has had associations with the sea and navigation. It was a landing place for the Romans; Henry VIII lived here; the navy has roots on the waterfront; and Charles II founded the Royal Observatory in 1675 for finding the longitude of places. The home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian since 1884, Greenwich has long been a centre for astronomical study, while navigators across the world have set their clocks according to its time of day. The Museum has the most important holdings in the world on the history of Britain at sea comprising more than two million items, including maritime art, cartography, manuscripts including official public records, ship models and plans, scientific and navigational instruments, instruments for time-keeping and astronomy. Its holdings including paintings relating to Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson and Captain James Cook. An active loans programme ensures that items from the collection are seen in the UK and abroad. The museum aims to achieve a greater understanding of British economic, cultural, social, political and maritime history and its consequences in the world today. The museum plays host to various exhibitions, including Ships Clocks & Stars in 2014, Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution in 2015 and Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity in 2016. The collection of the National Maritime Museum also includes items taken from the German Naval Academy Murwik after World War II, including several ship models, paintings and flags. The museum has been criticized for possessing what has been described as looted art. The museum regards these cultural objects as war trophies, removed under the provisions of the Potsdam Conference. The museum awards the Caird Medal annually in honour of its major donor, Sir James Caird. In late August 2018, several groups were vying for the right to purchase the 5,500 RMS Titanic relics that were an asset of the bankrupt Premier Exhibitions. Eventually, the National Maritime Museum, Titanic Belfast and Titanic Foundation Limited, as well as the National Museums Northern Ireland, joined together as a consortium that was raising money to purchase the 5,500 artifacts. The group intended to keep all of the items together as a single exhibit. Oceanographer Robert Ballard said he favored this bid since it would ensure that the memorabilia would be permanently displayed in Belfast and in Greenwich. The museums were critical of the bid process set by the Bankruptcy Court in Jacksonville, Florida. The minimum bid for the 11 October 2018 auction was set at US$21.5 million and the consortium did not have enough funding to meet that amount. The museum was officially established in 1934 within the 200 acres of Greenwich Royal Park in the buildings formerly occupied by the Royal Hospital School, before it moved to Holbrook in Suffolk. It includes the Queen's House, an early classical building designed by Inigo Jones, which is the keystone of the historic park and palace landscape of maritime Greenwich. It also includes the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, which was an active scientific institution until the 1950s, when it was removed to Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex. The gardens immediately to the north of the museum were reinstated in the late 1870s following construction of the cut-and-cover tunnel between Greenwich and Maze Hill stations. The tunnel comprised part of the final section of the London and Greenwich Railway and opened in 1878.