This blog is by Maritime volunteer and University of Hull student, Jason Kin Lok.
The date was Friday 15 January, I got up at 7am. to make sure I would be ready and on time for this volunteering opportunity I got given by the Hull Maritime Museum, my task was to note down the removal process of the 12 paintings in there. I was very excited and made sure I arrived on time, outside the museum I met Olwen and Don who were very nice to me then Tom took us in and told us what we had to do.
The paintings were already taken down the day before so my day was more about witnessing the paintings being put into boxes and the removal of the flag, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the ship Truelove and the conservation process of it.
Truelove was a merchant ship constructed in Philadelphia in America in 1764, it was captured by the British during the American War of Independence and served as a whaler and general cargo ship in the 18th and 19th centuries. Sadly, it eventually broke after 124 years of service in 1888.
The flag had been put a wall and it was quite high up, the workers had to construct a special ladder in order to get up there and remove it. The whole process was being recorded to make sure everything was under procedures.
The workers were very careful in terms of removing the flag and had to temporarily put away one of the paintings that was in the way as there was potential it would be damaged while taking the flag down. It was very eye opening for me to witness the whole process as I had never seen something like this before and I never knew there was so much detail involved in just taking a single flag down.
After the flag had been taken down from the wall, it was then brought up to the court room to provide it some protection. It was then we were told about the history of the ship Truelove. The flag was eventually covered with some soft papers and further conservation work will be conducted on it.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed my day volunteering for the Hull Maritime Museum. Although I am a history student, I didn’t get to go to a lot of museum this academic year due to Covid-19, therefore I was so happy on Friday when I actually got to a museum and got to see a lot of history in a physical form.
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