About the Bermuda Maritime Museum

THE BERMUDA MARITIME MUSEUM WAS OPENED TO THE PUBLIC IN 1975 AND HAS SINCE HAD just over a million paying visitors. It is managed by a Board of Trustees as a private not-for-profit organisation, with some 1,200 members in Bermuda and overseas. The operation budget of $500,000 a year is supplied by the Annual Giving and gate receipts. All new and capital projects are funded by donations from the public; the Museum presently does not receive any government funding. It has a permanent staff of nine, augmented by interns, volunteers and field school student help.

Since 1974, contributions in the order of $10 million have been raised by the Trustees from individual and corporate donors, with an equal amount estimated to have been invested through donated services and work of volunteers. The Museum is the largest such cultural body in Bermuda and is actively engaged in historical and archaeological research on the Island, It publishes a quarterly magazine and an annual scholar journal. The Museum is housed in the six-acre Keep, the largest fort in Bermuda at the end of the Old Royal Naval Dockyard in the western Sandys Parish. Aside from the Commissioner’s House, the Keep contains six other buildings of outstanding historic importance, as well as features of the gun ramparts which form its boundary on all sides.

Through the efforts of its donors, volunteers, staff and Trustees, the Bermuda Maritime Museum plays a significant role in the tourism trade of the Island and is the major attraction in the western parishes. Support for the Museum is assistance for a healthy tourism industry, which is essential to the well-being of Bermuda.

Opportunities to Give Your Support

THE TOTAL PROJECT FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE Commissioner’s House is $4 million, of which $2.5 million has been raised. While the urgent need is for $1.5 million to complete restoration of the Commissioner’s House itself, the Trustees have also decided to offer all of the rooms in the building as opportunities for making named financial gifts to endow the project. The donations which will eventually be raised in this manner will be placed in the Museum’s Historic Buildings Endowment Fund, to maintain the Commissioner’s House and the other important historical structures within the Keep.

We would like you to join us in this unique restoration project by endowing one of these rooms with a gift of the amount stated overleaf.

UNITED STATES AND UNITED KINGDOM RESIDENTS

Donations from those liable for income tax in the U.S. or Great Britain may make a gift on a tax-deductible, or tax-beneficial basis.

Gifts from those liable to tax in the United States should be made out to: Friends of the Bermuda Maritime Museum, c/o The Secretary, The Friends of the Bermuda Maritime Museum, Inc., P.O. Box MA 273, Mangrove Bay MA BX, Bermuda.

Gifts from those liable to tax in Great Britain should be entered on the appropriate covenant forms available from: The Bermuda Maritime Museum Trust, Mrs. V. Slade, the Hon. Secretary, The Bermuda Maritime Museum Trust, "Five Acres," Ivy Hatch, Sevenoaks, Kent TN15 OPD, United Kingdom.