The Main Gallery relates the story of the Deal boatmen, their craft and exploits.
Greeting you at the entrance is "Zenobia," the Queen of Palmyra and the ship's bell. She was able, according to legend, to drink any man under the table. She was the carved figurehead of a ship owned by John "White Hat" Willis the owner of the "Cutty Sark." At the foot of the stairs is a model of this ship and close by a display with exploded drawings and diagrams of her anatomy and rigging.
Two larger objects on display belonging to the Willis company are the carved name boards of "Laudordale" and "White Adder".
John Willis owned a house in Deal, No. 2 Sandown Terrace, the rather grand houses just north of the old Coastguard Station. He loved to come down to Deal from his large residence in Twickenham and observe the activity in the Downs and see some of his ships into and out of home waters.
The other carvings and the figurehead near the entrance are from the brig yacht "Charlotte" which belonged to the Powell-Cotton family of Birchington. They are on loan from the family collection at Quex Park.
Behind this figurehead stands a model of "Sovereign of the Seas," Charles I's great ship. She is the fourth model of the ship built by an eighty year old man for each of his three daughters and his doctor. The hull is carved from a solid block and all the elaborate decoration was hand carved by Mr. Henry Mercer of Welling in Kent. The model has been donated by "Painless Geoff", the well known tattooist.
Adjacent is an explanation of Deal's place in the Cinque Ports organisation and some of the seven ports' & limbs' town crests and other historic connections.
Another large object just inside the door is the wheel of S.S. "Biarritz", a Cross Channel Steamer of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway and a unique vessel of its time. The first ferry fitted with geared turbines, she was very fast, achieving 28.5 knots. Used by the Royal Navy as a minelayer in W.W. 1, she was present at Dunkirk & the Normandy Landings in W.W. 2. She was eventually broken up in Dover in 1949.
On the left-hand wall, above the carved boards, hang pictures of some of the heroes of Deal and its beach.
Close by are fine models of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution's vessels
that sailed off this shore. On top of the cases are details of the boats that
served on the Deal, Walmer and Kingsdown Stations and a list of Cox'ns.
On the right is a chart of the Goodwin Sands, the "Great Ship Swallower." Images of the sands, in joy as well as sorrow, show the workplace of the Deal "Hovellers" and a few of the many thousands of wrecks that have occurred in and around the Downs.
Other parts of this section show some history and activity of smugglers those perpetrators of "the wicked trade", and their adversaries, the Customs Man, Coastal Blockade & Coastguard.
One of our most important exhibits, situated at the far end of the main
gallery, is the four/five oared Deal Galley "Saxon King." This type of boat,
unique to Deal beaches was the racer of the Downs. Of very light
construction, they were locally built in various sizes. During the Napoleonic
Wars William Pitt passed a law limiting their size to "four oar" in order to
reduce the speed capability of smugglers.
Another racer hangs above the galley. It is a single sculler that once belonged to a member of the Franklin family. They owned a large novelty emporium in the High Street in which most of the goods on sale were of their own manufacture. They were very skilled artists and photographers. Many of the old photographs in this museum come from their collection. Sadly the original plates, going back to the dawn of photography, were lost in the disastrous High Street sea flood of 1952.
On the wall behind the galley hangs a wide selection of local boat builders' tools.
Facing the galley on the right are models of the famous Deal luggers, beach boats that earned the Deal boatmen or "hovellers" their living in four main ways:
The model schooner and cutter at the end of the ground floor have quite a
history. They were rescued after a fire in the Town Hall before W.W.2. and
became "lost." Eventually found, badly damaged, in an attic during a house
clearance, they were restored by Capt. Jim Brown in the 1960s. They are early
sailing models and the cutter by Harvey is probably one of the earliest surviving pond model boats of the early 19th century.
Nearby is an H.M. Dockyard rigged model of a naval cutter. These models were usually used to give instruction in the parts of the boat and its handling to young cadet officers & seamen. Also displayed is a selection of compasses and other models, most of which have connections with local waters. From time to time other models of ships and artifacts connected with the Downs and its seamen will be on a changing display.