Go behind the scenes in the galleries & with staff of the Mariners' Museum during our temporary closure due to the pandemic in this photo series.

The Women’s Army Corps or WAC (originally the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps) was the only one of these groups to integrate women into its corresponding military branch fully. However, in the 1940s, there were much stricter ideas of gender norms, gender expression, and heteronormativity. This meant there was significant pushback against the idea of women joining the military, as this was viewed as the epitome of masculine spaces.

The first step in a project to assess the condition of La Isabel, a Jábega boat, a traditional fishing trawler from Málaga, Spain. It was built in 1925 and came to The Mariners’ Museum and Park in 1933 not long after the Museum opened.

The discovery of a river boat in 1990 spurred a period of research into the Shenandoah Valley’s elusive single use boat, but 30 years later we find ourselves questioning the boat's identity… with Science!

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The United States Coast Guard was born on August 4, 1790. Wait, what? Does that sentence seem to come out of nowhere? And what does this have to do with Alexander Hamilton? I’m glad you asked. Among Hamilton’s many feats, he is also recognized as the father of the US Coast Guard.