Collections Highlights

Artifacts representing waterfowling as a pastime, occupation, and community and foodways tradition comprise one of CBMM’s strongest collections.  Decoys, gunning skiffs and sinkboxes, firearms, tools, clothing, as well as paintings, […]

CBMM’s largest artifacts, located along the Navy Point waterfront, include the Floating Fleet of historic and replica vessels include the skipjack Rosie Parks, bugeye Edna E. Lockwood and dovetail Martha.

In 2020, CBMM was designated a Regional Folklife Center under the Maryland Traditions program of the Maryland State Arts Council. The Folklife Center supports the continued collection of cultural objects, […]

A variety of Historic Structures located across CBMM’s campus, such as the Hooper Strait Lighthouse, Point Lookout fog bell tower, Tolchester Beach bandstand, and Eliza Bailey Mitchell House, were moved from […]

The library and collections center houses many tools of the Chesapeake maritime trades and fisheries. Figureheads, anchors, ceramics, textiles, rigging gear, decorative carvings, paper ephemera, and navigational instruments are represented. […]

Ship portraits, watermen and their vessels at work, maritime landscapes, and renderings of historic activities and events are the subjects of the some 1,500 historic and contemporary paintings, prints, and […]

From detailed scale ship models of historic and traditional Chesapeake Bay to builders’ half-models used in lieu of plans for construction to folk art “sailor-made” models constructed from memory by […]

CBMM’s collection of Chesapeake watercraft comprises more than 100 vessels built from the 1880s to the 1980s, including a Floating Fleet of traditional wooden workboats, and smaller purpose-built boats used for fishing, […]