The Maritime Museum assiduously collects artifacts, specimens, and documents in support of its mission: to preserve and interpret the maritime history of North Carolina. That history is considered in its broadest terms and includes the material culture of the state's coastal communities and the area's natural history which cannot be divorced from history's dynamics.

A collecting strategy is in place that delegates senior curators to collect in their area of expertise with the collections manager and the director assisting in decisions and having final determination. The museum operates from a collections policy that has been in place for many years. It is critiqued annually against acquisition needs.

The museum holdings include more than 15,000 cultural artifacts and natural history specimens, some 2,000 photographs and negatives, and 1,000 flat documents. The material culture collection of more than 2,000 artifacts includes uniforms of the U.S. Lifesaving Service and U.S. Coast Guard, lifesaving gear and ephemera, fishing gear, decoys, boat models and half-hulls, a Fresnel lens, 200 woodworking tools, nets, sea chests, and maritime paintings and prints.

The small craft collection includes 37 historic indigenous boats (including a rare Civil War-era split-log canoe), over 100 models and half-models, 24 outboard engines, and 60 sextants, compasses, telescopes, and plotting instruments that document coastal navigation.

The museum's natural science collection of some 600 specimens includes fish and animal mounts, and examples of plant life that are integral to the region's cultural history (e.g., yaupon, a medicinal and emetic remedy that was exported from the Outer Banks; and Atlantic White Cedar, the wood of choice for indigenous boatbuilding).

Fish mounts include types harvested in North Carolina waters by commercial and recreational fishers. Menhaden, a local commercial fish for generations, represents a fish type that helped build a fishing industry in North Carolina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The museum also holds one of the largest international sea shell collections on the East Coast—the Watson Collection of more than 5,000 pieces.

Museum holdings of historic images, documents, and oral history audio tapes number more than 3,000 pieces. These include ship's documents from the eighteenth century; mid- to late-nineteenth-century photographs of shipwrecks, lighthouses, and lifesaving scenes; and oral histories from Outer Banks natives.

The museum holdings represent the state's coastal cultural heritage in its broadest sense. The collections are richest in pieces from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when there was a transition from subsistence livelihoods to commercial and industrial occupations in the state's fisheries. The United States Coast Guard, Lifesaving, and Lighthouse collections are a direct cultural tie to the state's contemporary Coast Guard communities and traditions along the Outer Banks. They include such rare items as a life rescue car, a breeches buoy, a Fresnel lens, a Lyle gun, and a life ring from the wreck of the Anna Heidritter, one of the last old sailing coasters.

The museum's historic boat collection is a potent cultural tie to the numerous small coastal communities in the state where residents continue to build traditional boats by traditional methods—by "the rack of the eye," in their backyards. The museum collects and restores these cultural artifacts and teaches traditional boatbuilding techniques in its Watercraft Center.

The museum has 37 of these vernacular work boats, the earliest a Civil War-era split-log canoe which represents a tradition in North Carolina working watercraft that reaches back to the early eighteenth century. Others include indigenous shad boats, hunting and fishing skiffs, and twentieth-century recreational watercraft.

The museum staff has been collecting in the African American communities since 1989 and is adding to its holdings on working women and native Americans. Exhibits for each of these are planned in the next three years. The museum's upcoming "Commercial Fisheries Exhibit" particularly will feature the role of African Americans in the local menhaden industry, a still-active industry and one that ties intimately with traditional fishing industries.

Ninety-five percent of the museum's holdings were donated by local citizens who had emotional investments in the museum's mission and its success. The remainder was purchased or transferred from other agencies. The museum grew out of a volunteer effort within the community to its present national status. It did so in a short time and the community retains a direct involvement in its success.

The museum collections are used for exhibit and publication research, exhibitions, public programs, and teaching of North Carolina maritime and natural history.

The natural history collection is used in gallery exhibits and for instruction in behind-the-scenes tours and workshops. A special secondary/teaching collection is made available to youth programs for hands-on experience. The small craft collection is studied by independent researchers interested in the museum's boatbuilding classes. A few of the craft travel to maritime conferences for display; others are on loan to selected museums. Much of the collection is made available for loan to other accredited museums for limited periods. There are five in-state museums presently exhibiting parts of the collection.

Artifacts are taken to lectures and workshops for demonstration purposes when appropriate and are given care and protection while in use.

Artifacts, documents, and photographs are made available to researchers, both casual and scholarly, and to local museums and historical societies, photographers, and marine artists. The entire collection is made available to individuals doing serious research in maritime and natural coastal history. If you have an inquiry regarding the library, have questions involving research, or if you wish to inquire about donating an item to the museum, please call ahead for an appointment (252) 728-7317.

The major use of the collections is to supply the museum's exhibits on maritime history, coastal environments, barrier island ecology, and coastal natural history. These are rotated periodically to get the most exposure of the artifacts and to inspect their conditions after exhibition.