Maritiem Museum Curacao (Maritime museum)

The Maritime Museum is a beautifully restored house in Scharloo and was opened in December 1998.
Visitors of the museum will be taken on a discovery tour consisting of more than 500 years of maritime history of the island. This tours of Curaçao will take place by forty chronologically placed displays. These displays consist of nautical charts, ship models and navigation equipment combined with modern day audiovisual techniques.
The original inhabitants of the island, the caiquetios, arrived in canoes from the South America mainland.
In 1499 Curaçao appeared for the first time on the Western European maps after Amerigo Vespucci landed on the island. Then in 1634 the Dutch trading company West Indian Company took over and settled on Curaçao.
The Slave trade is showed and sea battles between the Dutch, the Spanish, The English and of course the privateers and pirates. The development of the harbor and its various activities, cruise tourism the Dutch navy and tales of seamen are illustrated.
Special arrangements are available on request for the visitors of the museum to take a guided harbor tour; a tour through one of the oldest harbors in the Caribbean. This tour leaves from the museum.
Highlights in this tour are the container port with a capacity of 80.000 containers a year, the largest dry docks of the Caribbean and the bunkering oil tankers at the refinery, which used to be the bunkering station for American warships during world war II.
The tour ends back at the museum, where a guided tour inside ties everything together, putting it all into historical perspective.