Funding to unlock intriguing travels of HMS Trincomalee

Thanks to the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, run by the Museums Association for a grant of £99,444, The National Museum of the Royal Navy Hartlepool has recently recruited Muskaan Gandhi as Curator (Co-Production) as it embarks on an exciting project to highlight and share the hidden stories of HMS Trincomalee. 

The ship, Europe’s oldest warship afloat, is the last remaining to be built in Bombay (now Mumbai), India by the East India Company but her Indian heritage, colonial links and travels across the world are not explicitly known. 

The project aims to fill this gap by working with community groups in and around Hartlepool to co-produce research that supports new narratives, interpretation and displays. 

Sarah Briggs, Collections Development Lead at the Museum Association said: 

“We’re incredibly proud to support this work that will add valuable research and insight to the history of the Trincomalee and involve the local community”.

Muskaan is a University of Leicester Museum Studies graduate and was previously working at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. In the past, she has worked on some highly impactful community-led museum projects related to colonialism and the Empire, including Partition Museum (in India), the National Museum of the Royal Navy's 'Tidal Teatime' project, and the Rebuilding Lives: 50 Years of Ugandan Asians in Leicester exhibition at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery.