The Museum highlights over 4000 years of India’s maritime history through a number of displays beginning with Pre Mauryan, Andhra, Kushan, Chola, Mughal, Maratha, and British periods. Amongst its quaint displays are a replica of the Indian Chart of the Red Sea drawn and used as a navigational aid by the seagoing Kutchhi community of yore.  The Museum also boasts of models and paintings of some important ships of early 18^th Century – 1842 ‘S S HINDOSTAN’ leaving Southampton to open the Indian Mail Service, Paddle Steamer ‘Lord William Bentinck’ which helped establish steam traffic in the Ganges, the private vessel of the Nawab of Oudh – the first Indian to install a steam engine in a boat, the East Indiaman ‘HMS MINDEN’ a 74 gunship – the first of its kind to have been built at Mazgaon Docks outside Britain and on whose decks, Sir Francis Kay had composed the National Anthem of USA – “Stars & Stripes Forever”.

The Museum highlights the saga of one of India’s foremost shipping companies on the West coast – the Bombay Steam Navigation Company and Scindia Steam Navigation Company to which the former sold out in 1953. There are exhibits which portray the association of some of our national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Moti Lal Nehru and other stalwarts of the Pre Independence movement with maritime and ship building activities of the country. The Founder’s personal collection of memorabilia, artifacts, etc includes his letter to the then British Governor of Bombay renouncing his Knighthood as also to Rabindra Nath Tagore.

Even without these exhibits, the House constantly reminds the visitors of its links with the sea. The ‘Anchor’ motif is extensively in use throughout, etched on every banister railing and teakwood stairway.