Community Voices
Custodian Voices Podcast Launch
New oral histories featuring volunteer skippers and shipwrights.
02 Dec 2025
Read more
Our Maritime Purpose
The Wartime Maritime Memorial Association stands as a guardian of Britain’s wartime fleets — from minesweepers and motor launches to merchant lifelines. Through research, restoration, and storytelling, we ensure every craft and crew are remembered with dignity and a seaworthy future.
We serve descendants, historians, educators, and supporters who share a commitment to remembrance, maritime heritage, and life on the water.
Why It Matters
- Safeguarding Heritage: We stabilise fragile hulls, engines, and rigging so wartime craft can sail or lie proudly in dock.
- Passing on Skills: Traditional seamanship and boatbuilding are shared through our workshops and custodial mentoring.
- Telling the Whole Voyage: Digital archives and oral histories chart each vessel from wartime commission to today’s guardians.
- Uniting Coastal Communities: Remembrance services, flotillas, and outreach bring the maritime story to harbours nationwide.
Remembrance & Commemoration
Honour the sailors, volunteers, and coastal forces whose wartime service safeguarded the nation. Explore our roll of honour, discover personal accounts, and participate in remembrance events.
The Wartime Maritime Memorial Association
In proud remembrance of the men and women who served, and of the crews of the wartime small craft.
Their courage endures through the vessels we preserve and the custodians who care for them today.
Preserving Memory, Honouring Service.
Memorial Pages
Dedicated tributes with biographies, service records, and family recollections.
Virtual Wall
Share messages, photos, and commemorations from around the world.
Vessels & Registry
Search our digital registry to discover surviving wartime vessels, their history, current custodians, and restoration status. Interactive maps and filtering help you trace stories by fleet, theatre, or service.
- • Searchable vessel records with imagery and oral histories.
- • Interactive global map of known surviving craft.
- • Downloadable data for researchers and heritage partners.
Small ships service record registry coming soon!
Custodians & Communities
“Every ship that survives does so because someone cares.” Meet the volunteers, restorers, and communities who keep wartime vessels afloat.
Read restoration diaries, listen to oral histories, and follow behind-the-scenes photo essays that celebrate craftsmanship and dedication.
Read Custodian StoriesVolunteer Spotlights
Profiles highlighting skills, service, and community impact.
Restoration Diaries
Step-by-step coverage of projects supported by the Association.
Community Events
Connect with commemorations, open days, and flotillas.
Skills Workshops
Traditional boatbuilding, seamanship, and heritage training.
Small Craft Plank Grant Scheme
Our signature £300 “Plank Grant” helps wartime vessel custodians tackle the kind of small yet vital repair that keeps a single plank, and a single story, afloat. The award level reflects the material cost of replacing one plank aboard Gerfalcon, a Royal Naval Patrol Service vessel that answered the call to Operation Dynamo and whose devoted custodians inspired the Association and remain close to its activities.
Applications move through quarterly voting rounds, with members using weighted vote allocations to prioritise the repairs that need support. Decisions are published on wartimemaritime.org, and recipients share before-and-after records that feed into our Supported Craft Register.
Board members, Heritage Members, vessel custodians, and Friends of the Charity cast those votes, combining governance insight, specialist expertise, frontline experience, and community backing for each award.
- • Supports traditional materials and self-help restoration.
- • Focuses on wartime wooden craft that remain largely original.
- • Celebrates community shipwrighting and volunteer endeavour.
Education & Public Understanding
Unlock digitised logbooks, photographs, and oral histories from Operation Dynamo to coastal convoys. Our learning hub supports schools, researchers, and heritage partners with curated resources, and it is our huge ambition to provide KS2 classroom materials alongside Duke of Edinburgh Skills content rooted in this wartime history.
Digital Archive
Search and download high-resolution records.
Learning Packs
Curriculum-aligned resources for schools and museums.
Oral Histories
Audio and video testimonies from veterans and custodians.
Get Involved
Whether you are a descendant, vessel owner, educator, or supporter, there are meaningful ways to contribute to our mission.
Donate
Help fund conservation projects, grants, and educational outreach.
Volunteer
Join our network of heritage professionals and community historians.
Share a Story
Contribute a vessel’s history, photographs, or oral testimony.
Partner with Us
Collaborate on research, exhibitions, and community programmes.
News & Updates
Contact the Association
Get in touch with our board members and curators for press enquiries, research collaborations, or vessel support.
The Wartime Maritime Memorial Association C.I.C is a Community Interest Company limited by guarantee, meaning we have no shareholders, operate on a not-for-profit basis, and reinvest every pound into safeguarding wartime maritime heritage for public benefit. This status locks our assets for community use and assures partners that our work is independently regulated and mission led.
Company: The Wartime Maritime Memorial Association C.I.C
C.I.C number: 16863284
Email: signals@wartimemaritime.org
Address:
The Wartime Maritime Memorial Association C.I.C, The Innovation Centre, Brunswick Street, Nelson, Lancashire, BB9 0PQ, United Kingdom
Send us a message
We treat all personal data with respect and in accordance with our privacy policy.
Inspiration Vessel: M.V. Gerfalcon
Built in 1937 by William Osborne Ltd. of Littlehampton, Gerfalcon is a 45-foot mahogany motor yacht that served with the Royal Naval Patrol Service and sailed in the Operation Dynamo evacuation off Dunkirk. While she is not an asset of the Association, her private custodians keep her close to our work as a living memorial to the coastal forces who answered the call in Britain’s darkest hour.
Volunteer shipwrights have renewed 32 planks using traditional oak and mahogany, inspiring the Association’s £300 Small Craft Plank Grant Scheme and showcasing the skills we champion. Gerfalcon remains close to our flotilla, supporting remembrance voyages, heritage events, and hands-on training for new custodians.
- • Builder: William Osborne Ltd., Littlehampton
- • Wartime service: Royal Naval Patrol Service, Operation Dynamo (1940)
- • Current role: Inspiration vessel for Association education, remembrance, and volunteer restoration
Community signal flag
Join our community WhatsApp groups
Stay connected with custodians and supporters.