Tradition has it that Macau's original population was made up of fishermen who built a temple in honour of the gods who protected them next to the waterfront. This is probably where the Portuguese navigators came ashore and they, likewise, regarded it as a reference point.
Until then the land community had been an extension of and dependent on the floating community. After this, however, the land population expanded under a tide of immigration initiated by the Portuguese who founded a trading post here at the gates of China. After almost five centuries of history marked by the Portuguese occupation, the link with the sea and the contact between two cultures which both benefitted from the exchange and adaptation of maritime techniques, Macau now has a Maritime Museum where these fundamental characteristics of its history will be displayed.
Macau's Maritime Museum is situated on the historic Largo do Pagode da Barra, next to the first pier of the Navy. This is an extension of the Museum, allowing vessels to be displayed on the water. This is an unusual facility, offered, for instance, in the maritime museums of Oslo and Bremenhaven.
Macau has already had a maritime museum, but of a different nature. It was established by the expert on southern Chinese naval arts, Admiral Artur Leonel Barbosa Carmona, in the Capitania do Porto. It had valuable exhibits of local fishing and freight vessels as well as other items of great interest. Sadly, however, the collection was destroyed in the Second World War and the only record which remains is Admiral Carmona's book Lorchas, Juncos e Outros Barcos Usados no Sul da China (Lorchas, Junks and Other Boats Used in the South of China). This unedited text, based on studies made during the twenties, was rewritten for publication in the fifties and was recently re-published by the Navy of Macau.
The present Museum has an exhibition area of 200m2 divided into three rooms where the following features are displayed:
•Portuguese and Chinese voyages and discoveries;
•Navigational techniques, instruments and aids;
•Cartography, hydrography and dredging;
•Sea transport;
•Fishing activities.
In the room on the ground floor there is an exhibition of fishing techniques characteristic of the Territory, the fishing grounds and the varieties of fish, women oyster-divers, the yards for building junks, and the clothing, customs and practices of the fishermen. Also exhibited, although not connected to fishing, is the use of boats to breed ducks which was mentioned by the Dominican Brother, Gaspar da Cruz in Tratado das Coisas da China (Report on Things Chinese), the first European book about China.
In the two rooms on the first floor there are several displays related to navigation. The routes taken by Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama and Zheng He (the Chinese navigator who reached the coast of Africa before the Portuguese) and the Indian and Pacific trading routes are displayed on a slide show. There are excellent scale models of the boats used by Vasco da Gama and Zheng He. Related to this are displays of the vegetables and spices which the Portuguese Discoveries made more readily available in Europe. Examples of nautical instruments (cross-staffs, quadrants, astrolabes, sextants, and the Indian wooden charts invented in the Orient), replicas of letters and three inventions which contributed to safety at sea - the compass, the watertight compartment and the axial rudder - are all displayed. There is a reminder that the compass was a Chinese invention while the watertight compartment and the axial rudder underwent a separate development in the East and in the West apparently with no exchange of information. It is known, however, that they were used from a much earlier date in China. The axial rudder, a rudder placed on the longitudinal axis of the vessel, made ships so manoeuvrable that it is considered to be an invention of equal importance as the wheel. Nowadays it seems so obvious that it is difficult to comprehend how significant it must have been at first.
On the first floor there are exhibits of passenger and freight vessels from the past up to the present. Dredging, bouyage and hydrography are displayed in relation to this. Dredging and the embankments which are produced as a result are what enable Macau to maintain links with the rest of the world and also to ensure the expansion of the city.
The use of audio-visual equipment to explain some of the displays is remarkable. On the ground floor a video in several languages follows the local fishing activities and some of the kinds of junks which are used. On the first floor there is a slide show which illustrates Macau's naval air force. The visitor is required to press buttons to put the slide shows and other mechanisms into action thus lending an air of an educational voyage. This technique, which was used by American museums before those in Europe, reflects a concern with communicating with the public, above all the younger age group and, ideally, school pupils.
The recent opening of the Museum was linked to the establishment of the "Seminar on Nautical Sciences and Navigational Techniques in the 15th and 16 th Centuries", in which both Portuguese and Chinese specialists took part. This cultural event was organized conjointly by the I. C. M. and the Navy to complement the opening of the Museum and to remind us that the museum depends on research which is already being carried out in a Centre for Maritime Studies. There are great hopes for this centre. Already it has published two studies: "A Viagem de Comércio Macau-Manila nos Séculos XVI-XIX" ("Trade Journeys between Macau and Manila from the 16th to the 19th Centuries") by Father Videira Pires and "Marinheiros llustres Relacionados com Macau" ("Famous Sailors Linked to Macau") by Father Manuel Teixeira. The first number of a periodical bulletin is also being prepared.
In the meantime the Museum is setting its sights further than the present provisional facilities. The construction of a new building has been announced which will be situated very close to the present one. The architect Carlos Moreno has already submitted a preliminary design (see the adjoining article) for the building. It is as if the opening of the Museum has been the means to the beginning rather than an end in itself.
The idea to establish the Museum came from the Navy and it would not have been possible to achieve this result had it not been for their support and enthusiasm.
I myself made a small contribution as a member of the consultative board for the Museum. On the one hand it may seem rather immodest to refer to my own participation in this work but I do it to testify to the effort, dedication and ability to find creative solutions while cooperating with each other which this team did. This enabled the Museum to be completed in record time.
The visitor will find a paradox in the Museum: in a certain way the fact that it is so young is an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Because it did not have the kind of collections of valuable, rare items which other, older institutions have, they were obliged, through necessity, to discover new ground at which others sneered. One of these areas is ethnography - that assortment of "banalities" which opens our eyes to our own surroundings. In this museum the visitor will not learn anything new about Shang bronzes or Ming porcelain but he will find bits and pieces which throw some light on that shady corner of Macau - the floating community, the fishermen who still pray to their gods in the temple which reverberates with the name of this city.
Lying on the enigmatic Porto Interior where the occasional glimpse of nostalgic junks gives way to a more frequent view of motor boats, next to the temple of A-Ma which still echoes with Macau's history, Macau's Maritime Museum has a clear idea of where it is going. All that remains is to wish that the winds of good fortune blow it straight towards its objectives.
Translated by Alorino Noruega
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