Aberdeen's relationship with the water is ancient and continuous. The Shiprow, where the museum sits, has connected the city centre to the harbour for centuries, its name declaring its purpose. Provost Ross' House anchors the museum in domestic history -- a structure old enough to remember when Aberdeen's wealth came from fishing and coastal trade rather than hydrocarbons. The building was acquired by the city council and opened as a museum on 26 April 1984, a moment when the North Sea oil industry was transforming Aberdeen from a granite fishing port into an energy capital. The timing was deliberate: the museum would document the old maritime world even as the new one reshaped the city outside its doors.

The collections cover shipbuilding, fast sailing ships, fishing, and port history, alongside displays on the North Sea oil industry that has defined Aberdeen since the 1970s. A scale model of the clipper ship Thermopylae -- one of the fastest sailing vessels ever built and constructed in Aberdeen by Alexander Hall and Sons -- captures the era when speed under canvas meant commercial advantage. Nearby, displays on diving equipment, first aid kits, and the industrial machinery of offshore extraction tell a very different story of working at sea. The museum does not sentimentalise the maritime past or glamorise the oil present; it documents both with the straightforward honesty of a port city that has always understood the sea as workplace rather than backdrop.

A few years after opening in Provost Ross' House, the museum expanded. The council acquired the adjacent Trinity Congregational Church with the intention of converting it into an extension. The church reopened as part of the museum in 1997, its high ceilings and open interior providing space for larger exhibits and the kind of dramatic display that domestic rooms cannot accommodate. The architectural contrast between the intimate proportions of Provost Ross' House and the soaring volume of the former church creates a journey through scale as well as time -- from the cramped quarters of historical domestic life to the industrial ambition of modern offshore engineering.