Maritime Heritage Museum: An architect's gift to Chennai

Hemchandra Rao, a retired architect in Chennai has converted his house into "Maritime Heritage Museum".

"I retired in 2002 and was 61. Thereafter, what to do next was a big question for me. So, I went to Tamil Nadu archives. I saw an arch bridge here and that prompted me to know more about these things. I came to Chennai as a small boy in 1943. Till that day I had never seen this arch bridge. So, from archives I started digging about all arch bridges," Rao told ANI here.

"As a child, I was encouraged by my father to collect postal stamps. Slowly, it grew and I found stamps showing ships only. Later, I started looking for things having ships picture on them. Finally, in 2015 I started a fascination for lighthouses in India," he added.

The museum is apparently Chennai's first Heritage Maritime Museum.

The museum exhibits anchors, coins with ships engraved on them, models of brass ships, wooden houseboats, pocket watches, clocks, ship lanterns, postcards, stamps of lighthouses, canals and a 16-foot-wooden boat that is a replica of one of the boats that crossed the Buckingham canal in the 1870s.

To collect all this, Rao has travelled to various states like Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Gujarat among others. The museum also has all lighthouse photographs.