Aberdeen - Provost Ross's House / Maritime Museum

South of Aberdeen's Union Street, Shiprow leads off to Provost Ross's House (1593). Since 1984 it has housed the Maritime Museum. Models, photographs and paintings document the development of the Dee estuary's port, the tough life of the whale-hunters and herring fishermen and North Sea trade. Also on display are the legendary Aberdeen clippers that American ship owners used to secure their monopoly over the trade in China tea, including the "Stornaway", a prototype produced for Jardine Matheson in 1850. Another exhibition sheds light on the work of the North Sea drilling rigs