119-Year-Old Whale Skeleton Returns to Hull Maritime Museum

A 119-year-old whale skeleton was reinstalled at the Hull Maritime Museum this week after five days of work by conservator Nigel Larkin. The 40-foot specimen consists of 168 bones and will be displayed in the museum's Age of Sail gallery. It was caught off the coast of New York in 1907 alongside its mother and belongs to the North Atlantic right whale species.

After the museum closed in 2020, Larkin dismantled the bones and took them to his Shropshire workshop for cleaning. The bones were returned and mounted following the completion of a £20 million refurbishment.

Fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales are believed to survive. The species faces threats from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement. The skeleton was transferred from the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge to Hull in 1935. Cambridge had received it from the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1908.

When the museum reopens in August, visitors will be able to enter the whale's rib cage through a tunnel. Councillor Mike Ross, leader of Hull City Council, said the whale is one of the museum's most important objects and that its story will be presented in new ways.