Our museum opened its
gates on August 3, 1969, in the building that still houses it today, itself
declared a historical monument due to the importance it has for the naval
history.
The works at
this building commenced on June 25, 1908 under the coordination of Architect I.
Socolescu. Throughout the time, since its inauguration in 1909 and until 1961,
this construction housed the Marine School, the Navy School twice, the
Commandment of the Romanian Royal Navy, and then for a year it housed a Soviet
barrack. It was also the headquarters of the Commandment of the Military Navy,
and afterwards, in the last period, until its transformation into a museum,
housed several civil institutions.
All Romanian means of navigation such as, monoxylon-boats, fishing vessels,
ships or floating bridges, used for crossing the watercourses, were also used
for military purposes, when the needs for defence, for obtaining and preserving
the independence demanded it.
The Tuzla Lighthouse was built in 1900
by the Barbier-Berand-Turenne French Company. It has the shape of a metallic
tower with lattice, 44 m high, inside which there is a central tower painted
with black and white horizontal stripes. The lighthouse's lens in front of you
is in the form of an oval dome made of crystal prisms, with a height of 281 cm,
a large diameter of 318 cm and about 3 tons in terms of weight. The light
source of the lighthouse is inside the lens, consisting of an oil lamp with 6
concentric matches, with a consumption of 80 grams of petroleum per hour. The
light pulse transmitted every 10 seconds was visible at 20 nautical miles. The
lighthouse had a compressor fog signal, powered by an 11-hp engine, built by the
Wolf plants in Bucharest. The engine and the compressor are also in the
patrimony of the Romanian Navy Museum.
Immediately after the recognition of Romania's State Independence by
the Great Powers through the San Stefano Peace Congress and the Berlin Peace
Congress in 1878, the governments of Bucharest adopted a fair policy of
developing the Flotilla, given the fact that, as of that moment, Romania also
had to defend the shore line of the Black Sea.
Two of the significant ships of the epoch are replicated in this room by
their very elaborately created scale models.
The "Mircea" brig, the first training-sailing
ship of the Military Navy (two-shafted), was built in England at the Thames
Iron Works dockyards in London under the first Romanian fleet development
program (1880) and entered into active service in 1882. It was given the name
"Mircea" after the name of the ruler Mircea the Elder, the
first Prince who obtained direct access to the Black Sea. The first commander
of the brig was Colonel Nicolae Dimitrescu-Maican (1882). Between 1896 and
1899, topographic elevations of the Romanian shore line were made on the
"Mircea" brig, on the basis of which the first marine map was
produced in Romania, which was awarded in 1900 with the gold medal at the
international contest in Paris. In 1931, the ship was taken out of service and
got stationed in Galati. In April 1944, the brig was hit by a bomb during
a Soviet aviation bombing in Galaţi.
The second scale model is that
of the "Elisabeta" cruiser, built in 1888 at the Armstrong
Dockyards in Newcastle and which, at the time of its entry into the active
service of the Military Navy on November 5th the same year, was the most modern
combat ship in the Black Sea. The ship was given, according to the customs of
time, the name of the country's queen. It was the most important ship of the
Romanian Military Navy until the First World War, remaining the core of the Sea
Division for 25 years, serving a double purpose: to protect the shore line and
to make the flag of independent Romania known in the Black Sea and beyond the
Straits.
Also, another point of attraction of this room is the showcase where the Romanian and foreign decorations received by the Romanian officers during the battles in the Dobrogea theatre of operations are displayed. By decorating the Romanian Army officers, the Allies recognized their courage and spirit of sacrifice provided that the troops of the Central Powers, more numerous and better armed, exercised a strong pressure on the Romanian troops. Another showcase reminds of the personality of the counter-Admiral Nicholas Negrescu, commander of the Romanian-Russian Operations Fleet on the Danube, in 1916, by presenting a few objects that belonged to him. Here you can admire a "Morse" telegraph, two types of alidades with mirror and counterweight, a hand lantern, and also a gyroscope of the "Schwartzkopff" torpedo boat.
In this room, another exhibit is the one of a 10-pipe Maxim Nordfelfelt machine gun, but also the original copies of the different types of mines used in those years, such as the "Vislovski" fluvial contact mine, with a mechanical trigger system can be seen, which was used for the construction of the Danube mine dams dating from 1914, the "Lernet" mine, of French fabrication, used at the Danube by units of the Romanian Army whose formation had more than 230 kg of explosive triggered by contact, but also the "Sauter-Harle" mine, also used by the Romanian navy during the First World War. You can also see in this room the first Romanian technical achievement in the field of underwater battle - the "Rădulescu" current mine, used in the actions of the Military Navy against the German and Austro-Hungarian Fleet until 1918. The commemorative plaque presented here reminds of the navy officers who died for the Country in the War for the replenishment of the nation (1916 – 1918)
Finally, along with an
impressive collection of modern rifles, among the first ones to use smokeless
black powder, in the endowment of the main combating armies of the First World
War, you can also admire a few of the old automatic firearms: heavy-duty
machine guns, with water-based cooling.
