The Romanian Navy Museum at Constanta

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.

As an object of interest, you can see in this room an original monoxylon ("mono" - one and "xilos" - wood in Greek language.), unique in the country in terms of its integrity and state of preservation, having a length of 10 meters. It was dated to about 700 years old. The exposed watercraft was discovered in a swampy area in Răpsig, on the Crişul Alb valley, being brought to Constanţa in the '80s. 

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. 

1914 is considered in the universal history as a fateful year, because it marks the outbreak of the greatest conflict known to mankind until then, which the historiography calls the First World War. After two years of neutrality, Romania would enter this war on the side of the Entente on August 14, 1916. The responsibility of the first round in this war belonged to the Romanian navy, who, in the "last night of neutrality and the first night of war", executed a surprise attack with the famous torpedoes over the main Austro-Hungarian naval forces at Rusciuk. A few days later, the whole Navy man power was involved in the defence of the Turtucaia bridgehead. Regarding this great battle from the end of August 1916, in the memory of the heroes who sacrificed to carry out the retreat of many units of the Third Army, we preserve a scale model and a diorama representing the crew on board the famous "Maior Nicolae Grigore Ioan" ship. They resisted the enemy fire, supporting the withdrawal until the last man of the Romanian land forces that were passing the Danube back to Romanian soil.

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.