India’s first maritime museum to be setup in Gujarat

A National first maritime heritage museum will be established at Lothal, a Harappan site on the Saurashtra coast in Gujarat. The museum will also be an independent research centre of underwater archaeology for the reconstruction of maritime history, the archaeology of boat building and materials traded.
The museum is being set up with technical help from the Portuguese Maritime Heritage Museum.
The central government has appointed the first Director-General for the museum which will be attached to the Maritime Board of the Gujarat government.
Lothal is the site of one of the oldest ports in India dating to the Bronze Age.
Underwater archaeology is a specialized branch of archaeology that involves recovering submerged remains such as ports, shipwrecks and studying proxy records of maritime activity from archaeological excavations as well as archival and historical records.
The Indian marine studies have covered wooden and steel-hulled shipwrecks off Sunchi Reef dating back to the 17th-century Indo-Portuguese trade and commerce network.