Maritime museums measure more than admissions. Their published figures show how collections, physical visits, online audiences, public funding, education, retail, and travelling exhibitions work together. The statistics below cover the National Maritime Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich in the United Kingdom, the 2021–22 through 2023–24 reporting periods, and selected 2023–24 figures from the Australian National Maritime Museum. Each figure is kept with its stated period, geography, and source label.
Contents
- National Maritime Museum attendance
- Collections and research scale
- Digital audiences and public participation
- Funding, revenue, and efficiency
- Visitors, children, and international reach
- Exhibitions, touring, and retail
- Australian maritime museum indicators
National Maritime Museum attendance
The National Maritime Museum’s reported visitor figures vary by year and by the measure used. In 2023–24, the museum welcomed 2,578,812 visitors, according to the National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2023–2024. The same report’s performance table lists visits at 2.760 million. Those figures should be treated as separate published measures rather than combined into a single total.
For comparison, the National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2022–2023 reported 2.0 million Royal Museums Greenwich visitors. The 2021–22 report recorded 921,516 visits. The reports therefore provide a useful multi-year view, but the measures and reporting contexts should remain attached to their original years.
The sites were open 362 days a year in both 2022–23 and 2023–24, based on the respective annual reports. Opening-day counts give context to annual attendance: the 2023–24 reported figure of 2,578,812 visitors corresponds to a simple average of roughly 7,124 visitors per open day, but this is only an arithmetic average and does not describe the actual distribution of visits across days.
| Reporting period | Published attendance measure | Source label |
|---|---|---|
| 2021–22 | 921,516 visits | National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2021–2022 |
| 2022–23 | 2.0 million visitors | National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2022–2023 |
| 2023–24 | 2,578,812 visitors | National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2023–2024 |
| 2023–24 performance table | 2.760 million visits | National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2023–2024 |
These numbers illustrate why a maritime museum statistics page should identify whether it is discussing visitors, visits, or a performance-table measure. They are not interchangeable labels.
Collections and research scale
The National Maritime Museum’s collection comprises more than 3 million items, according to the National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2022–2023. The same source describes roughly 3 million items across archival, art, and object holdings associated with the Greenwich Meridian-oriented collections.
The collection includes about 45,000 three-dimensional objects. It also includes around 75,000 oil paintings, prints, and drawings. More than 2 million manuscripts, rare books, ship plans, sea charts, and historic photographic negatives make up another major part of the holdings.
These categories overlap as descriptions of the wider collection, so their figures should not be added together. They do, however, show the range of evidence used in maritime history: physical objects, visual art, navigational material, written records, and photographic sources.
The same annual report states that the museum’s British portraits collection is exceeded in size only by the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. It also describes the museum as having the world’s largest maritime archive and maritime historical reference library. These are source-described rankings and distinctions; they are retained here as reported rather than presented as independently verified findings.
Digital audiences and public participation
Royal Museums Greenwich recorded 17,185,887 unique website visits in 2023–24, according to the National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2023–2024. Its performance table gives website visits as 17.186 million, a rounded presentation of the same reporting-period scale. In 2022–23, the corresponding annual report recorded 17.6 million unique website visits.
The earlier 2021–22 report recorded 11.591 million website visits. Across these reports, the online figures show that maritime museum reach extends well beyond people physically entering a museum site. The reports use “unique website visits” or “website visits” as stated, so the measures should not be assumed to represent unique people across years.
The 2023–24 report lists total users at 19.765 million. It also records 39,451 total users per full-time equivalent employee. Total GiA per user was £1.08, while revenue GiA per user was £0.74. These indicators combine the report’s defined user, staffing, and Grant-in-Aid measures; they are not attendance rates.
Participation figures add another dimension. In 2023–24, facilitated on-site participation was 71,114 and facilitated online participation was 1,458. The 2021–22 report records an average of 80 attendees per research and seminar programme seminar. It also records 250 attendees for Fierce Queens: Secrets of the Deep.
Funding, revenue, and efficiency
The National Maritime Museum’s total revenue was £20.6 million in 2023–24, according to the National Maritime Museum Annual Report and Accounts 2023–2024. The report lists total Grant-in-Aid at £21.4 million. It recorded total revenue of £13.9 million in 2022–23, while the 2021–22 report listed Grant-in-Aid of £21.7 million and all other incoming resources of £8.8 million.
| Measure | 2021–22 | 2022–23 | 2023–24 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grant-in-Aid | £21.7m | Not stated in supplied figure | £21.4m |
| Total revenue | Not stated in supplied figure | £13.9m | £20.6m |
| Total users | 12.513m | Not stated in supplied figure | 19.765m |
| Total users per FTE | 29,373 | Not stated in supplied figure | 39,451 |
| Total GiA per user | £1.73 | Not stated in supplied figure | £1.08 |
The 2021–22 report recorded 426 full-time-equivalent employees. The 2023–24 report’s total-users-per-FTE measure is therefore not directly comparable with the 2021–22 staffing count unless the later report’s own FTE denominator is also used. The figures are most useful as reported indicators of scale and resource use, not as a basis for unsupported trend calculations.
Charitable giving was 8.4% in 2023–24, with total charitable giving of £1,822,998. The percentage and cash figure describe related but distinct reporting measures. Together with Grant-in-Aid and revenue, they show the mixed financial structure recorded in the annual report.
Visitors, children, and international reach
The 2023–24 report recorded 343,569 visits by children under 16. Overseas visits totaled 932,719. These are audience segments within the report’s visitor statistics, not additional visits to be added to the headline attendance figure.
Earlier annual reports provide examples of event-level attendance. In 2021–22, the museum’s annual Diwali celebrations drew around 3,000 visitors, while the Lunar New Year celebration drew 10,934 visitors. Because the Diwali figure is approximate and both numbers refer to specific celebrations, neither should be treated as a general annual audience estimate.
The same 2021–22 report says that five working groups helped drive content strategy across five themes. This is a quantified organisational description rather than a visitor measure. It helps explain how programming and interpretation were structured, while the event figures indicate how selected programmes performed with audiences.
The reports also record children’s retail ranges named Epic Explorers and Our Ocean Our Planet, launched for the summer holidays, and a Christmas retail range themed around conscious gifting. These are programme or product-launch facts rather than attendance statistics, so they are included only as limited indicators of audience and merchandising activity.
Exhibitions, touring, and retail
The 2023–24 report records retail sales exceeding £3.2 million. The Meridian shop made over £1.5 million, and the online shop made more than £200,000. The museum introduced 12 new retail ranges during the period. These figures refer to different parts of the retail operation and should not be summed without a complete accounting definition.
The same report records 1,458 facilitated online participants and 71,114 facilitated on-site participants, showing how engagement was distributed across formats. It also records the 2023–24 performance-table website figure of 17.186 million visits, placing retail and facilitated activity within a much larger physical-and-digital reach.
For historical comparison, the 2021–22 report records five content-strategy working groups, an average of 80 attendees per research and seminar programme seminar, 250 attendees at Fierce Queens: Secrets of the Deep, and the launch of one new Christmas retail range themed around conscious gifting. The report also names two children’s ranges launched for the summer holidays. These are discrete activities, not a complete catalogue of museum programming.
Australian maritime museum indicators
The Australian National Maritime Museum’s Annual Report 2023–24 supplies a separate set of figures from a different country and institution. Its Ocean Photographer of the Year exhibition featured 118 images, drew 68,639 paying visitors, and generated estimated ticket sales of $500,000. The ticket-sales figure is explicitly an estimate, so it should not be read as an audited exact amount.
The Australian museum’s total visitor engagement figure was 6,814,221, while paid and unpaid on-site visitors numbered 912,695. Its visitor target was 4,254,750, and the report states that total visitor engagement was 59% above target. These measures are institution-specific and should not be merged with Royal Museums Greenwich attendance or website data.
More than 1.5 million people experienced the Australian museum’s travelling exhibitions. The museum sent 12 exhibitions to 24 venues. The National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach grant for Mariw Minaral was $94,000. These figures show the scale of outreach beyond a single museum site.
The Australian report also recorded a staff engagement score of 73% and a job satisfaction score of 73%. Its enabling-innovation score improved by 30 points. Scores and point changes are workforce indicators, not visitor counts, and their interpretation depends on the survey definitions used by that annual report.
Taken together, the United Kingdom and Australian figures show several recurring ways maritime museums report impact: annual attendance, digital visits, collection size, participation, revenue, giving, retail, touring, exhibition performance, and workforce experience. Keeping each number tied to its institution and reporting period is essential when comparing maritime museum statistics.