Hull is a city of many quirks, but I didn’t expect a mermaid. Seriously: an actual mermaid, mounted in a case on the top floor of the Maritime Museum. From head to fishtail she’s about a foot and a half tall, and look away now if you treasure your illusions, because even allowing for the taxidermy process it’s clear that Disney has not been entirely frank with us. Her skin is leathery and the colour of tar. Her glass eyes stare beadily, and she bares tiny teeth in a silent, eldritch shriek. ‘Probably a monkey stitched to a fish,’ the curator told me. The Spectator always gets the inside track.
Two old favourites – the stuffed polar bear known to locals as Erik and a 40ft right whale skeleton – are back
Still, there are no spoilers on the signage. Hull Maritime Museum re-opened this month after a six-year £20.4 million rebuilding project and, across three floors dealing with the 800-year sweep of Hull’s relationship with the sea, it’s not short on information or artefacts. New exhibitions have been created, handmade furniture has been commissioned from local craftsmen and the Museum’s home – a noble Victorian wedding-cake, smack in the centre of the city – probably hasn’t looked so spruce since it was built (in 1871, as the headquarters of Hull’s massive dock complex). No corner is wasted: more objects from the museum’s collections are on display than at any time in its history.
