New Jersey Maritime Museum

The New Jersey Maritime Museum is a maritime museum in Beach Haven, New Jersey, on Long Beach Island. It opened its doors to the public on July 3, 2007. Its main areas of focus are shipwrecks off the New Jersey coast and their salvaged artifacts, scuba diving and the diving community, notable maritime incidents in New Jersey waters, and the history of the United States Life-Saving Service and its successor, the United States Coast Guard.

The museum covers various notable maritime incidents involving the Jersey Shore. It features a full room dedicated to the 1934 Morro Castle disaster, which museum president Deborah Whitcraft coauthored a book on, Inferno at Sea. A fire swept the Morro Castle; the damaged ship eventually beached itself near Asbury Park, NJ, but many of its passengers died in the fire. The incident is sometimes called "New Jersey's Titanic" due to the needlessly high loss of life. There is also an exhibit on the wreck of the USCS Robert J. Walker, a US Coast Survey (a predecessor to NOAA) vessel which sank near Atlantic City and resulted in the deaths of 20 crew. The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916; the collision of the Andrea Doria and the MS Stockholm; the destruction of the USS San Diego; the wreck of the U-869; and other topics are also covered.