Museum Catches Rising Tide

Not every day does a small museum, scraping for every cent, suddenly find itself with $4.6 million to spend.

Such is the case with the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, a floating showcase of maritime artifacts and model ships tucked into an old steamboat moored off West Coast Highway.

This week, the museum’s directors announced that two huge gifts--one for $1 million, the other for $3.6 million--had dropped at their feet, theirs to spend.

For the museum, which opened 12 years ago, the money opens up a bold new future.

“This will allow us to become a world-class museum,” said Sheli Smith, the museum director.

The $1-million bequest came from the Harry and Grace Steele Foundation and was dedicated to the memory of the couple’s son, Richard Steele, a yachtsman and former museum board member. An anonymous donor gave $3.6 million.

Most of the money will be set aside in an endowment, the earnings from which will pay for much of the museum’s $350,000 annual operating budget. Another $350,000 will help turn an old kitchen into a library, classroom and offices.

The big donations are the latest in a series of successes for the organization. Founded in 1984, the museum for years was located in a small clapboard house on Balboa Boulevard.

A year and a half ago, the museum’s 22-member board put together the money and negotiated a deal to move into the old Reuben E. Lee restaurant on Newport Bay. The restaurant is a replica of a 19th century paddle wheeler, authentic down to its smokestacks and wheelhouse.

At the same time, the board secured a favorable lease for the surrounding property from the Irvine Co.

Since the museum switched digs, dues-paying membership has risen from 600 to 1,000.

“This is a 10-year dream,” said board member Marshall Steele, who is not related to the founders of the Steele Foundation. “We started from scratch, and now we have momentum.”

Board members like Steele hope the momentum will lead to a first-rate maritime museum to rival those in San Diego, San Francisco, Virginia and the Northeast.

They point out that some 14,000 boats and ships are registered in Newport Beach, and that the area is rich in nautical history.

Don Merritt, another board member, said that in the 1800s, tall ships often entered the harbor and unloaded lumber.

“They pulled up right over here,” Merritt said, pointing to a spot close to the museum.

It’s that sort of history that the museum’s directors hope to capture.

Already, the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum has much to show off. One room contains an array of intricate model ships, the kind that shipbuilders used to make to sell the real thing: the HMS Kent from 1798, for instance, or the SS Willochra. There are model ships constructed of bone; others of ivory.

Another room boasts a wall full of ships in bottles, another a selection of yachting trophies and nautical artifacts, like a scale model of a antiquated steam engine.

The $4.6 million in donations takes the museum more than halfway toward its goal of raising $8 million over the next four years. Money raised in the future will go toward bringing new and more varied exhibits to the museum.

Smith, the museum director, said she is looking forward to leading the museum’s growth.

“For a little museum like this to get such a big donation is really extraordinary,” she said.

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Awash in Cash

Museum receives $4.6- million windfall.