Awarded Heritage Centre small grants - January 2025
In January 2025, six successful grants, up to £10,000 GBP, were awarded as part of Lloyd’s Register Foundation's small grant scheme.
Awarded Heritage Centre small grants - June 2026
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8 successful grants
The Heritage Centre is pleased to announce ten successful grants, up to £10,000 GBP, as part of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation small grant scheme.
Small Grant cohort of June 2026
The grant will catalogue and appraise the Scottish Boatowners Mutual Insurance Association (SBMIA) archive collection, currently held temporarily by the Ballast Trust.
Founded in Buckie in 1918 by local fishermen, SBMIA insured fishing vessels in north-east Scotland, across the UK and further afield. Following the Association’s closure in 2018, its records were identified as a significant archive collection and transferred to the Ballast Trust in 2019 for safekeeping. The project aims to professionally catalogue and appraise the collection, helping to secure a permanent home for the records and make them accessible to the public.
This is the first stage of a research partnership exploring fishing’s role in Australia’s maritime history, multicultural communities and Blue Economy, while examining challenges including overexploitation, maritime conflict and the complexities of fisheries management.
Working with the Australian Marine Social Science Network, the project will research public attitudes, cultural values and misconceptions surrounding fishing, food security, conservation and maritime rights. Through co-design and participatory research, it aims to bring together researchers, industry, First Nations groups and the public. Findings will inform a proposed major exhibition designed to make complex fisheries issues accessible through storytelling and interactive experiences.
The project aims to film a virtual tour of historic Light Vessel 50 (LV50). Designed by Bernard Waymouth for Trinity House and delivered in 1879, LV50 features distinctive composite construction alongside innovative lantern and foghorn technology. Since 1952, she has been based in Blyth Harbour as the headquarters of the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club and is now part of the National Historic Fleet. The project will use the Friends’ extensive research into the vessel’s working life, technology and role in maritime safety to produce an accessible video tour. Available online and through social media, the film will complement physical visits while enabling audiences unable to visit LV50 in person to explore the vessel virtually. The project aims to broaden appreciation of LV50’s significance to shipbuilding, maritime heritage and the development of safety at sea, while supporting educational engagement with children and adults.
This is a pilot project to create an open-access digital archive documenting Ghanaian seafarers’ experiences of maritime incidents, near-misses and occupational health challenges. Through oral histories and community-based research in coastal Ghana, the project will capture knowledge that is often absent from formal maritime safety and public health records. The archive will combine accounts of shipwrecks and safety incidents with evidence on injuries, fatigue, environmental hazards and psychosocial stress. Outputs will include a searchable digital archive, spatial mapping, an analytical report and policy brief, alongside community and stakeholder engagement. The project aims to improve understanding of maritime risks, inform safety training and policy, preserve maritime heritage, and demonstrate how community-generated knowledge can strengthen maritime safety systems and support future research and expansion across Ghana and beyond.
This grant aims to increase the understanding of the heritage significance of Second World War merchant vessels. Focusing on ships operated by the Port Line, the project will combine Lloyd’s Register Foundation collection with other historical and archaeological sources. Researchers will reconstruct the complete lives of vessels, from their design and construction through their operational histories to wartime service and loss.
These vessel biographies will help assess technological, operational, social, and historical significance, while demonstrating how archival evidence can inform the understanding and protection of surviving wreck sites. Running from September 2026 to May 2027, the pilot will develop a scalable framework for future research and public engagement with Second World War merchant ship heritage ahead of the centenary.
The project uses archival research, co-creation and community engagement to turn Hampshire’s wartime maritime engineering heritage into practical learning resources for young people. It will create pilot educational materials that explore engineering design, logistics, innovation and risk through hands-on experiments, model-making and accessible case studies. The project aims to connect local maritime heritage with modern maritime systems, helping to broaden engineering literacy and support learners from underrepresented backgrounds. It will also strengthen partnerships between the heritage, education and industry sectors, creating opportunities for knowledge-sharing and future collaboration. A key legacy of the project will be a travelling exhibition, designed to share the project’s research and educational outcomes with wider audiences and extend its reach beyond the initial participants.
The project will capture maritime knowledge in the Falkland Islands through oral-history interviews with serving and retired seafarers, harbour authorities, vessel operators, and fisheries personnel. Interviews will examine navigation, weather and environmental risk, incident response, operational judgement, and resilience in an isolated and demanding maritime setting. The proposal responds to the lack of a systematic record of practitioners’ lived safety knowledge, much of which could disappear as experienced mariners retire. FMHT will coordinate the work with the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust, Jane Cameron National Archives, and the University of Portsmouth, which will support research design and thematic analysis. Outputs include a maritime safety lessons report, an archive of recordings and transcripts, podcasts, short videos, and stakeholder briefings.