GulfQuest takes a national look at Gulf Coast's impact
Explore the Coast
from Florida to Texas
GulfQuest – National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico
155 S. Water Street, Mobile, Alabama
GulfQuest is a hidden gem for anyone wanting a day’s entertainment learning about the maritime industry, the Gulf environment, maritime recreation, and energy exploration of the Gulf of Mexico. It is fairly new (opened in September 2015), so folks are still finding out about it. That means the crowds haven’t found it yet.
The Gulf of Mexico is a national resource that has contributed to the environmental, commercial, and recreational interests and needs of the nation since becoming U.S. territory in the 19th Century.
Gulf Coast History
Its history was indigenous tribes that fished the shoreline and fierce Spanish and French explorers who laid claim of the vast waters, its bays and rivers and shoreline, for their kings. The British and is colonies laid claim to Florida, the French took Mobile Bay and, further west, the mouth of the Mississippi River, and the Spanish took the shores of what would become Texas. In the early 19th Century, the entire arc of land and its Gulf waters were ceded or sold to the expanding United States, and the upper Gulf became America’s sea, and its shores became the newly created states of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
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Tourist Attraction
It was the maritime industries of shipping, fishing, and drilling for gas and oil that came to define the shoreline states, and this is story which GulfQuest was established to tell.
Established as a tourist attraction, GulfQuest seeks to distinguish itself from other sea-oriented museums and aquariums by focusing on the commercial character of the quest to control and to exploit the natural riches of the Gulf and its coast.
A small portion is archeological and natural history, but its primary character is maritime commercial. Its architecture resembles of huge ship and its “exhibits” are interactive that let visitors learn what it is like to ply the Gulf’s waters for shipping, mining and boating.
The interactive exhibits are pretty well done. You can get a sense of what it’s like being in the wheel house of a large container ship, both full-scale and in miniature, or you try to navigate a sailboat.
There’s also an excellent multimedia film, “The Gulf Coast: A Place Like No Other.” Audio exhibits provide educational material, such as one that produces an interview discussing what it was like for the pilots working in Mobile Bay who boarded ships to direct them to port and take them back out of Bay when
they had unloaded their cargo. Audio programs also explore the Merchant Marine's work in Mobile to supply American troops in Europe during World War II and the world of work during the war at the former Mobile US Air Base for "Rosie the Riveter" women, who gave up their home lives when the war started to fill jobs such as inspecting airplanes and working in the machine shops.
Another audio exhibit provides an interview with the descendant of Edward Parker, a remarkable young man. Parker was a free black living in Vermont when he booked passage to Mobile in 1830. When he arrived in the pre-Civil War city, he fell victim to an Alabama law that said any free black person who arrives in Mobile on a ship cannot leave the city. So, to make his living, Parker purchased some land on the shore of Fowl River in south Mobile County. There, he built a fishing camp with several cabins and a wharf. He rented the cabins to Mobile's elite, who would take holidays at the camp to spend a few days boating and fishing. When Parker died in 1917, his estate sold the property to the the first Coca-Cola bottler in Mobile, Walter Bellingrath, who turned the fishing camp into a summer retreat. He and his wife built a 5,000 square-foot house as a permanent residence in 1936. The house and flowering grounds are now a tourist attraction called "Bellingrath Gardens." (See this site's feature on Bellingrath Gardens here.)
Other Exhibits
Other exhibits show you the maritime knots that sailors must use to secure a ship and its contents.
There’s a suspended globe that uses satellite imagery to show the weather around the earth that sailors must contend with.This globe can also bring up visions of Mars and other celestial bodies.
One of the more interesting interactive exhibits puts you inside emergency management operation communications as officials from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida prepare for Hurricane Katrina, giving visitors a chance to make decisions that emergency officials had to make as that terrific and terrifying storm bore down on the coast.
The Pelican Girls exhibit lets visitors learn about what it was like for two young women to sail from Paris to the “new world” of Mobile in 1704 on the ship “Pelican” to become brides for unmarried French-Canadian settlers. The exhibit pretends that the ghosts of the girls and the woman who escorted them to the New World are talking to visitors, and a wisp of "smoke" floats in front of a screen where the women appear to tell their story.
In another exhibit, a glass-bottom boat lets visitors "see" into the wreck of the Spanish galleon, “El Cazador,” that sank in the Gulf in the 1700s as it was on its way to deliver new currency to a struggling colony in Louisiana territory. It is actually a video of the wreckage. Had the ship succeeded in delivering the currency, it would have allowed Spain to establish a viable settlement and claim the territory for its King. Instead, French colonists were able to gain a foothold on the shore and changed the course of history. Another exhibit lets visitors identify on a map of the Gulf where sunken ships have settled to the bottom of the sea. Yet another exhibit lets visitors choose a ship, such as Aventurier, to see where and when it sank in the Gulf of Mexico. The Aventurier sank off Dauphin Island (called Massacre Island at the time) in 1707.
An amazing exhibit lets you learn about the huge oil and natural gas exploration and production oil rigs that sit in the Gulf of Mexico.
There’s much more – too much to reveal here and too much to take in on one day, and plenty to engage visitors whatever their age during a visit.
Interesting Fact: GulfQuest’s container ship design commemorates shipping "containerization," which was invented by Malcolm McLean in the 1950s. In fact, the "ship" which the museum is built around is called the McLean. Malcolm McLean was owner of Waterman Steamship Corp., which was based in Mobile. Indeed, the first container ships were retrofitted at the Port of Mobile. Simply put, goods are put into containers that can then by loaded by cranes onto ships and easily secured. This drastically cut the cost of shipping goods around the world and ushered in the era of corporate globalization as companies moved manufacturing to countries where labor was less expensive than in the United States, and they could ship their manufactured goods back to United States consumers at an affordable cost.
How to Get There: It will take about 1.5 hours from the Gulf Coast of Alabama. From Gulf Shores or Orange Beach, you will want to travel north on Highway 59 or take the Foley Beach Express to reach US Interstate 10 and head west. Take the exit into downtown Mobile because the museum is smack downtown on the Mobile River. If you’re on Dauphin Island, take the main road to I-10 and head east, getting off on the exit to downtown. If you go, you might want to stay over the night in Mobile so you can also take in Alabama’s most visited tourist site, the USS Alabama and its related exhibits that sit on the Causeway near downtown Mobile. (See my feature on the USS Alabama tourist site here.)
Admission: $16 for adults; $15 for seniors, active military and college students; $13 for children age 5 to 17, but 5 and under are admitted free. There is a café on site for a quick lunch and an extensive gift shop.
Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday, Noon to 5 p.m.
Note: Watch for special exhibits because museum managers plan to make national traveling exhibits related to maritime culture a part of the museum’s regular offerings.
