Nautical Museum

This most unusual and attractive room has been built in the form of a stern cabin of a ship of Nelson’s day. The ceiling is curved as though to follow the curve of the deck above, the windows are obliquely shaped as if following the line of the hull, and even the panelling of the side walls runs in a curve, just as it would do in a real stern cabin.

Below the windows is a row of chart lockers, and as another example of George Quayle’s ingenuity, the middle locker can be slid away, to give access, through a counter-poised door, to a balustrade after-rail or stern walk, overlooking the tidal dock (now filled in) into which the Peggy could be launched from her boat cellar below. From this point of vantage the owner, when he felt so inclined, could take the air, fresh blown from the Irish Sea, and look out, through the arched opening of the dock, on to Castletown’s harbour.

Inside the room again, the opposite wall features a neatly proportioned imitation fireplace, with cast iron grate front and wood and ornamental plaster work surround, in which the classical style of the period is pleasantly displayed, and one can readily picture George Quayle and his boon companions of an evening snugly taking their ease by candle light; discussing over a bowl of rum punch the vicissitudes of the Napoleonic war; or perhaps laying out their charts and planning the future voyages of the Peggy.

The whole atmosphere of this elegant and well designed room, which has been redecorated in its original colour scheme, and provided with furniture of contemporary style, recalls the fashionable days of the turn of the 18th century.