A historic ship preserving the maritime heritage of Cyprus and the Mediterranean
At Kyrenia’s New Harbour, a ship that once cleared mines, patrolled distant waters and trained generations of seafarers has begun a new chapter. Opened to visitors on 1 August 2026 following extensive restoration and conversion, the HMAS TEAL / HMS JACTON Maritime Museum brings together the history of a remarkable vessel and the maritime heritage of Cyprus and the Mediterranean. Its decks, cabins and command spaces now hold historical collections, original shipboard equipment and contemporary artworks, allowing visitors to explore maritime history within a ship that helped shape it.
TEAL’s story spans more than seven decades and several continents. Built in England for the Royal Navy, it later served with the Royal Australian Navy before undertaking civilian work and eventually becoming a training ship in Cyprus. For approximately thirty years, it contributed to practical maritime education at Near East University and subsequently the University of Kyrenia. Hundreds of captains, deck officers and maritime professionals developed their practical skills aboard the vessel.
Its transformation into a museum preserves these different periods of service within the ship itself. Visitors encounter the working environment of a naval and training vessel while discovering the ports, trade routes, conflicts, fishing traditions and technological developments that have shaped the Mediterranean. Developed through the vision of Near East University’s Founding Rector, Dr. Suat Günsel, the project adds maritime heritage to the University’s wider network of museums and cultural initiatives.
From HMS JACTON to HMAS TEAL
The ship’s history began in Dartmouth, England, where it was launched at the Phillip & Son shipyard on 28 February 1955. Designed as a Ton-class vessel for mine countermeasures, it belonged to a class developed by the Royal Navy during the 1950s for minesweeping and minehunting duties.
On 20 July 1956, the vessel entered Royal Navy service as HMS JACTON. It was placed in the reserve fleet shortly afterwards. In 1961, it was purchased by the Royal Australian Navy and underwent preparations for its next period of service. Recommissioned as HMAS TEAL on 30 August 1962, it subsequently began active duties on 4 February 1963.
The two names retained in the museum’s full title record these successive naval identities. HMS stands for “His/Her Majesty’s Ship”, while HMAS means “His/Her Majesty’s Australian Ship”. Together, HMS JACTON and HMAS TEAL connect the vessel’s British origins with the Australian service through which it became part of a wider maritime history.
A decade of naval operations
Between 1963 and 1973, TEAL undertook mine countermeasures, maritime security, hydrographic survey and training duties with the Royal Australian Navy. These responsibilities took it into waters where the consequences of earlier conflicts continued to affect navigation, as well as areas experiencing new regional tensions.
In 1963, the ship participated in Operation GARDENING off Bougainville, helping clear mines left from the Second World War. The operation illustrates the continuing importance of mine clearance long after hostilities have ended: making waters safer remained a practical task for crews operating many years after the original conflict.
From 1964 to 1966, TEAL carried out patrol duties in the Far East during the Indonesia–Malaysia Confrontation. Lieutenant Keith Murray, one of the ship’s commanding officers during these operations, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his outstanding leadership.
In 1967, TEAL reached another milestone, becoming the first Ton-class vessel to circumnavigate Australia. This voyage forms part of a service record that combined operational duties with surveying and training, reflecting the range of tasks undertaken by the ship and its crews.
TEAL left active naval service on 31 May 1973, having travelled a total of 182,083 nautical miles. After a further period in reserve, it was sold in 1977 and entered civilian service. Its departure from the navy marked a change of purpose for a vessel that would continue working at sea for many years.
Civilian service and a new destination
TEAL’s civilian life included service as a diving support vessel, a passenger vessel and a fishing vessel, with work in the Caribbean forming part of this period. Each role introduced different demands while extending the working life of the former naval ship.
These successive uses are an important part of the history preserved by the museum. TEAL connects military operations with civilian maritime activity and, later, professional education. Its continued adaptation explains how a vessel launched in the mid-twentieth century came to acquire a lasting place in the maritime life of Cyprus.
In 1994, the ship was purchased for practical training at Near East University’s newly established Faculty of Maritime Studies and brought to Cyprus. This move began an educational chapter that would last approximately three decades and establish a direct connection between the vessel and generations of maritime students.
A training ground for generations of seafarers
As a training ship, TEAL gave students an opportunity to learn within the physical environment of a working vessel. Its decks, bridge and shipboard spaces became familiar settings for practical education, connecting academic study with the responsibilities and conditions of maritime professional life.
In 2013, the ship was transferred together with the Faculty of Maritime Studies to the University of Kyrenia, where it continued its educational role. Across its service to the two universities, it contributed to the preparation of hundreds of captains, deck officers and other maritime professionals. Many seafarers now working in different parts of the world received their first practical training on its decks.
The University of Kyrenia’s advanced simulation systems now carry forward the practical training role once fulfilled by TEAL. The ship’s conversion allows its educational legacy to continue through a different form of learning, opening its spaces to a wider public and placing the experience of maritime work within its historical context.
For former students, the vessel preserves a place associated with the beginning of their careers. For visitors encountering it for the first time, it offers a way to understand the shipboard environment in which those careers began. This connection between professional training and public education is central to TEAL’s identity as a museum.
Preserving the ship through a new cultural purpose
The decision to transform TEAL into a maritime museum grew from the wish to protect its historical value and pass it on to future generations. Guided by Dr. Suat Günsel’s vision, the project extends Near East University’s longstanding work in cultural heritage preservation and museum development.
Extensive restoration and conversion prepared the ship for its new role at Kyrenia’s New Harbour, also known as the commercial harbour. The museum opened on 1 August 2026, bringing the vessel’s naval, civilian and educational histories together in a permanent cultural setting.
The exhibition design follows the ship’s original structure. Former working and living spaces provide the framework for displays, allowing the vessel’s architecture to remain part of the visitor experience. The bridge, accommodation areas, engine room and decks feature in the wider conversion described in the project’s development, while the museum’s visitor plan organises its collections around five principal exhibition areas.
Preserving these spaces gives the historical narrative a physical setting. A navigation instrument can be understood in relation to the environment in which seafarers worked; photographs of shipboard life can be viewed within a vessel that supported such a life. The museum combines documentary history with the opportunity to move through the ship itself.
Cyprus and the Mediterranean through their maritime history
The museum’s scope extends across thousands of years of Mediterranean maritime heritage. Alongside TEAL’s own history, its collections explore the relationship between Cyprus, its ports and the surrounding sea.
Visitors discover the island’s harbour history and the trade routes that connected it with other shores. Naval conflicts, fishing traditions and changes in maritime technology provide further perspectives on the sea’s influence on the region. These themes place seafaring within the broader history of movement, exchange, work and conflict in the Mediterranean.
Historical maps, archival documents, photographs, navigational instruments, shipboard equipment and original maritime objects support this account. Ship models introduce vessels associated with different periods, while contemporary works with maritime themes add artistic interpretations of the sea and its cultural significance.
The collections allow visitors to consider maritime heritage at several scales: the history of an individual vessel, the lives and work of seafarers, the experience of Cyprus and the connections that extend across the Mediterranean. TEAL provides the setting in which these different histories can be explored together.
Exploring the five principal exhibition areas
The main deck
The main deck presents scale models of ships with an important place in Mediterranean and Turkish maritime history, alongside maritime objects from different periods. The collection introduces the development of maritime technology and the range of vessels associated with the region’s seafaring traditions.
Models offer a view of the ships as complete forms, complementing the visitor’s experience of standing within a historic vessel. Together with the objects on display, they provide an introduction to the technologies and material culture through which people have travelled and worked at sea.
The forward crew quarters
The forward accommodation area, once used as the crew’s living quarters, has been converted into an exhibition exploring major turning points in maritime history. Its nine rooms are each devoted to a different historical period.
Photographs and original maritime objects address naval battles, events that shaped the history of Cyprus and the wider maritime past of the Mediterranean. The succession of rooms enables visitors to move through different periods while remaining aware of the accommodation spaces that once supported the ship’s crew.
The upper deck cabins
Each of the thirteen cabins on the upper deck bears the name of a notable seafarer associated with the maritime history of Cyprus and the Mediterranean. These named spaces bring people into the exhibition narrative, alongside the ships and events represented elsewhere on board.
Historical ship models, selected details from the maps of Piri Reis and contemporary maritime artworks are displayed together in the cabins. The arrangement connects cartography, shipbuilding and artistic expression, offering several ways to interpret the region’s relationship with the sea.
The command centre
The command centre focuses on the ship’s own history. Photographs, archival documents and original maritime objects trace its changing roles, from naval service through its later uses to its educational mission and eventual conversion into a museum.
This section brings the names HMS JACTON and HMAS TEAL into a single narrative. Visitors can follow the vessel across different countries and institutions, understanding how each period contributed to the ship now preserved in Kyrenia.
The bridge
At the highest part of the ship, the bridge preserves the original command space from which navigation was directed. Instruments used for navigation, communication and control during different periods of TEAL’s service are displayed here.
The bridge gives visitors a close view of the working environment of those responsible for directing a naval and training vessel. Its original equipment makes the technical history of seafaring tangible and adds context to the operations and educational activities described elsewhere in the museum.
Maritime history interpreted through contemporary art
Contemporary art is an integral part of the museum. Maritime-themed works appear throughout the ship’s exhibition spaces, bringing artistic responses to the sea into conversation with historical evidence and original equipment.
On the upper deck, works shown alongside ship models and details from Piri Reis’s maps establish a direct relationship between maritime history and visual interpretation. Across the converted spaces, art offers another way to engage with the Mediterranean’s cultural memory and the meanings attached to seafaring.
This approach broadens the museum’s appeal to visitors interested in history, technology, education and the arts. The ship remains a historical environment, while the works displayed within it invite reflection on how maritime experience is represented and remembered.
A wider vision for museums and cultural heritage
The HMAS TEAL Maritime Museum forms part of the cultural network established through Near East University’s museum initiatives. Its addition brings the number of operating museums established under this vision to six, alongside the Cyprus Museum of Modern Arts, the Cyprus Car Museum, the GÜNSEL Art Museum, the Nicosia Museum and the Cyprus Herbarium and Natural History Museum.
Together, these museums encompass natural heritage extending back millions of years, automotive history, contemporary art, urban memory and now maritime heritage. Their different collections reflect a sustained effort to preserve cultural and historical resources while making them accessible to the public.
Speaking about the project, Prof. Dr. İrfan Suat Günsel, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Near East Initiative, placed the museum within this wider purpose:
“A country’s future is shaped by its determination to protect its culture, history and collective memory. Our Maritime Museum will be a living cultural centre that passes the maritime heritage of the Mediterranean and Cyprus on to future generations, with a purpose that extends far beyond preserving a historic ship.”
He emphasised the University’s vision of bringing science, culture and art together and explained that the addition of the Maritime Museum expanded the network to six operating museums. Across their different themes, he noted, the museums protect the country’s cultural heritage while helping establish Cyprus as an important international destination for culture and museums.
“I sincerely believe that the Maritime Museum, as one of the strongest elements of this vision, will make important contributions to the country’s tourism, cultural life and the historical awareness of future generations,” Prof. Dr. Günsel stated.
A continuing place in the life of Cyprus
TEAL’s transformation preserves a vessel whose history has repeatedly acquired new meaning through service. It has cleared dangerous waters, undertaken patrols and surveys, supported civilian maritime work and helped prepare generations of seafarers. Each of these roles remains part of the story visitors encounter on board.
At its permanent home in Kyrenia, the museum gives this history a public future. The decks on which students once began their professional training now welcome visitors exploring the maritime past, while the original command spaces and historical collections preserve knowledge that might otherwise become distant from everyday experience.
For Cyprus, TEAL offers a connection between the island’s own maritime identity and a ship whose journey extends from Britain and Australia to the Caribbean and the eastern Mediterranean. Its new role creates a place where that international history can be understood alongside the ports, people, artworks and seafaring traditions of the region. The ship continues to serve through education, cultural exchange and the preservation of maritime memory.
