Basil Greenhill

Single-minded director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Basil Jack Greenhill, diplomat and maritime historian: born Bristol 26 February 1920; Director, National Maritime Museum 1967-83; CMG 1967; CB 1981; married 1950 Gillian Stratton (died 1959; one son), 1961 Ann Giffard (one son); died St Dominick, Cornwall 8 April 2003.

Basil Greenhill, third Director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, from 1967 to 1983, had a strong personal vision of what the museum should be and proved single-mindedly effective in achieving it.

In this he had most in common with the founding director, 1934-46, Sir Geoffrey Callender, than with the other three 20th-century holders of the post. Callender was a late- Imperial champion of the Navy, primarily from Drake to Nelson: Greenhill's interests were far wider and largely non-naval, save in the post-1815 age of transition from sail to steam, and he consequently put much that was "maritime" in the broadest sense into a museum which until then lacked the range that its name implies.

The two men were also alike in other respects, the first being as passionate communicators of their subjects. "Man's encounter with the sea" was an admirable strap-line of Greenhill's which embodied his aim to take the National Maritime Museum (NMM) well beyond Callender's British focus and make it an international centre of excellence for the study, discussion and interpretation of many aspects of maritime history, and world leader in related museological affairs. "My intention," he said in 1970, "is that when someone says they are on the staff of the National Maritime Museum, no-one needs to ask 'Which one?'"

Such pronouncements, however, echoed another Callender trait; for both men were "l'état, c'est moi" autocrats, with a drive for recognition originating in their relatively modest origins and from an indomitable belief in their superior talents. Greenhill's senior staff knew the limits of even loyal opposition and for other subordinates, to whom civil hauteur and conditional affability were his familiar style, his reign was dynamic but often fraught with the excitements that perhaps characterised working for one of the more austerely efficient late-Roman emperors. In the wider world, where he felt himself among equals, he was more approachable and the fact that in many circumstances he could be hospitable, engaging and notably kind on occasion added to the fascinations of his character.

Of his passion for his subject and of his capacity for hard work there was never doubt, nor of his skills as a "Whitehall warrior" in the NMM cause. These qualities came with him from youth and a 20-year career in the diplomatic service. They formed a background which accounts for his effectiveness as a key figure in international maritime museum affairs, for the wisdom of his counsel in various broader national and regional ones and, in part, for the unusual international range of his interests.

Greenhill, an only child raised in Somerset, attended Bristol Grammar School and won the open T.H. Green scholarship to Bristol University, where he took an honours degree in philosophy and economics, interrupted by Second World War service in the RNVR. He joined up as a rating, rising to Leading Radar Mechanic and Sub-Lieutenant in the Air Branch and worked on a secret radar project at Malvern. He then flew for two years as air crew on bombers used in radar development and ended the war as a Lieutenant.

His maritime interests were established earlier, however, when he saw and photographed sailing ships still working in Cornwall in 1935 and by making a short passage to Finland in the barque Viking, while still at school, in 1937. She was run by Gustav Eriksson out of Mariehamn in the Åland Islands – the last commercial operator of "tall ships" – and it proved a formative experience. Much later, he wrote extensively about the Eriksson ships, developed close connections with the Ålands and their maritime museum, and (with his second wife) wrote a ground-breaking book on the largely forgotten British Assault on Finland (1988) in the Crimean War.

Much came in between. In 1946 Greenhill joined what became the Commonwealth Relations Office and in 1951 began another area of extensive publication with volume one of The Merchant Schooners, a study of British coastal craft (volume 2, 1957). One of his best books, later revised and much reprinted, it has sold over 20,000 copies. By the time it came out Greenhill had already been at the UN in New York, and was serving in Pakistan. After a brief FO secondment to Tokyo he was UK delegate at the Law of the Sea Conference in Geneva and in 1958 went back to what is now Bangladesh as Deputy High Commissioner. Here he completed the work published as Boats and Boatmen of Pakistan (1971) but tragedy struck within 18 months when his first wife contracted amoebic dysentery. Both returned home, where she died, leaving him with their four-year-old son.

A short tour in Nigeria followed and in 1961 he married Anne Giffard, herself a writer, and thereafter also his close literary collaborator. Their first book, Westcountrymen in Prince Edward's Isle (1967), a study of Devonian shipbuilder emigrants to the St Lawrence, emerged from his last overseas posting to Ottawa as Counsellor and Head of Chancery in 1964. This was filmed in 1975.

By the 1960s Greenhill had long been notable in the Society for Nautical Research and was instigator of its Photographic Records Committee – the material being housed at the NMM, where he also lectured and was mooted by the then director, Frank Carr, as well-qualified to succeed him. The Trustees agreed, following an open competition in 1966, but had to take Greenhill's "career break" before his next move abroad and earlier than Carr wished. Carr went at the end of 1966, creating a public furore explained in the museum's official history in 1998. While Greenhill bore no blame in the matter it cast a long shadow as he brought his organising powers to bear on what he saw as an under-performing institution.

The whole administrative and registry system was reconstituted, educational and publication activity expanded (especially with a "Maritime Monograph" series which eventually ran to over 50 titles) and major gallery redevelopment and temporary exhibition programmes were launched – of which "The Vikings" of 1973 was a trail-blazer and "Sea Finland" in 1982 an impressive swan-song. In-house design and co-ordinated conservation services were expanded as independent departments and a pioneering Archaeological Research Centre founded in 1974.

This sprang from the joint NMM/ British Museum excavation of the Anglo-Saxon Graveney boat in Kent in 1970 and later "boat archaeology" projects, in which Greenhill's determination to establish scientific study of early watercraft followed Scandinavian models. His parallel enthusiasm for interpreting more recent working boats and communities was partly based on his own experience of such American museums as Mystic Seaport, in Connecticut, with whom he built close ties.

In these and many other areas NMM rapidly became a centre for regular specialist conferences and its director the world leader that he set out to be. This was apparent by 1972 when the International Congress of Maritime Museums was founded at Greenwich, with Greenhill its first president from 1975, while the triennial International Ship and Boat Archaeology Conferences (the 10th being in Denmark this year) were also his initiative.

At the same time, Greenhill's West Country interests saw him create a number of small outstations – most notably in acquiring the Tresco figurehead collecton (via in-lieu arrangements) and, with the National Trust, fully restoring the last Tamar barge, Shamrock, as a working vessel at Cotehele Quay, Saltash. He also ensured that the museum lent realistic support to many other maritime preservation projects both ashore and afloat and safeguarded huge quantities of British shipbuilding and shipping records during the 1970s meltdown of the industry.

His passion for photography as a key historical source saw his formal creation of the NMM's historic photo archive, and its growth to now well over a million images from the 1840s on: archive film and sound recording followed, and much pioneering collaboration with "the media". He was adviser to a number of BBC radio and television series, starting respectively with The British Seafarer and The Commanding Sea (both of which ran in 1980-82).

Not surprisingly, galleries on maritime archaeology and ethnography, the coasting trade, emigration, merchant shipping and other subjects were soon vying for space at Greenwich with Nelson and Captain Cook – though not to their detriment – since in the early 1970s he managed to insert an entire new mezzanine floor into part of the main NMM galleries and launched the space in 1976 as venue for the spectacular exhibition "1776: the British story of the American Revolution".

In some respects Greenhill was fortunate, arriving at a time when more money was becoming available to fund his ambitious programme, but he was also adept at skirmishing for more opportunist pickings in pre-Thatcher Whitehall. He always had a plan in view (or, if not, boldly claimed to and rapidly produced one), often scooping up end-of-year underspends from sister institutions – who none the less eventually elected him Chairman of the National Museum Directors' Conference (1980-83), something unthinkable for either of his predecessors.

Such a personally engendered empire, however, was unlikely to survive its creator's departure without a clear succession – one symptom of which was the Trustees' agreement to extend his tenure beyond 60. Greenhill also recognised, even before Margaret Thatcher's arrival in 1979, that financial change was coming but – like several London directorial colleagues – not the radical immediate economies that might have saved more of his innovations (and staff) in the savage mid-1980s cut-backs.

Losses included his entire archaeology unit and, though his early engagement with information technology flourished, much of the conservation focus which he had championed as the general way forward also fell casualty to less esoteric concerns, in the need to curb escalating staff costs and radically address major buildings and other problems. By 1985 his successor Neil Cossons suggested, the museum's title would more accurately have been the "National Museum of Scaffolding".

Greenhill's retirement was one of change rather than rest. He held several research fellowships and the last of some 40 books which he wrote, collaborated on or edited (let alone innumerable articles) was published in 1997. He was Chairman of Dulwich Picture Gallery 1977-88, and a governor of Dulwich College; Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Royal Armouries (1984-88), Chairman of the Government Advisory Committee on Historic Wrecks (1986-96), and sat on many other historical, heritage and academic bodies.

At Bristol, where the university awarded him a PhD on his published work in 1980, he was a valued and technically informed Chairman of the SS Great Britain Project, 1982-92, and latterly its Vice-President. From 1991 he chaired the management committee of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at Exeter University, and was more recently a Trustee of the Maritime History Trust at Hull University. Here, he and his wife contributed to developing its new Blaydes House premises, to which he bequeathed his library.

Such connections, and his powerful advocacy of maritime studies for 40 years, have in practice ensured that much which he supported at Greenwich has found an enduring base in universities, with the NMM (now fully rebuilt in all senses) as a partner to several. At Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth universities he continued to lecture and supervise postgraduate students, Plymouth and Hull both awarding him honorary doctorates in 1996 and 2002. He was made CMG for his diplomatic service in 1967 and CB in 1981, while Finland also awarded him the Order of the White Rose in 1980.

For 20 busy years, Greenhill and his wife continued to enjoy wide travel – having visited over 40 countries – and living on the National Trust's Cotehele estate, close to the Tamar. Just before he died there, he told a friend that he felt incredibly lucky in having done everything he set out to do. To his credit, far more than luck was involved and his indisputable achievement will ensure his place, at home and abroad, as the leading late 20th-century figure in maritime museums and a wide range of related affairs.

Pieter van der Merwe