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Conceived of in 1949, the Shipyard Museum was originally located on the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and called the Shipyard Museum. It opened on March 27, 1950.  In January 1963, the Shipyard Museum was loaned by the Shipyard to the City. The City, in turn, leased the Museum to the newly created Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum, Incorporated. The Directors of this entity were appointed by the City Council and consisted of prominent local citizens, most of whom were members of the Friends. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum opened on January 27, 1963 at 2 High Street. The first Director and curator of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum was Marshall W. Butt, one of whose descendants is still involved with the Friends. In August 1972, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum entity was dissolved by the Court of Hustings for the City of Portsmouth and all of its assets were ordered transferred to the City of Portsmouth. While the Shipyard Museum still has a wonderful collection of Shipyard artifacts, unfortunately, in 2018, as part of a nationwide effort affecting many maritime museums, the US Navy took back many of the originally loaned artifacts.

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The Shipyard Museum was the first, and is the oldest, of the City’s five museums.

The Lightship Portsmouth was constructed at the Pusey and Jones Shipyard in Wilmington, Delaware in 1915. Commissioned in 1916, its first duty station as an active aid to navigation was off the Virginia Capes. Designated the Charles, it served there from 1916 until 1926. The ship’s longest duty assignment was from 1926 until 1951 off Cape Henlopen, Delaware, when she was designated Overfalls. It was during this time that the former U.S. Lighthouse Service was absorbed by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939. After two years of service in World War II on that same station, the ship received new engines and upgrades to its superstructure. The ship’s final station was off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at a station called Stonehorse Shoal, when her hull name was changed to Stonehorse. In 1963, the ship made a brief transfer to nearby Cross Rip Shoal, but after an engine failure, she was decommissioned and retired early in 1964. This is when the City of Portsmouth acquired the Lightship and installed her on the riverfront in the London Street slip as part of a waterfront revitalization plan to attract tourists and celebrate the city’s maritime and Coast Guard history installation links. The Lightship opened as a museum with the designation Portsmouth in the spring of 1967. The Lightship is currently listed as a National Historic Landmark.