To see how a real maritime museum functions and the type of facility it should ideally reside in, one has to look no further than the maritime museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, a purpose-built facility specifically to house invaluable national and historic museum artifacts, and is the largest maritime museum in the country.
This is how it should be done, and note it is on the waterfront, where a maritime museum ought to be:
https://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca/
Victorians, and especially those who get into a tizzy about any proposed development on our own precious waterfront should note that Halifax - which is a lot older than Victoria with infinitely more history - had zero issue building a modern, contemporary facility to accommodate much of Canada's maritime heritage. And imagine that - it looks great!
Having been there twice I can tell you it beats the hell out of trying to shoehorn the invaluable remnants of our own Pacific Northwest maritime history into a cramped 100 year old ex-jail that is neither seismically nor spatially up to the task.
One would hope the NDP would consider stealing a page out of the Liberal handbook: since the premier and many of his senior lieutenants are from this area, look into what it would take to kick in the requisite funding.
Funny how other places can 'get it done' but too often Victoria plays the role of bridesmaid yet rarely the bride.
We have a left-leaning city council: for heaven sake comrades have backroom conversations, if you have to meet after midnight on a weekend on the third floor stacks of the UVic library in the "Socialism Rules!" section, with your left-wing provincial counterparts and convince them to help out and just get it done.
That the capital city of the third largest province in the country, a tourist gem attracting close to 4 million people annually, and representing over 150 years of local, regional and national maritime history - both commercial and military - has to go begging for funding in wholly unsuitable quarters while Vancouver for example got $500 million bucks for a stadium roof, is beyond surreal......its the Twilight Zone.