Retired US Army LtColonel with a BA in music performance and an MA in History - who now consults and writes about technology, travel, history, philosophy, religion, and art - and develops historically centered video games. Find my website Buccaneers Reef dot com

DISCLAIMER: This page was first started almost a decade ago - before the current community guidelines were put in place. FLICKR now states that all content must be your own. I put this collection of images together from around the web and many different museums, collections, auction houses, books, and other sources, etc, for education and learning purposes only. These pages have never existed for profit or commercial reasons - and only serve to showcase education, learning and sharing - which is what the internet was originally invented for.

These images have now been viewed over 4.2 million times and I feel that this is one of the only places online many of the images can be found. I have seen this image collection referred to as a resource numerous times on model ship building websites, historical forums, and nautical learning websites - which I feel is a wonderful complement to what I have built here - and - to the original intent behind putting this collection together in the first place.

I am not in competition with anyone or any institution. I would argue in fact that people perusing the images here are far more likely to seek out the museum and books the paintings/images originally came from because of their visit to this FLICKR page. I have sought to give credit and put origin information on many images contained in this online collection for that purpose.

A disturbing trend in the last few years is that images in museums and collections are now being used for profit by the institutions. This is very sad I think and stifles academic discovery and creation. I think this runs counter to what a great many of the people who donated the art to the collections intended with their gifts.

A museum is a place the public can come to to enjoy and learn from the art. By finding these images online - one can then go to that actual museum and see the painting their-self.

If an author wishes to illustrate a historical book of research that may present illuminating information to the public and the aficionados of the subject, it may now be impossible to do this in an economically feasible way. No author of historical research has ever got rich from doing historical research - yet now they will be penalized even more when they wish to illustrate their works with prime historical examples which are hundreds of years old, created by great artists of the past - AND SHOULD BE PUBLIC DOMAIN!!! I grieve for what may come next.

Please enjoy and learn from my pages of images here for as long as you can.

Aaron R. Shields, LtColonel, Field Artillery (FA57), US Army(retired) (aka Modernknight1 and Buccaneer's Reef)