cultural objects as "war trophies", removed under the provisions of the Potsdam Conference. The museum awards the Caird Medal annually in honour of its major donor, Sir James Caird. In late August 2018, several groups were vying for the right to purchase the 5,500 relics that were an asset of the bankrupt Premier Exhibitions. Eventually, the National Maritime Museum, Titanic Belfast and Titanic Foundation Limited, as well as National Museums Northern Ireland, joined together as a consortium that was raising money to purchase the 5,500 artifacts. The group intended to keep all of the items together as a single exhibit. The oceanographer Robert Ballard said that he favoured this bid as it would ensure that the memorabilia would be permanently displayed in Belfast (where the Titanic was built) and in Greenwich. The museums were critical of the bid process set by the Bankruptcy Court in Jacksonville, Florida. The minimum bid for the auction on 11 October 2018 was set at US$21.5 million (£16.5m) and the consortium did not have enough funding to meet that amount. The site The museum was officially established in 1934 within the of Greenwich Royal Park in the buildings formerly occupied by the Royal Hospital School, before it moved to Holbrook in Suffolk. The gardens immediately to the north of the museum were reinstated in the late 1870s following construction of the cut-and-cover tunnel between Greenwich and Maze Hill stations. The tunnel comprised part of the final section of the London and Greenwich Railway and opened in 1878. A full redevelopment of the main galleries, centring on what is now the Neptune Court, which was designed by Rick Mather Architects and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, was completed in 1999. In 2008, the museum announced that the Israeli shipping magnate Sammy Ofer had donated £20m for a new gallery. For a year between 2016 and 2017 the National Maritime Museum reported 2.41 million visitors. Directors of the National Maritime Museum 1937–1946: Geoffrey Callender 1947–1966: Frank George Griffith Carr 1967–1983: Basil Jack Greenhill 1983–1986: Neil Cossons 1986–2000: Richard Louis Ormond CBE (born 1939) 2000–2007: Rear Admiral Roy Clare (born 1950) 2007–2019: Dr Kevin Fewster 2019–present: Paddy Rogers Caird Medal The Caird Medal was instituted in 1984 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the National Maritime Museum Act 1934 that established the museum. The medal is awarded annually to "an individual who, in the opinion of the