The museum of seafaring and rum has been located inside a historic edifice at Flensburg's harbour since 1884. The building dating from 1842 was formerly used by the customs office, and now shows plenty of interesting exhibits on the city's history of seafaring and ship-building. Among them are beautiful models and paintings of ships, instruments for navigation, as well as sea charts and sketches for building the old merchant ships. A town model showing Flensburg around 1600 can be found on the ground floor. In 1993, the rum museum became part of the museum of seafaring. It is the only one of its kind in Germany and illustrates Flensburg's rum trade with the West Indies, which was a very important economical factor for the city. And what would a naval museum be without a bit of seaman's yarn and some pirate stories... In additon to the permanent collection there are frequently changing exhibitions.