On your roundabout left, look for the big black-and-red ship hull with four buff-coloured funnels and strings of bunting fluttering overhead.
This is ShipSpace, once Inverness’s hands-on maritime museum, moored in spirit beside the Caledonian Canal at Muirtown Basin. And it had a party trick: a 1:10 scale Titanic model, ingeniously built from three caravans. You’d step inside expecting damp museum hush, and instead find yourself in three little worlds-a Parisian-style café, a replica bridge where you could imagine the orders ringing out, and a Marconi radio room that made the whole disaster feel suddenly, uncomfortably close.
Around it were interactive displays, posters and photos, plus film footage of divers dropping down to the wreck like ghosts into the dark. There were replicas too: the Nautile submersible, working boats like the Guiding Star creel boat, the Star of Hope drifter, and even a hefty RNLI Watson-class lifeboat.
ShipSpace closed for good in April 2018 after its owner-curator, Stan Fraser, died. The place is still family-held-so what you’re seeing now is a beloved project, resting at anchor.
