Shanghai yesterday received the first batch of donations - including a rudder from a 1970s Chinese missile warship - for its planned China Maritime Museum.

Four organizations and five collectors donated more than 20 artifacts to the museum, which is scheduled to be open to public in July, 2009.

The China Merchants Group gave the single biggest item - a four-meter-long model of the China's first merchant ship launched in 1872.

Cao Shaobo, a maritime collector of Shandong Province, donated the 1970s rudder and a 1940s United Kingdom-made sextant to the museum.

Feng Jimin, an official of the organizing group of the museum, presented two special pictures to the museum. They were taken when the country's ex-Chairman Mao Zedong and ex-Premier Zhou Enlai inspected Shanghai port in the 1950s.

The maritime museum is at Lingang New City on the eastern coast of Nanhui District, covering a ground area of 24,830 square meters.

The Chinese government has invested 500 million yuan (US$66.54 million) to build the museum.

(Shanghai Daily September 21, 2007)