Giovanni Bonello Collection of Postcards

Dr Giovanni Bonello’s 2022 donation to the national maritime collection constitutes a substantial visual record of ships calling at Malta. Comprising over 1,400 postcards, all immediately digitised, the collection mainly depicts British naval vessels throughout various phases of the island’s colonial and post-colonial history.

Among the more curious images is the torpedo ram HMS Polyphemus lying in Dockyard Creek. This short-lived late nineteenth-century experiment sought to combine emerging technologies with a very archaic naval tactic. But the Bonello Donation also documents Malta’s shifting strategic significance.

A large proportion of the postcards dates to a period when the island functioned as a global and regional projector of British imperial power, particularly from the 1920s onward, when the Mediterranean Fleet increasingly expected itself to intervene in the Far East against possible Japanese expansion. The collection also reflects Malta’s offensive role during the Second World War and its history as a NATO base during a portion of the Cold War.