The collection has developed since the opening of the Vancouver Maritime Museum in 1959. Prints, negatives, slides, glass plate negatives, and lantern slides have all been donated by various sources and brought together to create the Vancouver Maritime Museum (VMM) Photograph collection. Donors have been noted when known. Previous to 2014, very few images were assigned unique identifiers (item numbers). Starting in 2014, as images were digitized, they were assigned item numbers in order to be entered into the database. Therefore, not every individual item is catalogued in this collection. Researchers looking for photographs of specific vessels should contact the Archivist.

Collection consists of over 100,000 images donated to the Vancouver Maritime Museum at various times. Often discrete items, but sometimes also whole collections, have been included.

This collection is not completely catalogued. New files and items are continually added.