The "South China Morning Post" reported that the Hong Kong government partly financed the HK$115 million renovation project. Richard Wesley, the Hong Kong Maritime Museum's second Director, said at the blessing ceremony that this project "marks the culmination of an enormous amount of work by board members and trustees of the HK Maritime Museum to create a truly high-class maritime museum in the Central waterfront. We are very grateful to the many shipping companies who have backed the museum financially since its birth in 2005, and of course the government." Since the museum's opening in 2005 the collection had been built from some 700 objects to over 2000 and the library had gone from 15 books to over 1500.