In 1927, when the initial interest emerged to establish a national museum for preserving and displaying Britain's maritime history, Caird joined a board of trustees that had been established through the Society for Nautical Research to work toward founding the new museum. An opportunity arose to do this when the Royal Hospital School moved from Greenwich to Holbrook, Suffolk in 1933. With the school's Greenwich buildings vacated, Caird offered to fund the entire cost of renovating them to serve as a museum. This cost eventually reached £80,000. At the same time, Caird began purchasing a wide range of historical artefacts, rare books, globes, nautical instruments, artwork, and shipmodels that were reported in 1934 to be worth in excess of £300,000.