This medieval style instrument was made by influential Taranaki musician Alan Muggeridge to be used in the Stratford Shakespearean festival in 1998. It also features on the album Op Shop Sheik which was released in 2000. Alan was an organiser of the Shakespearean festival as well as a performer. He told the Taranaki Daily News that it was a strange vision that led him to build the instrument. " This will sound silly. One night, it was almost as if there was a voice in my ear, `You know, you really should make a trumpet marine' and I didn't even know what a trumpet marine was.So I went to my trusty Encyclopedia Britannica and looked it up. And there it was. There really was such a thing as a trumpet marine and it looked very long. With such long strings I thought it would really be bassy. So I made it. " And then I discovered that it's not a bass instrument at all. In fact, far from it. Actually the pitch is quite high -- It's nearer to a drone instrument."
Alan estimated that he built nearly 100 instruments over the years using a huge variety of timber. Trumpet marines like this one were at the height of their popularity in the 15th and 16th Centuries.