Deryck - yes, it would be bizarre if Wikipedia told the National Maritime Museum their work wasn't up to our standards. However, because it's unusual to get information of this nature and in this format, I'm keen to establish a consensus at the outset rather than risk an argument about it later.
I have been working with Royal Navy history for the past year or so and am working under one of NAM Rodger's students right now in writing an undergraduate honors thesis. As it goes for organizations which publish or support Naval History, the NMM is considered one of the more important authorities along with the Naval Records Society which sponsor or publish sets of sources. It clearly is reliable and I would be surprised if someone questioned it.
That being said, as Historian, I would find the donation much more useful if it were sponsored on another website (a closed wiki vetted by the NMM?), that way historians can use it without having to cite one of the Wikimedia projects. History, in particular, is a mildly backward field when it comes to digital integration into scholarship. And it is certainly one of the fields I don't think we will see lots of citations to Wikipedia in anytime soon. Naval History is one of the worst subfields for digital integration as well (most of the journals published in the field are not available digitally yet). Any sources published digitally outside of a pay wall would be infinitely useful for scholarship. That would also be useful for vetting of Wikipedia facts, instead of the content being inserted once, it could be refered to for verifiability for however long it is needed.
Alex Stinson
User:Sadads