Players Navy Cut tobacco tin from 1939, donated to the museum in 1989. Navy Cut Tobacco was a brand of tobacco products, pipe and cigarette, originally manufactured by John Player & Sons in Nottingham, where it continued to be produced after Player's became a branch of the Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland in 1901. Named "Player's Navy Cut," the brand gained popularity in Britain, Germany, and British Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, later expanding to the United States. 

The brand's packaging featured a distinctive logo of a sailor in a 'Navy Cut' cap. The term "Navy Cut" reportedly originated from sailors' practice of binding tobacco leaves with string or twine, allowing the tobacco to mature under pressure, and then slicing off a "cut" for use. The product was also available in pipe tobacco form. the brand became popular in the armed services and the merchant navy across the world. A large part of the early branding centred around the image of the sailor known as "Hero" because of the name on his hat band. 

The sailor image was purchased from W.J. Parkins of Chester who had previously used it on an advertisement for Jack's Glory tobacco in 1880. As time went by the image of the sailor changed as it sometimes had a beard and other times, he was clean shaven. In 1927 "Hero" was standardised. As part of the 1927 marketing campaign John Player and Sons commissioned an oil painting Head of a Sailor by Arthur David McCormick. The Navy Cut brand ceased in 2016. Until the arrival of airtight tins during the 1860s, flake tobacco was weighed out from stone jars or sliced from a compressed 'plug' using a special plug cutter. Wrapped by hand into what were known as 'twists' or 'screws', smokers in those days displayed loyalty to a specific tobacconist rather than to an individual brand of tobacco. However, the airtight tin revolutionized the tobacco industry, guaranteeing the freshness of the tobacco. Tobacco has a definite link to the British Empire’s history. 

The trade and consumption of tobacco is strongly linked to the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Tobacco was one of the first tropical products to fuel colonial trade and by the mid-17th century, tobacco was established as one of the main goods used by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and English to buy enslaved people on the African coast. Tobacco was grown in some North American colonies, mainly in Virginia, Maryland and North Virginia to supply the English market. While initially cultivated by indentured servants, by the second half of the 1600s planters began replacing their workforce with enslaved Africans. Now dependent on enslavement in order to be commercially viable, soaring American tobacco exports created a constant demand for more enslaved labour. 

For those who fell victim to Europe’s transatlantic trade in Africans, life on an American tobacco plantation was one of relentless, back breaking work, brutal punishments, fear, malnutrition, disease, and often, an early death.