National Museums Liverpool Blog - Stephen

My colourful new paperback Mersey Maritime Tales – True Stories of Shipwrecks, Heroism

Me with my new book

and Human Endeavour is out now price just £3.99. Although I say it myself, it’s a great read with amazing stories packed with all sorts of entertaining and inspiring things.

It’s available at Merseyside Maritime Museum as well as newsagents and bookshops in the Liverpool and north Wales areas. In addition you can order it through www.merseyshop.com or by calling 0845 143 0001 (plus £1.50 P&P UK).

Here’s an extract from my Foreword to the 92-page book containing 40 Tales plus a cargo of Did You Know facts and figures:

People tell me: ‘You are clever, knowing all those stories with so many dates and facts’. However, the Tales owe their existence to the outstanding displays at Merseyside Maritime Museum.

There is an amazing array of exhibits which prove a constant inspiration to me. The museum houses some of the finest ship models as well as the rarest historical objects. For example, the 20 ft long original builder’s model of the Titanic is probably the most popular single exhibit among the many thousands of objects on display.

Next to it in the Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery is an apron worn by a passenger, possibly the only item of clothing worn on the night of the disaster in a public collection.

This gallery alone has inspired several Tales, the Titanic story continues to fascinate succeeding generations of visitors.

I have to confess there is a trick in writing the Tales. I write four at a time and the drafts are checked for factual errors by Merseyside Maritime Museum curators and other staff. The Tales are done as part of my job as press officer for National Museums Liverpool.

I was a newspaper reporter for many years and am a proficient writer in Pitman’s shorthand. I can write down large amounts of information in a relatively short time using those peculiar phonetic symbols and short-forms. This particular skill is very handy in preparing the Tales. Sometimes I have an idea in my head before I make my monthly visit to the museum to do Tales research. More often than not it is quick flashes of inspiration which will see the birth of a Tale.

Many of the Tales involve my own research and in this area the Internet has opened whole new areas to countless people, myself included.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Model of U99. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

As regular readers of this blog will know, I like my food – good traditional English grub boiled, grilled, roasted or fried. If there’s one thing that puts me off it’s tainted food: the awful aroma and taste of the processed ready-meal or tinned scouse, to name just two.

German propaganda films of the Second World War depict the crews of U-boat submarines as swashbuckling marauders trawling the vast oceans for enemy ships to attack and destroy. In reality, the lives of the 40,000 men who served in the U-boat fleet bore little relation to this glamorous image which their activities inspired in the German public mind. The U-boats were cramped, smelly, unhygienic and also almost unbearably claustrophobic.

A typical U-boat bow (front) compartment measuring just 12 feet across, housed some 25 men, several 22 ft torpedoes and equipment. Each bunk bed was used by two or three people on a shift system.

The diet of U-boat crews was mainly tinned food. But, fresh or tinned, it always “tasted of U-boat – diesel oil with a flavour of mould,” according to Heinz Schaeffer, commander of U977.

A German war photographer on board U96 in 1941 wrote: “The heat. The stench of oil.  Lead in my skull from the engine fumes. I feel like Jonah inside some huge shellfish sheathed in armour.”

Included in the Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Battle of the Atlantic gallery is an exhibition model of the notorious U99 (shown here) which sank 40 British and Allied merchant ships (about 250,000 tons) in under nine months’ active service from July 1940. She was under the command of Otto Kretschmer, one of Germany’s most successful U-boat aces. U99’s luck, however, ran out on 17 March 1941 when she was sunk south west of the Faroe Islands between Iceland and north Scotland by the destroyer HMS Walker. Kretschmer and most of the crew were rescued and became prisoners-of-war.

U-boat medals on display include an Iron Cross second class 1939-45, which was awarded to large numbers of U-boat men, and a U-boat patrol badge. 

Towards the end of 1940 Admiral Karl Donitz, Officer Commanding U-boats, introduced the wolf pack system of using several U-boats to attack a convoy at night on the surface. A detailed model shows a wolf pack gathering beneath the waves for a surface attack on an Allied convoy in the north Atlantic at night.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

July 1941 convoy pre-sailing conference in the Liver Building. Courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I have been up the towers of Liverpool’s Liver Building several times to witness the breathtaking views across land and sea. Recently I learnt that this world-famous edifice once housed offices and personnel vital to the convoy system in the Second World War.

Liverpool was the most important convoy port in Britain during the war when groups of merchant ships, escorted by the Royal Navy, maintained a lifeline of supplies across the Atlantic. The Royal Navy was desperately short of ships suitable for convoy escort work at the outbreak of war. All it had were 24 old destroyers, a handful of sloops and a few anti-submarine trawlers.

In September 1940, 50 old American destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy in return for the use of British naval and air bases in the western Atlantic. Despite this, that winter there were only enough escorts to provide two for each convoy. The Admiralty had to draft in 70 trawlers from the fishing fleets. The original convoys consisted of between 30 and 40 merchant ships sailing in lines or columns. In the later war years, the convoys became much larger, often exceeding 70 ships.

Most ocean-going ships travelled to and from Britain via her western coastal waters. From October 1939, defence of these waters came under the naval operational control of Western Approaches Command based in Plymouth. This HQ was moved to Liverpool, the most central west coast port, in February 1941. It developed into a vast organisation responsible for the day-to-day direction of Britain’s entire north Atlantic campaign.

In Liverpool the Naval Control Service Officer (NCSO) was based on the first floor of the Royal Liver Building at the Pier Head. This officer was responsible for the routing of ships individually or in convoy.

Displays at the Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Battle of the Atlantic gallery include a photo of a July 1941 convoy pre-sailing conference in the Liver Building (shown here). These meetings were also attended by ships’ masters and their chief engineers, the convoy commodore and representatives of the sea and air escorts.

Also on display are remarkably-detailed coloured sketches showing some of the ships which made up convoys.These drawings are believed to have been begun during the convoys themselves by the commodore, Rear Admiral Hugh Hext Rogers. He probably completed them soon afterwards. They show side views of the ships with each one named.

Next week we look at life on board the U-boats which hounded the convoys.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Depth charge diagram. Image courtesy Livepool Daily Post and Echo

With eyes bulging and sweat pouring down their faces, submariners crouch fearfully as depth charges explode around them. The sub lurches and shudders, then – in a foaming, noisy climax - water comes pouring in.

This is the popular cinema and TV view of depth charges doing their deadly work against unseen enemies. I find such scenes gripping and unsettling in their intensity – particularly because I hate confined, crowded spaces.

Until 1942 the depth charge was the only weapon that could be used against a submerged submarine. It consisted of a steel drum filled with 200 lbs (90 kilos) of high explosive set to detonate at different depths of water.

In 1939 the standard equipment for small warships was a trap from which charges were rolled over the stern and two mortars, or throwers, which fired them 120 ft on either beam (side of the ship). Soon more traps and throwers were added. Depth charges were dropped in various patterns to give the best chances of success. Eventually heavy weights were fixed to half the charges, causing them to sink faster and explode deeper.

The Battle of the Atlantic gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum includes a coloured diagram showing a cross section of a Mark VII depth charge. It worked on the principle that water pressure increased with water depth. The depth at which the charge exploded was controlled by an adjustable inlet valve at one end. After filling a bellows chamber, the water drove the detonator against the primer causing it to explode and set off the main charge.

A exploding depth charge could destroy a U-boat 25 ft away and damage one at a distance of 50 ft. Even explosions that didn’t hit their targets could cause trauma, similar to shell shock, among U-boat crews.

Depth charges were used in conjunction with ASDIC, later known as sonar, which had been fitted in many of the Royal Navy’s smaller warships in 1939. It was a secret apparatus for locating submerged submarines using sound waves. The device consisted of an electronic sound transmitter and receiver, housed in a metal dome beneath the ship’s hull, near the bow. The gallery has a life-sized reconstruction of an ASDIC hut on a British destroyer at the start of the war.  It features original equipment and a recording of the pinging sounds that bounced back when the sound waves hit a submarine.

After 1942, new weapons such as the forward-throwing Hedgehog and Squid anti-submarine mortars were introduced against U-boats.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Stewardesses on the White Star Line's 'Teutonic'. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Seafarers from all over the world were a familiar sight on the streets of Liverpool and I always enjoyed watching the different personalities and characters. Some would head for local markets while others would congregate around the dock road area. It was the advent of container ships which concentrated activity at the Freeport and changed this way of life for mariners for ever.

Porters who handled luggage from the liners at the Prince’s Stage wore uniforms. The mix was further enhanced when a Royal Navy warship docked and the crew were ‘on the town’ in their bellbottom trousers and broad collars.

The worldwide success of British steamships in Victorian times greatly boosted seafaring jobs in the UK. It also provided most seafarers with greater continuity of work because steamships, unlike sailing vessels, could undertake reliable, scheduled services between ports.

This led to greater job security and company loyalty among mariners. Despite this, by the 1890s ship owners were finding it increasingly difficult – because of the low wages and poor conditions afloat – to staff their ships with good-quality British ratings. They therefore began to employ growing numbers of foreign seafarers on their ocean-going ships. From 1890, the Brocklebank shipping company hired lascars from Singapore and Malaya as deck, engine room and saloon crews. Chinese crews were a feature of the Blue Funnel Line.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there are displays about the working lives of seafarers. A lascar crew is pictured on the Brocklebank ship Pindari in 1891.

Kroo deckhands from Freetown, Sierra Leone, are pictured on the Palm Line’s Kamasi Palm in 1954. Krooboys, as they were called, were employed to handle cargo between coastal ports in West Africa. A Chinese certificate of merit was awarded to Chinese crew members by Blue Funnel during the Second World War.

The spectacular growth in the number and size of passenger steamers in the late 19th century created thousands of new seafaring jobs. These ranged from engine room staff to stewards, stewardesses and other hotel-style staff providing services for passengers.

Photographs on display include this one showing stewardesses in starched aprons and caps pictured on White Star Line’s Teutonic in 1889.

Three women who worked as a hairdresser, shop assistant and stenographer are seen on the Empress of France in 1956.

A fascinating model depicts the No 3 boiler room on the Aquitania of 1913. A total of 304 firemen, trimmers and greasers worked in the four boiler rooms on this luxury liner.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

The corvette, HMS Picotee. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I spend a lot of time at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Albert Dock, in the course of my work but only recently discovered the dock’s role in the Second World War as a corvette base.

Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, at the outbreak of war ordered the building of corvettes – lightly armed warships to escort vital supply convoys crossing the Atlantic. These corvettes – named after flowers – were based on whale catchers and were small and cheap to build.  First coming into service in April 1940, they bore the brunt of British and Canadian naval escort work in the Battle of the Atlantic. Nearly 300 corvettes were built and they sank 38 U-boat submarines with the loss of just 25 of their own number.

Liverpool-born Nicholas Monsarrat, author of best-selling 1951 novel The Cruel Sea, served as a young Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) on the Liverpool-based corvette HMS Campanula. He used his memories from this period as material for The Cruel Sea and his wartime book HM Corvette (1942). In The Cruel Sea he described how the crew of a corvette “looked as if they had been through a tidal wave, emerging in tatters at the end of it” after 22 days at sea.

The RNVR - 6,000-strong in 1939 – was the Royal Navy’s second line of reserves. Unlike the Royal Navy Reserve (RNR), it consisted of volunteers with no professional sea experience or training who learnt their new roles remarkably quickly.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a display featuring Nicholas Monsarrat’s wartime medals, both full-sized and miniature groups. A photograph shows Monsarrat, wearing a duffle coat and holding binoculars, on the bridge of the Campanula based at the Albert Dock.

In command of Campanula at this time was Lt Commander Richard Case RNR. Born and educated in Liverpool, Case was a professional sea officer with Coast Lines before the war. After serving on Campanula, he took charge of the Londonderry-based frigate Rother which he guided safely through some of the fiercest convoy battles of the war. On display are his steel helmet and woollen mittens which evoke those critical days on Atlantic and Arctic escort duties.

There is a 1:96 scale waterline model of one of the corvettes which did not come back. HMS Picotee (shown here), based in Greenock, was torpedoed and sunk by the U-568 while escorting a convoy off southern Ireland. More than 60 crew were lost.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

The Cutty Sark. Image courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Few things can rival the bliss of enjoying a pint of tea first thing in the morning – real tea, not tea bags, so you get the full taste of the brew.

The recent disastrous fire which badly damaged the legendary Cutty Sark has highlighted the role played by tea clippers in maritime history.

Designed to carry China tea quickly and efficiently, the glamorous era of these fast, slender sailing ships only lasted between 1850 and 1870 but the clippers left an indelible mark on the history of seafaring.

Pioneered by the Americans, the first true clipper was the Rainbow launched in 1845. She completed the journey from New York to Canton in 102 days – clipping more than two weeks off the previous record for that trip.

This may have been how the ships got their name although the word clipper was originally applied to a fast horse, so this may have been the origin.

American and British ships competed to be fastest in the tea trade and this is how international races started from 1852 when British Challenger beat the US clipper Challenge.

New ports opening in China to feed the tea trade fuelled the races. A winning ship’s cargo of tea could earn a premium of sixpence (two and a half pence) per pound weight.

The most famous clipper race was in 1866 when 10 clippers set out for London from Foochow. They were so equally matched that they were often in sight of each other as they sped across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and north across the Atlantic.

The race was declared a dead heat between Taeping and Ariel – one of the most famous clippers - which both came into the Thames estuary neck-and-neck.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a superb model of a typical tea clipper from about 1865, showing the cross section of the hull. The 1:48 scale model depicts a 186 ft-long three-masted wooden ship, with metal fastenings, similar in size and construction to the Ariel built in Greenock.

By the 1860s iron was increasingly being used to strengthen wooden ships so that they could be built to greater lengths.

There is a painting of the Maiden Queen by an unknown Chinese artist. Owned by T & J Brocklebank and employed in the tea trade, she is shown off the coast of China.

A number of Chinese artists worked in Far Eastern ports producing ship portraits for European captains.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Nancy Mildon with her brothers. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I was taken aback recently to learn that one of my relatives still has a teddy at the age of 19. He takes comfort having it near as have countless other people – including our own royal family. However, it didn’t appeal to me after the age of about three.

Countless thousands of children have travelled on passenger ships but very little has been recorded about their experiences unless by adults.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a collection of material linked to a young girl who sailed across the Atlantic with her mother and brother during the First World War. She was Nancy Mildon, aged eight, who sailed on the Cunard liner Alaunia from New York to Plymouth in July 1916. Nancy and her family were returning to England after spending six years in Canada. The crossing was frightening because of the threat of attacks by German U-boats.

Nancy had her toy lion Fido to hug for comfort during the voyage. She called him Fido because at first she thought he was a toy dog. Nancy (later Mrs Hall) kept Fido until she was almost 90 years old, when she gave him to the museum. During the voyage, Nancy was upset when her mother lent Fido to passenger Ruth Merrington who wrote an ode starting:

A British lion watch do keep
O’er a little bunk
Where I tried to sleep.
He rolled his eyes and he wagged his tail
When spooky sounds my cheek did pale.

Family photos (including this one) record Nancy on the voyage – one with her sailor-suited brother and other child passengers and crew members.

From an earlier era is The Big Ship (Great Eastern) Alphabet. The front cover shows Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s huge ship with its churning paddle wheels. Other illustrations on display show a children’s race on board the Andes in the 1930s. There are two from the 1950s - playroom on a passenger liner and bedtime stories on the Ivernia.

Many souvenirs could be bought - one is a “take to pieces” model of the Queen Mary dating from 1936.

A sailor boy doll dressed in bell-bottomed trousers wears a cap carrying the name Lancastria. This pre-war souvenir is a poignant reminder that many children were among up to 5,000 people who died when the liner was sunk by the Germans off France, in June 1940. It was the worst-ever loss of life on a British ship. 

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

G Humphrey's 'An interesting scene on board an East Indiaman showing the effects of a heavy lurch after dinner'

Sea air gives me an appetite and it has to be really rough to put me off my food. I fondly remember the old Isle of Man ferry which always sounded the dinner gong immediately after casting off from Douglas, so there were no excuses for wavering.

The welcome return of cruise liners to Liverpool’s waterfront puts into focus Britain’s historical association with sea travel as the world’s greatest maritime nation. As an island, Britain has always depended heavily on sea travel. Until the invention of aircraft, for example, everyone travelling to and from Britain had to do so by ship.

Until the late 19th century sea travel was often unpleasant and hazardous. It was usually undertaken only when absolutely necessary.

At the Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a hilarious coloured engraving of 1818 by G Humphrey called “An interesting scene on board an East Indiaman showing the effects of a heavy lurch after dinner”. Passengers on board a sailing ship attempt to eat at a table as the ship lurches from side to side, scattering food and drink.

Few sailing ships had more than the most basic facilities for passengers, who were largely left to fend for themselves. Early steam ships were usually able to provide reliable, scheduled services regardless of the weather. By the end of the 19th century the age of the floating palaces had arrived, providing comfortable accommodation for passengers.

Although today competing with aircraft and Channel Tunnel trains, ships still carry millions of people to and from Britain every year. Ferries can compete with aircraft because they carry large numbers of road vehicles as well as foot passengers. They can also compete with Channel Tunnel trains because they transport more vehicles and people to a wider range of destinations. Roll-on, roll-off car ferries were widely introduced on routes to and from Britain in the mid-1960s.

In the past holiday cruises were often seen as being for the very old or very wealthy. In recent years, however, they have become less expensive and they are experiencing a boom. People of all ages enjoy cruising because the ships provide the facilities of floating hotels and holiday resorts while moving from place to place. Among the other attractions are sunshine, fresh sea air, excellent food and exotic locations.

Other exhibits include a publicity model of the passenger / vehicle ferry Stena Hengist dating from about 1990. She was operated by Stena Sealink Ltd on the English Channel routes between 1990 and 1993.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Apprentices dhobying on the Malakand,1910. Image courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

My late uncle Alfred Guy would tell stories of armies of rats moving between ships and warehouses when he served as a policeman at Liverpool’s docks in the 1930s. It was always in the dead of night when the vermin surged past him looking for holds full of grain or piles of food-filled sacks.

Seafarers have always dreaded illness and disease breaking out on board ship and in the past scourges like scurvy could decimate crews made vulnerable by poor food. Vessels were infested with vermin such as rats and cockroaches which could bring infections that spread like wildfire in the days before immunisation and antibiotics. There were tales of derelicts – ships found drifting months and even years after all the crew members had died from disease.

Before the Second World War mariners were particularly vulnerable to illness. This was due largely to their unhealthy diet and bad conditions on board. Other reasons were the poor health of new recruits and the exposure of many crews to highly-infectious diseases, especially on voyages to tropical countries. Although the situation has improved greatly since the 1940s, merchant seafaring is still a relatively unhealthy occupation.

More than 200 years ago slave ships were particularly unhealthy. Over one fifth of seamen on Liverpool and Bristol slave ships in the late 18th century died due to illness on the voyage.

Between 1918 and 1939 merchant seamen were three times more likely to die of TB than the average British male.

The Seamen’s Hospital Society was established in 1821 and incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1833. Today it is a UK charity which helps people currently or previously employed in the Merchant Navy or fishing fleets and their dependents. From 1821 to 1870 the Society ran Seaman’s Infirmaries on former warships before moving ashore as the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital, Greenwich, named after its last floating home. Today the hospital continues as the Dreadnought Unit at University College Hospitals London.

Merseyside Maritime Museum has a display focusing on disease and illness at sea. There are examples of surgical tools used on vessels. From 1894, all foreign-going British ships carrying more than 100 people were required to carry a qualified surgeon.

A large wooden medicine chest for seafarers contains glass medicine bottles, pestle and mortar and scales. It dates from 1854 which was the year British ships were required to carry medical equipment and stores for the treatment of illness and injury.

This photograph shows apprentices dhobying (washing their clothes) on the Brocklebank Line’s Malakand about 1910.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

I remember the Prince’s Landing Stage at Liverpool as a constantly busy place when I was a boy in the 1950s – and the Empress of France was one of the monarchs of the sea attended by hundreds of passengers and crew.

This magnificent liner started as a Duchess before serving as a troopship in the Second World War and – after sinking a German U-boat and shooting down an enemy plane – was created an Empress.

The 20,448-ton Duchess of Bedford, of the Canadian Pacific Line, was a popular ship on the Liverpool to Canada run and she was renamed Empress of France in 1947.

She was a floating world of contrasts when first built in 1928. In those days the Duchess of Bedford could carry up to 1,570 passengers. It could take an army of some 70 waiters, 80 stewards and stewardesses, six chefs and 50 kitchen staff just to feed them. The crew numbered 510 in all, including the deck and engine room staff.

Conditions for crew members were basic, with no recreational facilities or dining rooms. Kitchen staff ate on the worktops and shared accommodation with up to 19 others in steel bunks. They had to travel light because each only had an 18-inch square locker for all their belongings.

However, for her passengers she set new standards of comfort when she began life as one of four Duchesses sailing out of Liverpool.

The Duchess of Bedford had hot and cold running water for all 580 cabin class, 480 tourist class and 510 third class passengers. This was at a time when many British homes had only a cold tap and did not have constant hot running water.

Requisitioned as a troopship, she carried a mammoth 179,000 personnel and covered more than 400,000 miles during her war service.

The Duchess of Bedford was sailing from Liverpool to Boston in August 1942 when she spotted a U-boat and sank the submarine by gunfire. She was later used in the north Africa landings in November 1943 when she shot down an enemy aircraft.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a large model of the liner when she was the Empress of France, shown in her post-war livery.

Resuming her Liverpool – Quebec – Montreal sailings in September 1948, she did 310 round voyages across the north Atlantic before her final crossing in 1960.

A photograph shows the 582-ft long Empress leaving Liverpool for the last time, heading for Newport, Monmouthshire, where she was scrapped.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

Leslie and Clifford Morgan

Danger lurks everywhere and it is essential to keep vigilant at all times. This painful lesson was literally driven home to me recently when I was knocked off my bicycle – flying 10 ft into the air, fortunately without serious injury.

Birkenhead-born Leslie Morton, aged 18, has a unique place in history for using his eyes. He was the lookout who first spotted the torpedo which sank the Lusitania as she headed for Liverpool on 7 May 1915. It was just after lunchtime on a bright, sunny day and the sea was calm when the German submarine U-20 launched its deadly attack.

As the great ship passed the lighthouse at the Old Head of Kinsale, southern Ireland, Leslie was stationed on the bow of the liner. Suddenly, he spotted thin lines of foam racing towards the ship and shouted: “Torpedoes coming in on the starboard”.  A large explosion shook the Cunard vessel as the torpedo blew a large hole in her right side. The Lusitania began to sink very rapidly at the bow and within 18 minutes she was on the bottom of the Irish Sea. A total of 1,195 people died in the tragedy.

Lusitania is featured in a permanent exhibition at the Merseyside Maritime Museum called Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress – the latter being the Empress of Ireland which sank in Canada in 1914. There is a section devoted to Leslie Morton and his brother Clifford, who was nearly 19 at the time of the disaster (they were not twins). 

Both brothers saved many lives and Leslie was later considered to be the “outstanding hero of the Lusitania disaster”.

They joined the crew of the Lusitania as ordinary seamen in New York. The brothers were among eight crew from the Liverpool sailing ship Naiad who jumped ship to join Lusitania. All planned to join the Royal Navy once they returned to England. The Morton brothers were the only ones to survive the sinking.

On display is the silver Board of Trade Gallantry Medal awarded to Leslie Morton for saving lives at sea.

Kapitan-lieutenant Walter Schwieger was the captain of the U-boat which sank the Lusitania. He was very successful, sinking three ships in two days before scuppering the Lusitania.

The sinking of the Lusitania sparked riots and attacks on businesses run by people of German descent in Liverpool and elsewhere. My late father, George Guy, as a four-year-old clearly remembered a mob attacking Yagg’s shop in Everton.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

The Hesperous, 1942. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I’m told duffle coats are coming back into fashion – as they were when I was at school in the 1960s – but little did I realise that they came to the fore on the convoys of the Second World War. The convoys which brought vital supplies across the Atlantic to Britain were constantly threatened by German submarines bent on sinking as many ships as possible.

Once at sea, merchant seafarers were always involved in the daily routine of watches (two and four-hour working shifts). Off-duty time was mostly spent sleeping, playing cards or on other similar pastimes

Whenever a convoy was under attack it took great discipline and nerve to remain at your post. Engine room staff lived closer to death than those on deck, since the engine room was a prime target for U-boat torpedoes and was often a difficult place from which to escape.

Iron ore cargo ships, once torpedoed, were often known to sink literally like stones. The crews of oil tankers knew that they could be burnt alive if their ship was attacked.

In 1942, 8,400 British and Commonwealth merchant seafarers lost their lives in the Atlantic. Nearly a third of the crews died on British ships that were sunk. Government reports said that morale within the merchant navy remained remarkably high. Most of the people involved, however, felt they were just doing their jobs, like millions of others.

Among exhibits on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum are tiny models of the warships which escorted the convoys. These miniature waterline models, scale 1:1200, show how small Royal Navy ships were compared to capital ships. There are models of the destroyers Montgomery and Vanoc (both built1918) and Fame (1934), sloop Pelican (1939), corvette Abelia (1943) and frigate Allington Castle (1944). By way of comparison, there is a same scale model of one of the Royal Navy’s largest capital ships of the war, the battleship King George V.

There is the commissioning pennant of the destroyer Hesperus which was based in Liverpool for much of the war. A photo shows Hesperus entering the Gladstone Dock in December 1942, her bow crumpled after ramming and sinking the U-357.

An iconic duffle coat is of the type worn by Royal Naval and merchant seafarers on the Atlantic convoys throughout the war. Another iconic item is a Mae West lifejacket as worn by British and allied personnel during the war. It was named after the buxom Hollywood star who was a pin-up of the time.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Several of my friends emigrated but now, with the arrival of cheap air travel, they quite frequently return on visits. One comes every year from New Zealand. In the past emigration usually meant, for those left behind, that you were unlikely to see loved ones again. It was a drastic step.

Model of the Berengaria, which took many emigrants to new lives. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Liverpool was well-placed on the west coat of Britain to cater for the huge growth in the emigrant trade to the United States and Canada by the early 19th century. It became Britain’s most important international passenger port and probably the greatest emigrant port in world history, with some nine million people passing through in the period 1830 to 1930. Not until 1927, when transatlantic emigration was in decline, did Southampton finally surpass Liverpool for international passenger traffic.

From 1800 until the 1920s the busiest ocean travel route in the world was between the British Isles and North America. Most of the millions of passengers on this route were emigrants to the USA and Canada. Many came from as far away as Scandinavia and Russia to set off from Liverpool. From 1850 many emigrants also sailed to Australasia and other British colonies around the world.

As the 20th century dawned, however, more and more people became tourists and travelled the oceans for pleasure rather than need. The main short-sea routes to and from Britain are to Europe and Ireland. In recent years, business and pleasure have been the main reasons for travel.

Despite the successes of Cunard’s paddle steamer Britannia and other British steam packets in the 1840s, most passengers to and from Britain still travelled by sailing ship. This was because until the 1860s travel under sail, although slower, remained cheaper. By 1870 steamships were becoming larger and more powerful and were carrying many more passengers than ever before.

There are many displays at Merseyside Maritime Museum illustrating the era of sea passenger travel. There are displays about the passenger liners, how people lived on board, what they took with them and what they ate. The Britannia, a wooden paddle steamer, took 14 days to cross the Atlantic. The Queen Mary, five times as long and nearly 70 times larger in tonnage, took just four days.

Liverpool-based shipping companies had regular passenger services to every continent until the 1960s. Competition from air travel ended the era of the passenger liners but in the recent years there has been a huge growth in cruise holidays.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Sir Percy Bates. Image courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

This portrait of Sir Percy Bates is one of my favourites as it makes you want to know more about the man as he looks quizzically over his spectacles. The painting hangs in the Life at Sea gallery in the Merseyside Maritime Museum along with personal items and other memorabilia.

Cunard chairman Sir Percy (1879-1946) had the idea of building legendary liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. He was one of a long line of shipowners and shipping company bosses who had tremendous influence when British vessels led the world.

Sir Percy, a baronet, began his career with the family shipping firm of Edward Bates & Co. He joined Cunard in 1910 and was chairman from 1930 to 1946, a crucial period in the Liverpool-based company’s history when both the Queens were built and Cunard merged with rival White Star.

In December 1930, Sir Percy’s dream of two world-leading ships had begun to take shape when the Queen Mary’s keel was laid at John Brown’s Shipyard at Glasgow. Work was delayed because of the Depression before the Queen Mary was launched and sailed on her maiden voyage in May 1936. The Queen Elizabeth was completed in 1940 and both Queens became troopships in the Second World War. Queen Elizabeth did not enter normal passenger service until 1946. Sadly, Sir Percy died from a heart attack, aged 67, at this time.

Items on display include a beautiful illuminated scroll carrying the speech Sir Percy made at the launch of the Queen Elizabeth in 1938. A cigarette box is made from oak off the Cunard liner Aquitania. A gold medal produced to mark the launch of Queen Mary. Only four others were produced – for Edward VIII, Queen Mary, President and Mrs Franklin D Roosevelt. In contrast, a simple leather briefcase was used by Sir Percy when he was Cunard chairman.

Other leading shipping figures are featured. A photograph of members of the Liverpool Shipowners’ Association 1890-1 shows the top-hatted grandees standing proudly in rows.Alfred Holt (1829-1911), founder of the Blue Funnel Line, was also an engineer and designer of the compound engine. His work ensured the ultimate success of the long-distance steamer.

Sir Alfred Read (1871-1955) brought together a number of small companies to form Coast Lines in 1912. Until the Second World War, Coast Lines was the largest trading group between British ports, including Ireland.

Lord Kylsant (1863-1937) was chairman of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company from 1903 to 1931.The group was broken up in 1931 after financial problems and irregularities for which Kylsant was convicted.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

I’m always fascinated by the ‘what ifs?’ of history and the sinking of the Titanic might never have happened if the rivets had been different.

Riveters played a vital role in shipbuilding when Britain’s shipyards boomed as the Empire expanded and the Royal Navy dominated the seas. Riveting was the only method of fastening together the plates and frames of early iron and steel ships. It was a very laborious process and accounted for much of the banging and clattering associated with traditional shipbuilding.

About three million rivets were used to hold Titanic together. Rivets recovered from the wreck were apparently made of poor quality iron. One theory about the sinking claims that the impact with the iceberg caused the heads of the rivets to break off and sections of Titanic to break up. Better quality rivets, it is argued, may have prevented the ship sinking.

The most effective way of making rivet holes was with an hydraulic punch. By the 1870s such machines were capable of punching up to 30 holes a minute in half-inch thick plates. When riveting was done by hand, large shipyards such as Cammell Laird’s employed more than 100 riveting squads, each with five men. They were:

• The heater, usually the youngest of the team, who softened the rivets in a portable forge before picking them up with long-handled tongs and throwing them to …
• The catcher who caught the rivets in a tin then, with short-handled tongs, placed the rivets in the holes where they were held by …
• The holder up whose 14 lb hammer kept the rivets in place while they were hammered by …
• The riveters who worked in pairs with hammers weighing between  three and five lbs to round over the ends of the rivets, thus fastening the plates together.

On display at Merseyside Maritime Museum is a riveting hearth and examples of plates riveted together.

The death-knell for riveting was sounded in 1920 when Cammell Laird launched the Fullagar, the world’s first all-welded steel ship. Welding was perhaps the greatest development in shipbuilding in the 20th century. The time-consuming and labour-intensive process of riveting was replaced by the stronger and more efficient method of welding steel plates. There was no need for overlapping plates or connecting flanges so less steel was used.

The speed of construction was greatly increased and automatic welding machines could be used. Today large sections of hull and superstructure can be built under cover so that final assembly is simplified.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

One of my favourite scenes in the classic film Around the World in 80 Days (1956) is when virtually everything that’ll burn is thrown into the furnaces to keep the ship going – with hilarious results. A real incident many years before may have inspired French author Jules Verne when he wrote the original story in 1873.

The paddle steamer Sirius was the first ship to cross the Atlantic by steam power alone. She achieved the feat in 18 days, arriving in New York on 22 April 1838. Setting out from London and stopping briefly at Cork, she battled against head winds on the stormy ocean crossing in a race to be the first to steam all the way across.

As Sirius neared Long Island and the end of her voyage, she had run out of coal and was burning her supplies for fuel. A great crowd gathered in New York harbour to cheer her in. Sirius arrived just eight hours before her much-larger rival, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western, which had set out three days behind her.

Only 200 feet long, Sirius was built in Scotland for the coastal trade between Cork and London. Although she had sails, her steam-powered paddles were her main source of propulsion.

Early in the epic Atlantic crossing, her captain – the naval officer Lt Richard Roberts – had to persuade his crew not to turn back because of the bad weather. Sirius was carrying 40 passengers (29 man, 11 women) travelling in three classes. Cans of salmon, oysters and lobsters were among the provisions carried.

Both Sirius and Great Western suffered big financial losses, mainly because neither ship attracted many passengers for the return voyages to Britain. However, this trans-Atlantic steam race had sparked the imagination of the public and shipowners began to build steam packets to meet the demand. Steamers had conquered the mighty Atlantic, changing ocean travel forever.

The Sirius. The text at the foot of the painting reads: Steam-vessel Sirius, Lieutenant Richard Roberts: R.N Coff New York. The first British Steam-vessel that ever crossed the Atlantic: performed her Voyage from Cork in 18 Days!!

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a fine oil painting of Sirius (shown). She is seen off New York with passengers and crew on deck, her helmsman at the wheel. There is also an exhibition model made by D Balfour and SH Phillips at the time of her 100th anniversary (1937). Sirius sank off Ballycotton, Ireland, in 1847 with the loss of 20 lives.

Until the mid-19th century sea travel was often unpleasant and hazardous. It was not usually undertaken lightly and only if absolutely necessary, such as for business reasons.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

A childhood game left me claustrophobic so I cannot abide crowds of people in enclosed, windowless spaces.

The popular Liverpool school playground activity in the 1950s involved a group of lads piling on top of you until you screamed for mercy. As a result, submarines are not for me.

Germany’s U-boats waged an underwater campaign against the transatlantic convoys bringing vital supplies to Britain during the Second World War.

But once the Allies had gained advantage in the Battle of the Atlantic there was no escape for the U-boats and it was only a matter of time before they were routed.

Although the Germans developed new U-boat weapons and equipment, they came too late. Renewal of the U-boat offensive was ended by Allied advances in Europe.

German naval commander Admiral Karl Donitz issued the ceasefire order on 4 May 1945. The U-boat crews were elite seafarers who were proud of their achievements. At the end of the war, more than 200 U-boats were scuttled by their crews so they would not fall into the hands of the Allies.

There is a display of U-boat exhibits at Merseyside Maritime Museum.  A U-boat issue grey leather jacket, made in Vienna, hangs next to a German-issue sweater with zip-up collar.

A pair of binoculars was taken from a captured U-boat commander. A Kriegsmarine ensign emblazoned with a swastika is believed to have come from a surrendered U-boat.

A wooden heart decorated with flowers has the humorous inscription in German: “The cunning of women is endless”. Kriegsmarine badges and personal effects were “liberated” from German naval barracks at Emden, north west Germany, by a British soldier.

A photo shows the crew of a U-boat standing with heads bowed as the sub docked at Wilhelmshaven naval base following the German ceasefire.

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

An aerial view reveals more than 60 surrendered U-boats at Lishally, near Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

A number of German submarines arrived in Liverpool and the surrendered U1023 is seen in the Mersey.

On display is the painted emblem from the conning tower of the U249, the first German submarine to surrender at sea to the Royal Navy at the end of the war. On 9 May 1945, following orders from German High Command, U249 surrendered to HMS Magpie and HMS Amethyst.

The emblem was the gift of Mrs P Symonds of Dorset in memory of her late husband, Capt George Symonds, in command of HMS Magpie at the time of the surrender.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Margaret Scobie's scrapbook

I always think of Easter in terms of crowded church services, frolicking baby lambs, daffodils and chocolate eggs – it is not a festival which has any obvious seafaring links. Easter is traditionally a time for relaxation and leisure activities but for centuries seafarers would have seen little difference from one day to the next during the days of sail. Pursuits such as model-making and perhaps art work including scrimshaw had to be fitted in during quiet periods.

A cultural change blew in when steam supplanted sail on merchant ships criss-crossing the world as the British Empire reached its zenith. By the 1880s steam ships had largely taken over from sailing ships in the British merchant fleet.

Eventually the steamship era brought better conditions for most seafarers. Only the firemen and trimmers, who kept the ship’s furnaces supplied with coal, continued to work in particularly harsh and unhealthy conditions. Their salvation didn’t come until after the Second World War when oil replaced coal as fuel on most ships.

However, leisure facilities for seafarers on most ships were very limited before the 1950s. Officers and ratings relaxed by reading, writing letters home or playing cards, chess or similar games. Smoking was very popular but alcohol was strictly controlled.

On both passenger and cargo ships, crews often organised elaborate Crossing the Line ceremonies for their own and passengers’ amusement when ships passed over the equator. Boxing matches were also popular.

By the 1950s and 60s better facilities were gradually introduced. These included recreation rooms, film shows, deck tennis, bars and swimming pools. A large ship might also provide gym facilities and a separate TV lounge.

Exhibits in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery include items used by Dorothy Scobie, of Liverpool, who joined Cunard White Star Line as a stewardess in 1939. After serving with the Royal Navy during the Second World War, she rejoined Cunard. From the 1950s until her retirement in the 1970s, Dorothy worked with Ellerman Lines and Belfast Ferries. On display is an embroidered scrapbook cover (shown) made by Dorothy while at sea during the 1950s plus three sketches made by one of her shipmates and kept in her scrap book.

A model of the Atlantic Conveyor, the well-known container ship built in 1985, gives an idea of the scale of this vast vessel. She has a crew of just 18 and the leisure facilities on board surpass anything available 50 years ago. These include an indoor swimming pool, sauna, cinema, sports room, TV and video/ DVD library room and even a conference room.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

The old gateposts of Bellefield

Whenever I see an imposing gateway, vivid pictures of vanished villas and stately residences come into my mind. Liverpool is a city of many mansions to this day, but a large proportion have been demolished by developers hungry for their land. Their gateways often remain, leading to nowhere.

A Victorian gateway stands on the fringes of a private park, the only reminder of a strange deserted house associated with doomed vessels known as coffin ships. This was Bellefield, in West Derby, Liverpool, and the owner who laid it waste was notorious shipowner Edward ‘Bully’ Bates MP. He was among unscrupulous operators who deliberately sent their overloaded coffin ships to sea. They hoped the ships would sink so they could make inflated insurance claims. Bates once lost six ships in a year. 

Reformer Samuel Plimsoll fought a long, bitter battle to outlaw this shameful practice. It resulted in the now-famous Plimsoll Line being introduced on ships’ hulls showing they were not overloaded. This law still applies today.

Bates was called ‘Bully’ for good reason as his brutish behaviour was legendary. He was said to have confronted an idle crew on one of his ships. Such was his commanding personality that he intimidated them with kicks and blows until all, but one, ran away. This was a slightly-built shipwright armed with an axe who prepared to defend himself. Bates discharged all the crew except the shipwright, saying: “I like pluck and do not mind being faced”.

Bates bought Bellefield in 1871 at the height of the coffin ships scandal. He planned a side entrance through the gateway which still stands, blocked by railings, on the edge of Sandfield Park. It was never used because stubborn Bates refused to pay the park dues.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a large commemorative handkerchief depicting Samuel Plimsoll in 1875. As a result of his tireless efforts, a maximum loading line on ships was introduced in 1876. The handkerchief includes a map of Liverpool plus contemporary personalities and scenes of Liverpool.

Three cut-away models illustrate how typical cargoes were stowed on sailing ships. Some commodities such as coal and iron were carried loose in the hold. Sugar, salt and tobacco were shipped in barrels or sacks while cotton was put into bales.

What eventually happened to ‘Bully’ Bates and Bellefield? He was expelled from the Commons for bribing the electorate whereupon Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli rewarded him with a baronetcy. Bates died in 1896, aged 80. Bellefield was pulled down and the land later used as Everton soccer club’s training ground.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Campania at the Spithead Review, 1897 by Parker Greenwood

The Spithead Review of 1897 is one of the great historical naval spectacles that I would have liked to witness. It was a sight to freeze the enemy’s blood – a fleet of warships lined up in the greatest display of sea power the world had ever seen.

The Review is depicted in a remarkable painting at Merseyside Maritime Museum which captures the pomp and power of that day. In the centre of Parker Greenwood’s picture is Campania, at that time the pride of the Cunard Fleet. She steams slowly between lines of ironclad battleships bristling with guns.

The Campania, along with several other famous merchant ships, attended the Review to accommodate the guests. The event was to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee – 60 years on the throne. However, the Queen was not feeling up to taking to sea and her son Bertie – Prince of Wales and the future Edward VII – took her place. He was accompanied by guests from all over the British Empire and beyond.

This Spithead Review was claimed to be the largest number of warships ever gathered at anchor together. In two seven-mile-long lines between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight were 170 British naval ships including 50 battleships. Nearly all were less than 10 years old and were immaculately ablaze with brass and bunting. Crews stood in serried ranks in wide straw hats and spotless white uniforms in the stunning spectacle.

The painting shows guests crowded on the deck of the Campania under canvas awnings, looking at the warships as they pass by.

There was an incident that day which is not seen in the picture. In an impudent publicity stunt, Charles Algernon Parsons brought his revolutionary turbine boat Turbinia uninvited to the Review.  As the Prince of Wales, Lords of the Admiralty and other dignitaries looked on, Turbinia – much faster than anything else afloat – raced between the lines of big ships. She easily evaded the Royal Navy’s patrol boats.

Parsons, who invented the steam turbine in 1884, had made his dramatic point. In 1905 the Admiralty confirmed that all future Royal Naval ships would be turbine powered. The following year the first turbine powered battleship, the famous HMS Dreadnought, was launched.

Campania and her sister Lucania were ordered in 1891. They were Cunard’s response to recently-launched rivals on the Transatlantic service – White Star’s Teutonic (1889) and Inman Line’s City of New York (1888). When launched in 1893, both Campania and Lucania were described as “the most magnificently appointed passenger liners in the world”.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

The QE2 visited Liverpool last year and I was among the thousands of people who trudged through the rain to see her moored at the waterfront.

The QE2 served as a troopship during the Falklands war in 1982 when she carried 3,000 troops to the south Atlantic.

The original Queen Elizabeth and her sister ship Queen Mary were two of the most famous converted troopships of the Second World War, ferrying many thousands of military personnel to different areas of battle.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is an oil painting by Norman Wilkinson showing the Queen Mary and other ships on the Clyde.

Although vast numbers of troops and military supplies sailed to and from Liverpool and other west coast ports, during the war the two huge Queens always used the Clyde Anchorage, off Greenock, Scotland. This was Britain’s main trooping port during the war.

Also on display is an exhibition model of the 8,000-ton Marwarri of 1935. She was owned by T & J Brocklebank Ltd, managers for the Ministry of War transport.

Marwarri, like other British cargo liners, was requisitioned by the British Government soon after the outbreak of war.

After doing sterling service as a cargo carrier, she later carried both troops and equipment to support the invasion of Europe. The 1:192 model shows Marwarri in wartime grey.

In 1944 she made seven return passages to the Normandy beaches, carrying thousands of troops and vehicles for the invasion.

An oil painting of Marwarri was done by Sybil Rimmer in 1940 when she was working as a secretary with the Brocklebank Line. It shows the ship on a dull day in the Mersey, seen from the first floor of the Cunard Building at Liverpool’s Pier Head where Miss Rimmer worked.

A photograph shows the Marwarri preparing to join a convoy taking men and supplies across the English Channel to support the Normandy landings. Another shows British troops resting in hammocks below decks en route to Normandy.

Troopships, unlike landing ships, could not land troops directly on to the shore so had to use a seaport.

Regular naval ships were originally used to carry troops overseas. As part of their plan to invade Britain, the French built a fleet of 2,000 barges during the Napoleonic Wars but they were never used.

With the arrival of huge ocean liners in the 19th and 20th centuries, navies recognised their troop-carrying potential and began to charter them. The liners were painted grey and armed.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

'Just another sailor' by J Hanstock. Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

It came as a surprise when I learnt that hospital ships had their origins in the American Civil War. Serving a vital role in theatres of war, an early example was the Red Rover which aided soldiers from both the Union and Confederate armies.

Both world wars saw passenger liners being converted to hospital ships. Titanic’s sister ship Britannic was being used for this purpose when she was sunk by a mine off the Greek island of Kea on 21 November 1916. She was heading for Moudros in Greece to pick up injured military personnel. A total of 30 men died - 21 crew and nine members of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) - but 1,036 people were saved. Britannic was the largest British ship lost in the First World War and remains the largest sunken ocean liner in the world (she was slightly bigger than Titanic).

There is a sailor-made model of the hospital ship Atlantis, which served in the Second World War, in Merseyside Maritime Museum. Formerly a cruise liner with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, the 15,000-ton Atlantis was converted into a hospital ship in 1939. She carried up to 615 patients and 130 medical staff, including many female nurses provided by the RAMC. Crewed by Royal Mail merchant seamen, during and after the war she was constantly at work on missions of mercy. Atlantis was twice bombed off Norway. She steamed some 280,000 miles and carried 35,000 wounded from a variety of war zones. She later repatriated prisoners of many nationalities and carried soldiers’ brides to Australia. Atlantis docked in Liverpool several times during the war.

The wartime model was made by medical orderlies on board ship. She is painted white with large red crosses on her funnel, decks and hull. 

A photo shows Atlantis arriving at the Prince’s Landing Stage, Liverpool, in October 1943. She was carrying 764 badly-injured allied servicemen repatriated after being released from German prison camps. A moving water colour is called Just Another Sailor, showing an anonymous  patient with his face swathed in bandages, revealing only his eyes. It was painted by his ship mate J Hanstock. It graphically shows the suffering of the Royal Navy rating, his face severely burned after the bombing of the British battleship Warspite at Salerno, Italy, in 1943.

Today the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Argus performs a medical role but is designated a “primary casualty receiving ship”.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Graveyards and cemeteries have fascinated me since childhood because of the stories each stone tells – some simple, some complex, all emotionally moving. Jesse Hartley, a colossus in the history of the Port of Liverpool, lies under a simple stone next to his wife at a desolate churchyard in Bootle’s docklands.

Canada Timber Docks, Liverpool. Towards close of day by Robert Dudley (active 1865-1891)

A bustling scene is captured by Robert Dudley in his painting 'Canada Timber Docks, Liverpool, Towards Close of Day' in the collection of Merseyside Maritime Museum. Sailing ships crowd a dock as hordes of workers unload tons of wood which is carted away by horses and stacked neatly on the quaysides. The atmospheric 1872 view of Canada Dock vividly captures the hustle and bustle of the port. The number of horses in the painting underlines the importance of horse-drawn carts in carrying goods from docks to warehouses.

Canada Dock, opened in 1859 when Canada was Britain’s major source of timber, was the last dock designed and built by Hartley (1780 – 1860). He was the Port of Liverpool’s most prolific and famous engineer. Hartley’s greatest single achievement was the Albert Dock (1846) which now houses the Maritime Museum. He was the world’s first full-time professional dock engineer.

Hartley’s appointment was characteristic of the many risks taken in Liverpool during its history. He had no experience in building docks and beat 13 rival applicants, several of whom were well-known engineers. No doubt the port authorities were impressed by Yorkshireman Hartley’s strong personality, grit and determination which later paid great dividends.

Sir James Picton - the renowned Liverpool historian, architect and contemporary of Hartley – described him as: “A man of large build and powerful frame, rough in manner and occasionally rude, using expletives which the angel of mercy would not like to record”.

During his 36 years as Liverpool dock engineer, Hartley added 140 acres of wet docks and 10 miles of quay space. He either altered or constructed every Liverpool dock and during his career worked on other projects including the Liverpool end of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and the Bolton to Manchester rail and canal system.

Hartley and his wife Ellen lie buried in St Mary’s churchyard, off Irlam Road, near where they lived. St Mary’s was flattened during the 1941 Blitz which devastated Bootle, with hundreds of lives lost and thousands of buildings destroyed or damaged. The graveyard, containing the mortal remains of nearly 19,000 people, was made into a park in 1960 but many of the tombstones were preserved.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. More on Hartley and his construction of the Albert Dock can be found on our main site.

Success to the James of Liverpool

When I was a boy in the 1960s there were the enormous jaw bones of a whale forming garden gates at a pub in Frodsham overlooking the Mersey marshes. Doubtless the creature had been beached in the river, quite a common occurrence in the distant past.

Whaling ships once operated out of Liverpool but it was never a major industry in the port - at its height around 1788 there were 21 vessels registered as whalers. Today scant remains to remind us of this little-known period which ran parallel with the early growth of Liverpool. One place is Greenland Street, off Jamaica Street in the city centre. The waters off Greenland were among the places the Liverpool whalers hunted lucrative sperm whales and other species valuable for their oil-rich blubber and baleen - whalebone used for making ladies’ corsets (stays). It is likely that Greenland Street got its name because it housed the warehouses, counting houses and offices linked to the whaling industry.

The whalers would spend weeks and months hunting their prey. When they had killed a whale they would strip the carcass and store away the valuable products. Practically all of the whale could be used in one form or another: whale oil was used for lubricants, soap, candles, margarine and curing leather. Ambergris, a wax-like substance from the intestines of sperm whales, was used for perfumes. There were many stay-makers in Liverpool and whalebone was also used in the brush trade.

Seafarers would fill their leisure hours decorating whale teeth with intricate scrimshaw designs featuring ships and seascapes. 

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is the only known painting of a Liverpool whaling ship, Success to the James of Liverpool. The James was originally a French ship that was seized by privateers in 1781. She made her first whaling voyage in 1800, going to Greenland every year until 1821. The anonymous artist shows a number of small boats in the water. In the bows of each stands a marksman armed with a harpoon to kill whales. Several whales are depicted, some spouting water from their blow-holes. To the right, a group of men are killing a seal on an ice floe. The tails of several seals can be seen in the icy sea.

Whaling was dangerous, particularly when icebergs were around, and in 1789 it was recorded that four Liverpool whalers were lost. In 1827 only one whaler, The Baffin, was operating full-time out of Liverpool and by 1830 there was no more trade out of the port.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

A ship heading in or out of port to me always evokes images of distant places. 

Despite the growth of air travel, ships carry around 95% of the goods coming and going to and from Britain.

Many of the things that we use in our daily lives are brought to us by sea – everything from food and cars to toys and televisions.

For centuries British ships have traded with other countries, buying and selling raw materials and manufactured goods. Over the years goods have varied because of changes in technology and taste.

In 1800 the top five imports to Britain were sugar, coffee, corn, raw cotton and tea. The top five exports that year were woollen goods, cotton yarn goods, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals and goods and finished yarn goods.

Two hundred years later, in 2000, the top five imports were road vehicles and parts, office machines and computer equipment, petroleum and petroleum products, miscellaneous manufactured goods and industrial machinery.

The top five exports were similar to imports: road vehicles and parts, petroleum and petroleum products, office machines and computer equipment, electrical machinery and industrial machinery.

The Lifelines gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum has paintings and displays illustrating seaborne trade past and present.

Before 1600 ships only traded around the coast and to Europe. After that date, improvements in ship design and navigational techniques enabled Britain to establish colonies and trading links in North America, the Caribbean and India.

Britain was also very active in trading enslaved Africans across the Atlantic and Liverpool became Europe’s leading slave trading port until British abolition in 1807.

A colourful engraving shows the burgeoning port in 1727 with ships of all sizes on the river.

After 1800 Britain developed worldwide trading links to South America, Africa, the Far East and Australasia.
The introduction of the steam engine from the 1840s enabled regular liner services to operate to ports all over the world. However, Europe remained Britain’s largest trading partner.

Until the early 19th century, all British trade with India and China was controlled by the famous East India Company. It was largely responsible for the British conquest of India and was used by the government to rule India.

The company’s control of trade to India was ended in 1813 and to China in 1833.

East India Company ships were amongst the finest and largest vessels of their time. The company was dissolved in 1858.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

Stephen Guy with a British Mark VIII torpedo. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

I think this is one of the greatest stories of sacrifice in the Second World War – a commander who literally worked himself to death in his devotion to duty.

Captain FJ (Johnny) Walker was the Royal Navy’s top U-boat submarine killer during the war. He was the most famous escort commander to be based in Liverpool when the port played a vital role in the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain’s lifelines were the convoys that brought vital supplies from north America and the ships were prime targets for German U-boats.

Walker, a brilliant specialist in anti-submarine warfare, was an unorthodox and inspirational officer who won great respect and affection from his men. There is a display at Merseyside Maritime Museum devoted to his incredible career.

In early 1943, following his many successes in command of the sloop HMS Stork and the 36th Escort Group, Walker was put in command of HMS Starling and five other sloops of the Second Support Group. His brief was to attack and sink U-boats at every opportunity along the northern convoy routes.

At Walker’s insistence, the jaunty popular tune ‘A-hunting we will go!’ was played over a loud-hailer on Starling’s bridge whenever she left harbour. Between 1 June 1943 and 1 July 1944 the ships of Walker’s Second Support Group sank 15 U-boats in an astonishing run of successes.

He was a great exponent of team work, making very successful use of Asdic, HF/DF (high frequency direction finding). One of Walker’s famous “creeping attacks” lasted more than 30 hours before the U-boat prey was sunk.

Walker – whose awards included the DSO (three bars) – died of a stroke, undoubtedly caused by the demands of war, in July 1944. He was buried at sea in Liverpool Bay. After the war Admiral Max Horton, commander-in-chief Western Approaches, considered that victory in the Atlantic was due more to Walker than to any other individual.

The display includes an exhibition model of HMS Starling, the Royal Navy’s most successful anti-U-boat ship of the war. Under Walker’s command, she was directly involved in sinking 11 U-boats. HMS Starling sank four more after his death. Her ship’s wheel is among the exhibits.

A dramatic photograph shows Walker using an inter-ship radio on Starling’s bridge to urge HMS Woodpecker to attack a U-boat. There is archive film of Walker’s funeral with full naval honours in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral.

A 22-ft long British Mark VIII torpedo (shown here) gives a sense of precision and power. These were the Royal Navy’s standard torpedoes of the Second World War.

There's more on this website about Cpt Walker, written by a man who knew him. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Representatives of West Derby Community Association at the Antiques Roadshow. They are (l to r) Stephanie Grogan, James Ashton and Stephen Guy, with specialist Jon Baddeley at the far right.

When I, Stephen Guy, discovered a cache of films stored away unseen for more than 40 years, I wondered what to do.

I am a trustee at Lowlands, the Grade II-listed home of the West Derby Community Association, Liverpool – a superb Italianate former merchant’s mansion dating from 1846. It was the home of the basement Pillar Club where many of the major bands of the 1960s played in their early days. The Quarrymen (early Beatles) famously failed an audition there and are thought to have played in the Pillar Club once or twice as the Silver Beetles. Later they became resident band at the Casbah Club, literally over the road, at the home of drummer Pete Best.

When we started planning the restoration of this historic building, an inventory was made of the contents. This vast, rambling place has many secrets including sealed doors and mysterious unused rooms.

We discovered the films along with the original camera, projector and editing equipment. In excellent condition, they were among piles of books, reports, equipment and furniture. We were advised not to attempt to show the film on the projector but to transfer the film professionally on to DVD. We did not want priceless film being shredded or singed in a faulty projector. There the matter rested because of other priorities. Volunteers cleared the building and prepared for the builders to start the £1.1 million Lowlands project largely funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Then we heard that the Antiques Roadshow was coming to Liverpool. In my capacity as National Museums Liverpool press officer I supervised filming programme links with presenter Michael Aspel at the Walker Art Gallery and Merseyside Maritime Museum. I mentioned the films and equipment to the producers and was invited to come along to St George’s Hall. I went with other West Derby Community Association representatives, Stephanie Grogan and James Ashton.

Engineering specialist Jon Baddeley admired the superb 1950s British projector and Russian camera, in the sequence that was broadcast on Sunday. He added that if any of the film had images of the Beatles it could be worth around £100,000. Our eyes popped.

Some days later the BBC rang and offered to transfer one of the reels of 16 mm silent colour film to DVD at no cost to the Association, a registered charity.

We now have the DVD and it contains 15 minutes of stunning images – local people and Danish guests at Lowlands, Speke Hall and Croxteth Hall, fun and frolics at New Brighton open air baths plus tantalising glimpses of other vanished sights such as New Brighton Tower and the Fish and Chip Boat. The final sequence features colourfully costumed dancers and musicians performing stick and belly dancing on a visit to Lowlands.

But no Beatles.

However, there are four reels yet to be transferred on to DVD, so who knows? Watch this space.

HM Grampus model. Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I, Stephen Guy, had ancestors living and working among the shipyards that dotted the Liverpool waterfront in the 18th century.

Liverpool was a shipbuilding centre for more than 200 years, developing alongside its growth from a small port to a major centre of commerce. By 1700 several shipyards were established around the Pool, a creek long since covered over, which gave the town its name.

With the opening of the first dock in 1715 and the Salthouse Dock in 1739, shipbuilding moved to the Mersey Strand on the site of the Albert Dock. Today the Strand and Strand Street remind us that this was once a long beach, a strand of mud and sand. My ancestor Henry Guy was born in nearby Moor Street in 1728 and was a shipwright in the yards.

In 1739 John Okill began work on the 44-gun HMS Hastings, the first ship built in Liverpool for the Royal Navy. The construction of wooden warships and merchant ships occupied the many Liverpool shipbuilders until the late 18th century.

The early docks of the 19th century brought competition from shipyards in Canada. They were near forests providing wood for the ships and had cheap labour so the Liverpool shipyards were undercut. By 1840 it was estimated that almost half the ships owned in Liverpool were built in Canada.

Eventually the demand for more new docks on the Liverpool side of the Mersey drove the shipbuilding industry to the opposite Wirral shore. The last large vessel launched on the Liverpool shore was HMS Britomart, a gunboat built by WH Potter & Sons in Queens Dock in 1899.

Models of Liverpool-built ships are on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum. The 50-gun HMS Grampus was launched at John Fisher’s shipyard in 1782. This superbly-detailed model shows the three-master with three huge lanterns at the stern.

The Jhelum (1849) was one of the last Mersey-built wooden ships and was employed in the guano trade shipping bird droppings for fertilizer. Her beached hulk still lies in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. Merseyside Maritime Museum staff have visited her. Alongside a small model of Jhelum are a number of artefacts from the hulk including nails and copper sheathing. This online feature covers the damage being done to the Jhelum by the lowly shipworm.

The Wanderer, a four-masted barque of 1891, was an unlucky ship with her captain being killed in a severe storm on her maiden voyage.  In 1907 she was sunk in the River Elbe after being rammed by the German liner Gertrud Woermann.

More on shipbuilding on the Mersey and related documents in our collections can be found in our Maritime Archives section. A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Liverpool is celebrating being European Capital of Culture this year and I, Stephen Guy, have been reflecting on the many beautiful artworks produced here. These include remarkable products, some with maritime connections, made by Liverpool’s innovative Herculaneum Pottery between 1796 and 1841.

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

The Toxteth-based pottery was established by local merchant Samuel Worthington and quickly established a reputation for the quality of its wares. The name Herculaneum was probably chosen to rival the Italian classical name of Etruria so successfully used by Josiah Wedgwood in Staffordshire. The Herculaneum Pottery rapidly expanded and a large proportion of its products were exported, especially to the fledgling United States.

In 1837 the factory was purchased by Ambrose Lace who leased the works to Thomas Case and James Mort and later to a partnership between Mort and John Simpson.

In the end