National Museums Liverpool Blog - merseyside maritime museum

Lorna Hyland, Assistant Librarian at the Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives shares this update:

Liverpool’s Literary Festival, “In Other Words” is now drawing to a close and as the festival celebrated the city’s reputation for producing much loved story-tellers, poets, authors and playwrights, I thought I’d mention the library at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

We have a wide selection of stories of seafaring life, some written about well known seamen and others published by the seafarers themselves.  Sailors have traditionally been viewed as great ‘spinners of yarns’.  They lived interesting lives, travelling to exotic (and not so exotic) places often being caught up in extraordinary events. 

Our library collection of seafarers’ memoirs includes gems such as the memoirs of Violet Jessop.  Published under the title, Titanic Survivor, the book provides an insight into the everyday working life of a stewardess on a large liner, as well as Violet’s personal experience of the sinkings of Titanic and Britannic.  In Life is a four letter word, Nicholas Monsarratt tells the real story of his Battle of the Atlantic experiences in the Royal Navy, whilst in the book, Tramp Steamers at War, the slightly less well known George Gunn recalls his experiences as a young man on the tramp ships of the North Atlantic convoys of World War II.  From sail to steam, Commodores to apprentices, we have memoirs covering a huge spectrum of seafaring life.

So if you want to read a good ‘yarn’ about life at sea, come down to the Maritime Archives & Library.  I’m sure we’ll have something to suit your tastes.  The library is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10.30 am till 4.30 pm and can be found on the second floor of the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

 

Everyone at the Merseyside Maritime Museum welcomes the arrival of a very impressive and grand visitor to Liverpool. Cunard’s Queen Mary II docked at the pier head landing stage in the early hours of this morning. It’s the first time in forty five years that passengers can sail on a Cunard liner from the Pier head waterfront.

Pulling up at the lights during my commute into the office, the QM2 dwarves the neighbouring buildings and certainly has the wow factor with her classic red funnel.

The museum has a very fine collection of china and tableware which relates to the first Queen Mary (1936-1967) which was at the time the largest and fastest ship in Cunard’s fleet. She was certainly remembered as the grandest belle of the sea.
On display in the Life at Sea gallery we have tableware which was supplied to Cunard by Stoniers Ltd. of Liverpool. Stoniers supplied fine china to major British shipping companies for over a century. Life at Sea also exhibits other objects from Cunard’s long association with Liverpool.

Follow the below link for the museum’s maritime archives ‘Cunard Queens’ online exhibition.
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/archive/displays/cunard-queens/

Jo Connor, education manager at Merseyside Maritime Museum, reflects on a busy Bank Holiday weekend packed full of events:

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"Call me Ishmael..." Must be one of, if not the most famous opening line to a novel perhaps next to "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."

And so started the weekend of Moby Dick on the Mersey marathon readings at 9am on Saturday, each day beginning on board the wonderful Kathleen and May schooner moored outside the Merseyside Maritime Museum, then moving inside the museum from 10am. BBC Northwest arrived and stayed most of the morning to interview readers and film excerpts for their evening slot.

Highlights of our accompanying events included wonderful performances by students from the University of Liverpool of the Chester Noah play. Performances took place in the open air on a very windy grassy knoll next to the Piermaster's House. The dialogue retained its medieval English language roots, but even so was accessible and very funny. And as with the performances at the time, certain aspects were contemporised, hence the chart songs by Mr and Mrs Noah and the cast.

On Sunday local children’s author Jon Mayhew enraptured a young audience enticed outside by the sunny weather, with his stories of 'Terror on the high seas' on the decks of the Kathleen and May. Meanwhile inside the museum families were making their own model whales to take home.

A thank you of Moby Dick proportions to all the staff from the University of Liverpool who made it a thoroughly fun and well organised adventure, and to everyone who took part in the readings or offered their services to the weekend.

If you missed the weekend's events there's still time to catch the last of our Moby Dick themed Wednesday lunchtime lectures, which continue for a few weeks.

Palaeography, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the science or art of deciphering and interpreting historical manuscripts.  It normally refers to ancient manuscripts in long dead languages, but I will make a case for applying it on the many handwritten letters within our collections.  The technique is more or less the same.  You need to know a bit about the context (in this case the American Civil War) and a bit about word and letter forms (for example, initial lower case 'p's that go both above and below the line) and the right balance between thinking what is likely to be being said and putting your own words in the mouth of the author.  Then the squiggles turn into prose before your eyes. 

This page of a letter from Major Caleb Huse, arms procurement agent for the Confederate States Army, to Charles K. Prioleau of Fraser, Trenholm & Company, Liverpool merchants and bankers who acted for the Confederacy reads as follows-
 
'six months armistice and meantime those life preservers at Birkenhead can be finished - so far as getting supplies in or cotton out is concerned, we shall be quite independent of the three great powers.

Col. Maine is I understand, in town, but I have not yet seen him. Wither he is to return'

More information on the letter can be found here and the original, along with some others from our fantastic American Civil War archive collections are on display outside the Maritime Archives & Library at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. I'm not convinced I've got the Colonel's name right, any better suggestions?

The recent posting about the St George's festival in Liverpool this weekend made me think about dragons.  These spectacular dragons are on the back of a pack of playing cards made for the Blue Funnel Line (Ocean Steam Ship Company) in the early 1960s.  Shipping companies, especially those that carried passengers, put a lot of effort into corporate branding, producing items such as ashtrays, crockery, menus and calendars. 

The Ocean Steam Ship Company, commonly known as Blue Funnel for reasons I'll leave you to work out on your own, were a large Liverpool shipping firm who sailed predominately, but not exclusively, to the Far East and China.  The Maritime Archives & Library holds a large collection of records from the company, including examples of their marketing material.  These playing cards would have been a useful distraction during long hours at sea.

Our waterfront venues have a packed programme of events for this year's River Festival, which includes activities to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic.

A highlight of the programme will be a talk by TV presenter and historian at Merseyside Maritime Museum. Dan explained to us why the events are so important to him:

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It is extremely exciting to be coming to Liverpool to mark the official anniversary of a desperate and hugely important battle that raged from the first day of the war to the last. The Battle of the Atlantic was nothing less than a long running attritional struggle for national survival. Britain's enemies, as so often before in our history, attempted to shut off supplies to our island nation on which we depended. Had they succeeded the war would have been over, a starving population, and a weaponless army would have given the government no option but to sue for peace, on the enemy's terms.  

Battles were fought on fields far and near, armies were lost, territories evacuated, but Britain’s ability to fight on was really at stake on the cruel stretch of the North Atlantic. It is a titanic struggle that is often overlooked by the people of Britain, a battle won by the supreme ability of the Royal Navy and merchant marine, institutions hardened by centuries of conflict and professionalism.

My grandfather served in the Royal Canadian Navy escorting convoys throughout the war. His stories mesmerised me as a young boy and fired my love of history. In Liverpool I will be marking the battle with the public and the surviving veterans, and my grandfather will constantly be on my mind.

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Update 15 April 2013: Dan Snow's talk is now fully booked However there are lots more free events for all ages during the River Festival,see the website for full River Festival event listings.

2013 marks 40 years of CITES the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. To commemorate this significant year, the Seized! gallery is showing a new, hard-hitting display of wildlife seizures.

On display are primate skulls and dried bats from the home of a retired couple in West Yorkshire. Hundreds of animal parts were discovered at their home, illegally imported from Indonesia and Africa. The couple were selling the specimens for a profit on eBay. Shocking imagery in the gallery shows their home filled with boxes of seized skulls.

Other objects on display include a grotesque rug made from the fur of the tiny Geoffroy's cat, boots made from endangered crocodile skin and an incubator used to smuggle rare Peregrine Falcon eggs out of the UK.

This new display reflects the extent and scale of wildlife crime around the globe, online trade being one of the largest threats to some species existence. It also shows the risks that obsessive collectors will go to acquire the rarest specimens.  

The Seized! gallery were assisted by Andy McWilliam of the NWCU (National Wildlife Crime Unit). NWCU work with the UK Border Force, CITES team and the Police to prevent illegal trade in wildlife.

Anne Gleave, Curator of Photographic Archives, has found this photo in the Stewart Bale collection which shows a very different Easter display to the ones in shops today:

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There are 195,445 photographs in the Stewart Bale collection and this is one of them; a window display for Easter 1945 in the former department store Owen Owen on Clayton Square, Liverpool, which was commissioned by Owen Owen Ltd, April 1945.

I’m guessing that the passer-by’s attention was supposed to be grabbed by the words ‘Easter Harvest’ in large rustic letters in each of the three windows, hopefully to draw them closer to investigate and read the explanatory text panels about this strange phenomenon (how could harvest be at  Easter! But wait a minute...) 

The text reads "A Harvest in Easter? Yes... Seeds that were sown in the Fashion Market last summer have now born fruit"; a rather complex advertising hook which stages the new fashions amongst objects associated with farming: cartwheels, large forks, rakes, wheel barrows and a scattering of straw for good measure; the harvest fruit is the clothes on the manikins, who although they are in a farm setting are there not to labour but to loll in what is new and smart in the world of fashion.  

There is a jacket at 56 shillings (approximately £2.80) and a blouse at 15 shillings and sixpence (approximately 77 pence). The blouse, which is in the central window, strewn across the top of the wheel, carries a war-time utility label at the top of the neck; clothing was rationed from 1st June 1941; other basic commodities were also rationed and the utility label would have been a familiar sight. 

According to the text in the window these clothes have been more than 6 months in the planning; quite typical of WWII designs and not obviously showing anything very new. An Easter display without a hint of an egg or chocolate (rationing was in place and continued until 1954). 

The building still stands and is now occupied by different shops including Tesco Metro; it is still recognizable and was designed by Walter Aubrey Thomas and built in the 1920s, originally for use as a hotel.  The building was altered in 1925 to house a department store and Owen Owen who occupied it remained in the building until 1995.

Easter Sunday in 1945 was on 1st April (only one day later than this year).  So think of what Easter would have been like at this time, austerity and loss but also hope and change; this was just a month prior to German unconditional surrender 8th May 1945.

The Stewart Bale collection is full of gems like this; a collection that takes you back in time, a time traveller’s paradise. 

For more details about the Stewart Bale collection which also contains a large proportion of maritime related subject matter see the online information sheet. You can see further images from the collection on the website.

This handsome young man is Willie Dailey of Stafford who decided he wanted a life at sea and persuaded his parents to apprentice him on a voyage of the ship Benares, from Dundee to Chile and San Francisco, USA.  It was 1886 and he was 16 years old.  The Maritime Archives and Library hold some letters by Willie and his family and the ones from his mother would be achingly familiar even today.  His worried mother, Jane, tells Willie to mind his manners, wash his clothes and eat well.  She hopes his Captain is kind, his crewmates friendly and that he is warm enough, dry enough and not sea sick.  She tells him off when he fails to write.  The forms of communication may be different to today, but the emotions are just the same.  Jane mentions at least 4 other children, so she certainly had her hands full, but seafaring was, and still is, a dangerous life, so she must have been deeply concerned for his safety and wellbeing.  Two of Jane's letters are from 1906 and by this time Willie has a wife and child.  His mother is less worried about him and writes instead about the wet summer weather, another topic that is familiar today.  But as we approach Mothering Sunday, spare a thought for worried mothers, waiting for their children to get in touch.

Hurrah for half term! Aside from all the great half term events that are taking place at our venues next week, we are also set for some radio interference across the city from 18 – 22 February.

Waves on the Mersey is a project that has been created by Open the Door Theatre in Education, who are bringing five giant radios into the city to broadcast documentaries about major historical events that have shaped Liverpool’s history.

The documentaries have been created by young people between the ages of 14 and 21, who have researched, interviewed and devised radio shows and plays on each topic. They have also decorated the radios, which will be located at five locations around the city, broadcasting a different documentary every day.

The radios can be found at the Museum of Liverpool, FACT, Albert Dock Liverpool (outside Merseyside Maritime Museum), the Metquarter and Liverpool Cathedral. They will each broadcast the following documentaries between 1 – 3pm every day:

Monday 18 February – The Beatles, 1964
Tuesday 19 February – The Toxteth Riots, 1981
Wednesday 20 February – Hillsborough, 1989
Thursday 21 February – The May Blitz, 1941
Friday 22 February – Pope John Paul II’s visit, 1982

You can also tune into 87.7FM to listen to the documentaries, but if you’re able to visit the giant radios, how about doing a trail of them all and getting a picture with each one?