National Museums Liverpool Blog

Sometimes you have to leave a place to find it again, if you know what I mean.

Liverpool once had many small shipping offices which did good business supplying goods and passengers to the many vessels using the port. Gradually they largely disappeared and are now a fading memory.

Some years ago I went to Las Palmas, the busy capital of Gran Canaria and a shopping mecca. I wandered off to the dock area one sunny day and stumbled across busy little shipping offices. They were like those I remembered in Liverpool with wide wooden counters and ornate metal grills.

In keeping with much of modern business, most ships today are owned by large multi-national companies. These enterprises are often involved in other ventures such as property development, finance or leisure facilities. They operate on a global scale whether by raising money, buying ships or engaging crews.

Many ships are registered in countries like Liberia or Panama where regulations are less stringent than in Britain. Until the 1950s, most ships using British ports were owned by British shipping companies with familiar names such as Blue Funnel.

Most of these concerns were founded in the mid-1800s and were often controlled by families with long maritime traditions. However, only a few independent shipping companies survive today.

On display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery is a colourful spread from Liverpool’s Journal of Commerce of 1882 (pictured) showing flags and funnels of shipping companies that figured in the boom years of the port.

Britain, as an island nation, will continue to rely on merchant ships and seafarers long into the future. Most goods still go by sea and sea travel is growing in popularity.

A new exhibit in the gallery illustrates the impact of container ships in modern sea transport and trading. It is a 10 ft long model of the Liverpool Bay, built in 1971. The ship was built in Kiel, Germany, for the Ocean Steamship Group founded by renowned Liverpool shipowner Alfred Holt in 1865.

The 58,000 tonne Liverpool Bay was one of the new generation of ships designed to handle containers. She could carry more than 2,300 containers and was one of five sisters built at the same time, originally sailing to East Asia.

Huge ships are now a familiar sight on the Mersey but I remember vividly the impact of vessels like the Liverpool Bay arriving for the first time in the early 1970s.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

 

Homesickness is like seasickness – you only feel better once you’ve stopped travelling. I have suffered from both and hope I never experience them again.

Longing for home gnaws away at the soul and is almost impossible to eradicate. I found that it was just as much the loss of my cultural roots as the absence of family and friends.

The logistics of moving huge numbers of emigrants through Liverpool involved everything from supplying cabins to the plates they ate off – it was very big business indeed.

Around nine million people moved abroad through Liverpool between 1830 and 1930 making it probably the greatest emigration port in world history. It was often very emotional for the passengers as they left their old familiar homes behind for new lives in unknown countries.

Many descendants of those emigrants still have strong emotional attachments to Liverpool because it was the last place their families saw before taking the leap into the dark.

However, some did not like their new lives and returned home. There were a number of reasons for this including work and financial issues but often it was simply homesickness.

The new emigration gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum focuses on many different aspects of this mass migration.

From the tail end of the era there is a fascinating model of the Blaco portable cabin from around 1920-30. They were made by F C Blackwell & Co of Crosby, Liverpool.

Portable cabins were used by shipping companies involved in emigration from the 19th century onwards. The detailed wood and metal demonstration model was used when shipping companies such as Cunard and Canadian Pacific employed Blaco cabins. They could be quickly installed to cater for individual needs of emigrants.

A wooden trunk was used by the Parsons family when they emigrated from Liverpool to the United States in 1906. Oliver Charles Parsons and his wife Sarah Jane were originally from Wakefield, Yorkshire.

After arriving in the USA they lived with their young family in Tennessee, Kentucky and Wyoming before returning to England in 1914.

Oliver died during the flu pandemic of 1918 and Sarah had to raise here five children alone. She kept the wood and metal trunk with its many memories until her death in 1965.

Photographs show Sarah at Bridlington in 1950 (pictured) and her daughter Minnie Chesters in 1954. Minnie was the couple’s eldest child and had emigrated with her parents.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Forget the Oscars and the Golden Globes they’re for tanned people with abnormally white teeth. Last night the Wirral Tourism Awards celebrated the real people who make a difference to our days out.

Two members of staff from the Lady Lever Art Gallery were rightly rewarded for the brilliant work they do on a daily basis.

Sarah Lynch, admin assistant won the Unseen Hero Award.  This award is given to staff who show a positive, committed and willing attitude to their organisation and who demonstrate positive communication skills.

Jenni Whiteside, assistant manager in the Lady Lever Art Gallery gift shop was runner up for the Most Supportive Supervisor Award. People nominated for this award demonstrate outstanding contribution to staff development, are a positive role model, and have motivating skills.

Both Jenni and Sarah looked lovely and are certainly a credit to National Museums Liverpool. Well done ladies we’re very proud of you!

 

The nearest I’ve got to emigrating is briefly wanting to flee to the Isle of Man - in the summer it matches any other exotic island in the sun. It was a bright sunny day and I was taking a lunchtime stroll while covering a heavy-going criminal trial at Liverpool Crown Court. Balmy breezes drifted off the sea. Down at the Pier Head the Manx ferry was waiting with last boarders being called.

I was sorely tempted to dash up the gangplank but then common sense kicked in.

Emigration is a drastic step into the unknown and there are usually very good reasons for people wanting to make new lives in different countries

People emigrate for three main reasons – poverty, persecution and ambition. In the great movements of people around the globe in the 19th century, many were fleeing from hardship and poverty.

Emigration was also a way of fleeing political and religious persecution. Many Jewish people left east Europe for this reason.

However, a lot of people were simply attracted by the opportunities offered by life in such places as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Gold Rush years in North America and Australia triggered mass emigration from Europe as prospectors sought wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

The new emigrants’ gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum looks at many different aspects of the trade that helped generate wealth in Liverpool for shipping companies, hotels and many other businesses.

A fascinating colour print shows the emigration of Russian Jews in 1891 (pictured). They are seen crowded on the deck of the Guion liner Wisconsin as she prepares to leave Liverpool.

Other exhibits are linked to the Gold Rush. A 19th century board game called A Race to the Gold Diggings has a box emblazoned with a colourful scene, tiny model sailing ships and a set of rules.

A contemporary poster advertises the Royal Charter emigrant steamer run by the Liverpool and Australian Navigation Company. Saloon passengers paid top prices of between 60 guineas (£63) and 75 guineas (£78.75) – around £4,500 in today’s money – for the voyage while Third Class paid between 16 and 20 guineas.

The Royal Charter met her cruel end in October 1859 when, heading for Liverpool, she was wrecked on the Anglesey coast with the loss of 498 lives. Exhibits include items from the wreck including a section of ornately-carved wood believed to be from the ship’s stern. There's more on the Royal Charter on our main site.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Throughout our lives chance can play a decisive part – perhaps I am tempting fate but I believe you can change the course of events. I do not subscribe to the theory that events follow a predestined path.

The following story, though, tests my credulity. It really looks as if this was all pre-ordained, not simply a German U-boat captain seeing his chance and ruthlessly taking it.

They were both hugely popular in Liverpool but one of the beautiful sisters was to have a tragic end while the other carried on until the close of her natural life.

The Lusitania and Mauretania were both built in 1907, the pride of the Cunard fleet. They were bigger, faster and more luxurious than any liners before them – but were soon eclipsed by other giants of the seas as the race to capture lucrative business became ever faster.

The two ships were the first express transatlantic liners fitted with steam turbines. Although more renowned for their luxurious elegance, they also carried many Third Class passengers emigrating to the USA on the Liverpool – New York route.

The 31,550-ton Lusitania had a successful career until she was torpedoed by a submarine in May 1915 while heading for Liverpool, with the loss of 1,201 lives.

There were plenty of famous people on board, many of whom died. The artistic world lost such talents as the playwright Charles Klein and the founder of Dublin Art Gallery Sir Hugh Lane.

The business world was devastated by the loss of leading moguls such as multi-millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt and Paul Crompton, a director of the Booth Steamship Co, who died along with his wife and six children.

Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes and there was a terrifying scramble for the boats, and many people were trapped below decks because of the speed of the sinking.

An etching by W L Wyllie in the new emigrants’ gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum shows the Lusitania in the River Mersey shortly before the First World War.

A 1:6000 scale model depicts the Mauretania at the Princes Landing Stage in 1911 (pictured). Among other ships on the river are tugs, a paddle steamer, ferry boats and fishing craft.

Mauretania captured the coveted Blue Riband (westerly) in September 1909 when she crossed the Atlantic at an average speed of 26.06 knots – a record which lasted 20 years.

She served as both a troopship and hospital ship during the First World War before resuming passenger services. Mauretania was scrapped in 1935.

There's more on the Lusitania, including items recovered from the ship, on our main site.

Maritime Archvies has also put together an information sheet on the Lusitania. There are also sheets on the great transatlantic liners and the Cunard Line. 

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

I sometimes go to postcard fairs and join the throngs of people leafing through piles of illustrated epistles mailed long ago with every sort of message and greeting. Each stall has cards sorted into themes and one of my favourites is ships and shipping. Recently I bought this card showing the Republic. I added it to my collection simply because I liked it, only later discovering the unique role this vessel once played.

One hundred years ago radio technology pioneered by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi and others became reality in saving lives at sea.

Two significant centenaries are being celebrated in 2009 – the first radio sea rescue and the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics to Marconi and Karl Ferdinand Braun for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.

In the early hours of 23 January 1909 the 15,378-ton passenger liner Republic, owned by the Liverpool-based White Star Line, was steaming from New York to the Mediterranean with 742 passengers and crew. She entered thick fog off Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, and sounded her whistle 

Suddenly another whistle was heard directly in front of the ship. Republic’s engines were quickly thrown into reverse and her helm swung hard-a-port but then a ship’s bow loomed out of the fog and sliced into the Republic amidships.

As water poured into the disabled Republic’s engine and boiler rooms, radio operator Jack Binns wired his new Marconi set with backup batteries and sent out a distress signal using Morse Code – CQD, later replaced in popularity by SOS.

CQD is understood by wireless operators to mean All Stations: Distress (not Come Quick, Danger as is often thought).

The call was relayed to all ships in the area but the first ship on the scene was the Lloyd Italiano liner Florida – the ship that had crashed into the Republic. Passengers were transferred to the Florida, which was in no danger of sinking. Attempts by the captain and some crew members to save the Republic failed and she sank the day after the collision.

In Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery there are many Titanic-linked exhibits including the 20 ft long original builder’s model used to publicise the ship.

Both CQD and SOS were used by wireless operator Jack Phillips as the ship went down but it is a popular myth that this was the first time SOS was used. Phillips, who did not survive, and junior operator Harold Bride, who did, were employed by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Françoise Chircop Rutland of the University of Liverpool, who is doing her PhD on NML Hittite collections, asked Annemarie Le Pensèe in Conservation Technologies to scan a mysterious mould from an excavation by Professor Garstang in 1907 to 1911 at Sakje Gözü, southern Turkey.  Making a computer positive from the scanned negative it turns out to be a mould for a type of axe known in Middle to Late Bronze Age Egypt - between 1300BC and 1180BC.

The axe - called a 'fenestrated "duck-bill" axe' on account of its window shaped apertures and its duck-bill shape - is known from other examples (not in our collections) though both moulds and axes of this type are rarely found outside of Egyptian collections. There's not many moulds about... and moulds, presumably, facilitate the production of more axes for use in the ‘smiting’ of which the Hittites were so fond according to the Old Testament of the Bible.  Some archaeologists now believe that these axes were used for ritual battles between prize fighters and symbolised high social status both in life and death – since these axes were buried with them. 

When I started work in 1966 on the Crosby Herald as a junior journalist the big local story was the container terminal planned for the north end of Liverpool docks.

There were protests from local residents who feared the area would be ruined by this new dock – now the Liverpool Freeport. Most of the opposition was on environmental grounds – little did people know how radically the port would be transformed by this project.

Models of the Inventor (shown) and Atlantic Causeway stand next to each other in the new Liverpool: World Gateway gallery in Merseyside Maritime Museum. The two ships were only built five years apart but they symbolised a seismic change in the way cargo was carried as container ships took over.

The Inventor, built in 1964, was one of four heavy-lift cargo liners built for the Harrison Line. With their 180-ton lifting capacity derricks, these ships were built to carry machinery to developing countries.

The sudden rise of Roll On, Roll Off (RORO) ships and containerisation, plus changing trade patterns, shortened the lives of many ships like Inventor. In 1981 she was sold to Singaporean owners, renamed Penta World and scrapped in 1985.

Cargo containers had their origins in the 1780s carrying coal on canals and the first standardised container was introduced in the 1920s. The first purpose-built container ships started operating in Denmark in 1951. Over the following decades more and more operators adopted the system until by 1970 it was unstoppable.

The 15,000-ton Atlantic Causeway was a RORO container ship built in 1969 by Swan Hunter at Wallsend-on-Tyne.

In 1966 five major European shipping companies, including Cunard, joined together to form ACL. Their aim was to share the huge costs involved in building and operating a fleet of RORO container ships trading between Europe and North America.

For more than 30 years ACL, now based in Norway but with offices in Liverpool, has been a giant in the North Atlantic trade. Its ships still visit Liverpool every week and continue to dominate ports vital to the North Atlantic trade.

Atlantic Causeway and her younger sister Atlantic Conveyor were owned by Cunard, managed by Cunard Brocklebank and hired by ACL. In 1982 both ships were converted to carry aircraft and serve in the Falklands War. Conveyor was sunk after being hit by two Argentine Exocet missiles with the loss of 12 lives. Causeway returned home safely having played an important part in supporting the British Task Force.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

I find graveyards and cemeteries fascinating places not only on a spiritual level but also as sources of stories – each stone bears testimony to lives, some detailed, some obscure.

While looking around Childwall’s ancient yard in Liverpool recently I stumbled across memorials to the Okill family. These were principled people because John Okill &Co were the only Africa merchants in Liverpool not engaged in the slave trade.

The impact of the slave trade on Africa was profound as it blighted progress in all aspects of life on the continent for many generations.

The transatlantic slave trade operated for almost 400 years, fuelled by Europe’s almost insatiable desire for sugar, cotton, tobacco and other products of the New World which were then regarded as luxuries.

Liverpool ships were a key part of the trade and the town became Europe’s leading slaving port in the second half of the 18th century.

At least 12 million Africans were forcibly transported by Britain and other countries but many millions more were profoundly affected. The transatlantic slave trade destroyed African societies, robbing them of young people.

A staggering two-thirds of enslaved people were young men aged between 15 and 25. They were in huge demand to work the booming plantations producing ever-growing quantities of crops.

Arms and ammunition brought to Africa by European traders helped perpetrate conflict and political instability.

Displays at the International Slavery Museum, in the Merseyside Maritime Museum building, focus on the consequences of the trade on Africa.

Successful trade routes that existed before European intervention were disrupted. The development of African communities and cultures was severely stunted. Agriculture suffered as communities abandoned fertile land as they fled the long reach of the European slavers.

The labour and inventiveness of enslaved peoples shaped the Americas and enriched Western European, rather than their African homelands.

On display is a lithograph featuring ships on the 1841 Niger Expedition (pictured). Thomas Fowell Buxton was leader of the British anti-slavery movement in the post-slave trade era.

He urged the British government to make treaties with African leaders to abolish the slave trade. The expedition went to the Niger River delta to set up a headquarters and began negotiations. The party suffered so many deaths from disease that they had to return home.

There is a half model of the Balmore, bought by John Holt & Co in 1908. The Holt family was involved in the West Africa trade from the 1860s.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

The Beatles’ song 'Being for the benefit of Mr Kite' is particularly evocative for me because of the seaside fairground memories it conjures up. I think the organ sounds create images of garish 1950s roundabouts and hot dog stands. John Lennon’s words were inspired by a 19th century poster but the musical arrangement is pure New Brighton.

John would have visited Liverpool’s own seaside resort on a ferry across the Mersey where his senses would have been bombarded with the sights, sounds and smells of the fairground surrounding the Tower Ballroom.

The Beatles sang about Mr Kite challenging the world with his act featuring acrobats, the Hendersons, leaping through “a hogshead of real fire”.

A tobacco hogshead on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum (pictured) makes you appreciate the bravery of the Hendersons.

This huge round barrel is more than four feet tall and about the same diameter. It was found in the Albert Dock warehouses – now housing the museum – where tobacco was stored on arrival (there's more on the history of the dock and it's warehouses on our main site).

Although today most goods within Britain travel by road and rail, ships carry some cargoes between British ports. In particular, it can be more convenient and profitable to use ships for goods carried in large quantities such as petrol and aviation fuel.

Two hundred years ago, before proper roads and railways, it was often easier and cheaper to carry goods by sea or on rivers and canals.

There are exhibition models of coastal vessels in the museum’s Life at Sea gallery. The three-masted Liberty and Property was built in Whitby in 1752.

One of the largest coastal trades in the 1700s and 1800s was carrying coals from Newcastle and other ports in the north east of England to London. The expression “Carrying coals to Newcastle” means a pointless action. There was a huge demand for coal in London and south east England, mainly as a household fuel.

A modern coastal vessel is the Mersey Fisher which was added to the fleet of James Fisher & Co in 1998. She carries liquid petrochemicals to ports in the UK and north west Europe. The model was commissioned with the generous support of the Sir John Fisher Foundation as a reminder of the firm’s long association with the port of Liverpool.

Among the museum’s ship collection housed on the Historic Quaysides is the De Wadden, an auxiliary schooner based in Arklow, Eire, from 1921 to 1961. She was the last sailing ship to trade in and out of the Mersey.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

As I've mentioned many times before, there's never a dull moment for the handling and transport team. Since I last reported on their activities they have safely transported a huge variety of objects from our collections, including ship models, paintings, a stained glass window and some Hindu Gods (well, sculptures of them, anyway). Some have been moved from storage to the conservation studios for treatment and back again, other objects have been gone on or off display and a few have ben loaned to other organisations.

Some of the more unusual jobs have involved taking a whole rack of uniforms to the conservation freezer to treat a possible insect infestation and weighing weapons from the collection in order to determine the floor loadings of planned displays in the new Museum of Liverpool.

On a rare break from work a few weeks ago the team had a sneak preview of the new galleries currently under construction at the Museum of Liverpool. They were all impressed by the scale and design of the building. However in the back of their minds I'm sure they were all thinking the same thing - they'll have their work cut out installing all of the many objects in this huge building in time for the opening.

You can see what they've been up to in the Moving stories Flickr set of photos.

One of my older relatives used to joke that you should not bathe too often because hot water removes the skin’s natural oils. I’m all for keeping clean but some people overdo it and this can be very wasteful in a world that needs water.

However, I would not like to go on a long journey without having the opportunity to bathe but this was hardly the situation on most passenger ships in Victorian times, for example.

Competition to capture business during the emigration boom through Liverpool spurred shipping companies to create better facilities for travellers.

The arrival of large steam liners meant that services could keep to publicised timetables and schedules. This was a huge improvement on sailing ships which were at the mercy of wind and weather.

Cunard’s transatlantic passenger liner Gallia of 1879 was a beautiful ship built during the transitory period when steam was still supplemented by sail.

There is a superb builder’s-style model of the Gallia in the new emigrants’ gallery in Merseyside Maritime Museum (pictured).

The 430-foot long Gallia was one of the steamships that brought new standards of safety and comfort to the North Atlantic emigrant trade. She spent most of her career on the Liverpool to New York and Boston run.

Gallia could carry 300 first class passengers in luxurious (for the time) two-berth cabins plus 1,200 steerage (third class) passengers along with 2,000 tons of cargo.

She had both engines and sails and her captain used sail whenever possible. Two new features were an improved main saloon which took up the full 42 feet of the ship’s width along with steam-powered steering.

Despite all these luxuries and improvements, Gallia was fitted with only two baths for the entire ship. You can read more on SS Gallia on our main site.

About nine million people emigrated through Liverpool in the period 1830 to 1930 making it probably the biggest emigration port in world history.

Few of these emigrants, who came from many parts of northern Europe including Russia, recorded their experiences in Liverpool.

Dirk van den Bergh and his large family emigrated from Holland, via Liverpool, to Canada in 1906. He wrote a diary about his journey - audio extracts are available for museum visitors to listen to, or you can listen to some here.

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• Transcript

Dirk writes: “We went into the centre of Liverpool – what a busy place and what traffic! If you could imagine Liverpool without fog and smoke it would be really impressive city. It streams with many emigrants.”

There is more on the emigrant experience in our Leaving From Liverpool online feature.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Great vanished buildings always hold a certain mystique and the Liverpool Custom House was one I would have loved to explore.

There are many pictures of the exterior of this huge H-shaped structure crowned with a dome but I have yet to see any of the interior. In its prime this was one of the busiest places in the port with people beavering away and rushing hither and thither.

The Custom House was damaged in the May 1941 Blitz and later demolished – although many believe it could have been saved.

On display in the new Seized: Revenue & Customs Uncovered gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a large contemporary wooden model of the Custom House, built in 1837 from a design by John Foster Junior (circa 1787 - 1846).

Trade brings profits and those who do business through ports have to pay the appropriate duties and taxes on many items that are imported.

From the 1700s Britain’s trade with the rest of the world grew hugely. It fell to Customs officers to control it and protect the revenue so that the Government got its share.

On the quaysides and in the warehouses of Liverpool and every other port, amid the hustle and bustle of unloading ships and moving cargoes, the Customs officers went about their daily business.

Each man had a special job. For example, front line officers known as tide waiters met each incoming vessel and stayed with it until the cargo was unloaded. Some weighed and measured cargoes while others toiled at paper work in the Custom House.

Custom Houses were once the hub of every port. They were run by the comptroller who had immense power. He could prevent ships from unloading their cargoes or leaving port.

The Long Room was the heart of his domain where captains arrived from months at sea to present their paperwork to bench officers who made out a warrant and copied out six extracts. These were then sent to six different colleagues elsewhere in the building.

On display is a fascinating aerial view of the Custom House taken around 1935 (pictured). It shows the Overhead Railway station outside the entrance so that Customs officers on foot had fast and easy access to all the Liverpool docks.

An enamelled notice from about 1909 declares: “The Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs and Excise hereby give notice that spitting is strictly prohibited in all parts of this building. By order.”

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

The bold and beautiful people of Liverpool called into World Museum Liverpool last Thursday to have their portrait taken by the acclaimed photographer Rankin.

For those who don’t know the name you will certainly know his work as there doesn’t seem to be a member of the glitterati he has not photographed. However it was “ordinary” scousers under the lens last week, as part of the Shoot Me, Rankin! project to photograph 1,000 people and form a portrait of modern Britain.

The whole process was quite fascinating to watch. A team of people looked after hair and make-up, while another team of photographic assistants worked on lighting, props, wind machines and the final touch ups of the portraits on the computer.

Rankin works amidst this whirl of assistants, producers, models and PR people, to produce stunning portraits that are all as different as each sitter but all maintain a Rankin "look".

The Shoot Me, Rankin! portraits will be on display alongside a major retrospective of Rankin's work at the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London from 31 July to 18 September 2009.

If you have missed your chance to be photographed by Rankin you can still be photographed by a professional photographer at the Walker Art Gallery. The Iconic Portraits Competition is inspired by the Cecil Beaton: Portraits exhibition (until 31 August 2009).

 

I’m a great admirer of beautiful ships but in the tough realm of trading it also helps to be practical and economical.

In the shipping world, like any other commercial enterprise, you have to be competitive – there is no sentiment in business and profits literally keep ships afloat.

The steamship America was a stunningly lovely ship, as a 1:48 scale model in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s new emigrant gallery clearly demonstrates.

This is my favourite ship model in the museum, displaying the graceful lines of the America to perfection. Her two black and white funnels are finely proportioned and tiny detailing such as individual deck planking adds an air of reality. The remarkably-detailed figurehead shows a woman in flowing white robes.

Perhaps the America was too good for the work she had to carry out – a transatlantic passenger liner with the Liverpool shipping company, National Line. The 5,528-ton America was built in 1884 for National by J and G Thomson of Clydebank. Her owners hoped she would be faster than any of her rivals in the highly-competitive north Atlantic passenger trade. The 442 ft long liner was powered by 9,000 hp engines and could travel at 18 knots.

On her first voyage between New York and Liverpool she made a record crossing of six days, 14 hours and 18 minutes. As is so often the case, her moment of glory was soon eclipsed and the record was beaten by other vessels on the route.

America was an elegant ship looking like a very large steam yacht. However, her large coal consumption and high fares made her too expensive for the north Atlantic with its cut-throat competitiveness.

Just three years after being built the America was sold to the Italian Government, renamed Trinacria and was used by the Italian Navy. She was scrapped in 1925. There is more on the SS America on our main website.

Another model of a J and G Thomson ship is on the gallery - the Friesland (more on that ship on our main site). However, she was a profitable ship that saw many years of service on the north Atlantic. Friesland was built in 1889 for the Red Star Line’s Antwerp to New York passenger trade which she served until 1903.

Red Star was eventually absorbed into American financier J Pierpont Morgan’s International Mercantile Marine along with White Star, Dominion, Leyland and Atlantic Transport Co shipping lines.

The International Mercantile Marine was set up in an attempt to monopolise the North Atlantic shipping trades.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

In the 1980s I spent several happy holidays in the Canary Islands where you could buy fabulous big Cuban-style cigars very cheaply. The Canaries – although part of Spain - were not in the EU so only a limited amount of duty free tobacco could be brought home. However, the Los Cubanos were so cheap I’d buy lots and declare them at UK Customs. The officer would weight them and work out the duty to be paid. A receipt was handed over as proof of the transaction.
 
Smuggling has been around ever since duties and taxes were levied on goods and commodities. From the days of sailing ships to the present day, Customs officers have relied on the latest technologies to counteract smuggling.

Both in the 18th century and now they have used some of the fastest and most manoeuvrable boats available. These cutters, as they are known, enable officers to chase and board vessels at sea and in remote ports.

In 1779 nearly four million gallons of gin and more than five million pounds weight of tea were smuggled into Britain, landed on beaches up and down the coast. At that time tea was a very expensive luxury which was kept in locked caddies usually in the homes of the rich. More than two-thirds of the tea consumed in Britain during the 18th century was smuggled.

The Commutation Act of 1784 slashed the tax on tea, smuggling it ceased to be profitable and the smuggling trade vanished virtually overnight.

Today tobacco and spirits are still smuggled and have been joined by Class A drugs such as heroine and cocaine. Between 1996 and 1998, the London-based Wright Gang smuggled in at least three tonnes of cocaine on yachts. In April 2007 they were jailed after an 11-year investigation.

Seized: Revenue & Customs Uncovered at Merseyside Maritime Museum looks at many different aspects of smuggling and related issues.

Two ships models show the development of the Customs cutter. The Sprightly was used by the Revenue service at the end of the 18th century. She was heavily armed, fast and could be moved with dexterity and skill. The other cutter model shows the Vigilant, one of a fleet of five cutters that today patrol the waters around Britain. The 42-metre long vessel was built in Holland in 2003.

An 1840 coloured engraving (pictured) shows the Revenue cutter Harpy chasing a smugglers’ ship. Casks are bobbing in the water after being jettisoned by the smugglers.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

I was never caned at school but was threatened with it on one occasion for failing to whiten my pumps for PE. Another time the class bully - a hefty blonde - flicked ink at me. I told the teacher who sent Muriel to the female deputy head for two strokes on each hand. Muriel was as nice as pie to me after that.

Life for the ordinary seaman on sailing ships was hard with poor food, atrocious living conditions and frequently diabolical weather. There was also very harsh discipline to make sure crew members literally “toed the line” – believed by many to be a seafaring expression referring to the lines created by deck planks.

Captains ordered wrongdoers to be flogged. This involved the culprit being whipped on the back, usually with a cat o’ nine tails – a whip with nine thongs or tails. Very young seafarers were flogged with a lighter model with just five tails known as a boy’s cat. It was administered on the bare backside while the culprit was “kissing the gunner’s daughter” (bending over a cannon). The cane was also used but rarely on the hand, as this could hinder the victim when hauling ropes or doing other work.

One of the most feared punishments in the Royal Navy was being flogged around the fleet. The total amount of lashes was divided by the number of ships in port. The offender was rowed between each ship for the crews to witness his punishment. The gravest offences – such as sedition and mutiny – could attract a sentence of hundreds of lashes. However, a surgeon was present and could stop the flogging if it endangered the culprit’s life. A tally was kept of how many lashes were still to be carried out. Once the wounds had healed, the floggings would be resumed. As a result, sentences often took months or years to complete.

The ultimate punishment was execution by being hanged from the yardarm, again witnessed by the crew.

Apart from formal punishments, crew members were often thumped and hit as a matter of course.

In Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery there is a hastener from about 1877. These were applied by bo’suns (boatswains - junior officers) to keep crews in order. This hastener on display was used on the iron ship Eulomene of Liverpool. It is made of cane with the end formed into a Turk’s head knot. It is more than 18 inches long and as thick as a man’s thumb.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

I grow my own rhubarb and am a strong believer in its health-giving properties – as was the great Venetian explorer Marco Polo who is credited with introducing the sweet vegetable to Europe from China. Just simmer the chopped stalks for about 10 minutes in water with a spoonful of sugar, put in a bowl with some of the liquid, add dried mixed fruit, let it cool then add some natural yoghurt – delicious.

Liverpool’s initial prosperity was built on the successes of shipping lines with fleets of sailing ships. It took several decades for steam to become the dominant source of power. One of the most successful of all the sailing ship lines was Black Ball with its emigrant packets on the Australia run.

The Black Ball Line was started in 1852 by James Baines of Liverpool. Baines operated a regular service between the port and Australia, principally Melbourne. Black Ball packets were renowned for their fast voyages. The company captured much of the emigrant trade during the Gold Rush years between 1851 and the late 1860s when the Australian state of Victoria dominated world gold output.

The new emigrant gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum features an exhibition model of the renowned Black Ball ship Marco Polo. Built in 1851, she made record-breaking voyages to Australia. The model shows the ship refitted for the emigrant trade.

Two richly-coloured replica stern carvings from the Marco Polo show him wearing 19th century Western and Eastern dress. In reality, he lived between 1254 and 1324.  One of the life-sized figures (pictured) shows clean-shaven Polo in a green frock coat, plumed hat and black boots. In the other he is bearded and sports traditional Eastern headgear and matching blue, pink and gold gown.

There is a picture model of another Black Ball three-master, Indian Queen, depicted with pennants flying.  The model belonged to Capt John McKirdy, of the Isle of Bute, Scotland, master of the ship 1854 – 5.

A fearsome Bowie knife is inscribed with the name of the infamous Black Ball Capt James Nichol Forbes. He was known as “Bully Forbes” because of his harsh treatment of both passengers and crews.

A major competitor of Black Ball was Pilkington and Wilson’s White Star Line (predecessor of the later Titanic line). The White Star was an emigrant sailing ship between Liverpool and Melbourne. A pair of binoculars, dating from about 1860, came from the White Star when Captain T Kerr was in command.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Beautiful gold and silver items are always a joy to the eye but I think they are much more interesting if there is a story behind them. This particular piece of gilded silverware is linked to a very famous story indeed.

The White Star line – which later included the Titanic among its fleet – was founded in Liverpool in 1869 by shipping mogul Thomas Henry Ismay. Known also as the Ocean Steam Navigation Company, White Star eventually led the way in building prestigious luxury liners such as Titanic and her almost identical sisters Olympic and Britannic.

When Ismay died in 1899, White Star was the most successful transatlantic passenger line. In 1902 it was bought by the huge American firm, the International Mercantile Marine Company.

Ismay’s son, Bruce, became the first president and managing director of the new company. He remained in control of White Star and its ships continued to fly the British flag. J Bruce Ismay, as he was known, continued his father’s close partnership with the Belfast shipbuilders Harland & Wolff which led to the construction of Titanic and her sisters.

Thomas Henry Ismay’s original home can still be seen at Beach Lawn, Waterloo. He later built a huge mansion called Dawpool at Thurstaston, Wirral, but this was demolished many years ago. J Bruce Ismay – who survived the Titanic sinking by escaping in one of the last lifeboats - lived at a large house called Sandheys in Mossley Hill, Liverpool.

In the Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum there are parts of the magnificent Ismay Testimonial silver.  This parcel gilt dinner service was presented to Thomas by the company’s shareholders on board the White Star liner Adriatic in 1884.

The service, made by London silversmiths Hunt & Gaskell, is one of the finest of its kind. It was intended to “illustrate the progress of the art of navigation from the earliest times to the present day”.

The centrepiece (which there's more about on our main site) depicts commerce on top of the world with figures of the legendary navigators Jason (of Argonauts fame), Vasco de Gama (first European to sail to India around the Cape of Good Hope), Christopher Columbus (New World explorer) and British naval explorer Captain James Cook.

There are beautiful models of tiny vessels used for fishing and hunting – a kayak, canoe and coracle. Most of these pieces could be used for condiments such as salt, pepper and mustard. A large sweetmeat dish is flanked by two contemporary (1884) seafarers – a merchant navy officer and a sailor.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

When choosing an outfit for a sunny day (though it is raining right now) you can't go wrong with navy and white. In particular, I'm very into the nautical stuff that is around at the moment. On a recent trip to Beyond Retro in Shoreditch I had to be talked out of purchasing a vintage sailor bib top, possibly taken from a real sailor in the mists of time (that's an actual era you know.)

In 1910, fashion fanatic and philanthropist Mrs. Emily Tinne would have been right on trend for this summer with her quirky sailor inspired espadrilles, which are now on show as part of A Sweet Life at Sudley House until Spring 2010.

Everywhere you look on the high street right now there are beachy espadrilles and sailor-style pumps, but none that combine the two things quite as well as Mrs.Tinne's little beauties. They are made of white linen and have a cool anchor design that has been hand-embroidered onto the toe with red wool.

Even über-model Agyness Deyn is a fan of the nautical trend - who would have thought Mrs.Tinne and Aggy would have something in common!

Just looking at this plan of a slave ship hold almost makes me break out into a cold sweat.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have a strong aversion to crowded enclosed spaces. This print of 1789 brings home to us all the hideous nature of the slave trade.

Liverpool’s slave ships carried their human cargoes from West Africa over the Atlantic to the Americas and Caribbean on journeys that took six weeks or more. The Africans were held in atrocious and dehumanising conditions – violence, terror and degradation were everyday occurrences.

They had already suffered terrible hardship before reaching the coast. Sometimes the slaves were forced to march hundreds of miles from the interior of Africa. Sold several times over, they passed from one owner to another, their sense of disorientation and dread increasing with each sale. However, the prisoners took every opportunity to escape. One group of women tracked their husbands for several days before breaking them free.

Some African leaders were actively involved in the trade but others took a stand against slavery. They included Tomba, leader of the Baga in Guineas and Agaja Trudo, king of Dahomey.

The slaves’ final destinations on land were forts and places such as the island of Goree where they were held before boarding ships. The message to potential escapers was clear – skeletons of those who tried to make a run for it were impaled on spikes as gruesome warnings.

The horrors of the Middle Passage, as it was known, were made worse because many of the captives had never seen the sea. They were packed into unbelieveably hot, cramped and suffocating conditions in the holds. The men were kept separated from the women and children. In good weather they were brought on deck.

The men were humiliated and forced to ‘dance’ for the crew. This also have an ulterior motive – to keep the slaves fit and healthy so they would fetch higher prices. Women were abused by crew members and rape was common.

The physical conditions, fear and uncertainty left many of the captives totally traumatised and unable to eat. Some preferred death and took their own lives. Disease and brutality took their tolls. Between one tenth and one quarter of enslaved Africans died on every journey. Mortality among crew members was also high.

At the International Slavery Museum, in the Merseyside Maritime Museum building, there are displays which explore slave voyages including a model and painting of slave ships.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

I have always wanted to invent something that cannot be bettered - the best ideas are always the simplest. What could possibly be better than the wheel? Another idea that I think will never be improved is the wash basin plug. You could think of all sorts of weird pumps and other devices to do the same task but not so simply. Traffic lights solved a problem people had agonised over for years before discovering the (now) obvious solution. The anchor is another simple foolproof invention.

Anchors must have been created shortly after the invention of the boat and the earliest ones were hauled up by hand. Ship models found in Ancient Egyptian tombs dating from around 1600 BC have grooved or perforated anchor stones. By 800 BC bronze anchors were being produced in Malta. By about 300 BC anchors, now made of iron, had a more modern appearance. A 16-foot long anchor from a ship of the tyrannical Roman Emperor Caligula – dating from about 40 AD - was salvaged from an Italian lake in 1929.

It is said that the first iron anchors forged in England were made in East Anglia in 573 AD. There is a modern-looking anchor in the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

As ships and anchors got bigger, a device needed to be invented to haul the anchor up – thus the capstan was born, probably more than 2,000 years ago. This is a vertical rotating drum originally operated by sailors using removable levers known as handspikes. Crew members would sing popular songs and sea shanties as they raised the anchor - probably the best known is The Drunken Sailor. These days capstans are powered by petrol motors, electricity, hydraulics or even pneumatics.

A large anchor outside the main entrance to Merseyside Maritime Museum  came from HMS Conway, a 92-gun wooden battleship built in 1839. Surprisingly, it is about the same size as the one from Caligula's Roman ship.

In 1876 HMS Conway became a school ship where thousands of Royal Navy cadets were trained. She was anchored in the Mersey for many years before being moved to North Wales. She was wrecked in the Menai Straights in 1953 and later broken up. The anchor, saved from the wreck with other relics, was later donated to the museum by the Conway Club – a group made up of former cadets.

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 paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Great oaks from little acorns grow is a real truism and one that particularly applies to ships.

I like to think of early adventurers taking to the water countless centuries ago, presumably on logs that were later hollowed out to make primitive boats. The technology got better and better and today we are still improving our ships which seem to increase in size as each year passes.

The first steamship on the River Mersey was the paddle steamer Elizabeth which arrived on 28 June 1815 to serve as a ferry boat. This was also the dawn of a new era of comparative peace that was to last a century. The Elizabeth’s arrival came just 10 days after the Battle of Waterloo at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Although regarded by many people as a passing novelty at the time, ships such as the Elizabeth were in the vanguard of change which would see the maritime world transformed.

A 1:48 scale model of the Elizabeth in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Art & The Sea gallery shows how small she was. Models on the same scale appear giants alongside the tiny wooden ship. The Elizabeth was fitted with an eight horse-power engine and inaugurated the ferry service between Liverpool and Runcorn. She made just one trip daily travelling at between nine and ten knots.

The first experimental steamboat was built in 1704. However, it was the brilliant English engineer James Watt (1736 – 1819) who realised the importance of steam and its great potential. His work inspired others to develop the concept of steamships. The first practical steamboat was the Charlotte Dundas which towed barges along the Forth and Clyde Canal to Glasgow in 1802. Her success opened the floodgates to steamship development in Britain and abroad.

The 1:48 scale model of the 13,518-ton Cretic (pictured), in the same case, shows the huge changes in steamships in less than a century since the Elizabeth was built. It is like comparing a whale to a sprat.

Cretic was a passenger and cattle carrier with the famous White Star Line of Liverpool. She was bought by White Star in 1904 and remained with the company until 1923.
Cretic could carry 245 passengers while the Elizabeth could only transport a fraction of this number and had no cabin accommodation.

Steamships continued to be built until recent times. The Queen Elizabeth 2 was the last passenger steamship to cross the Atlantic before being converted to diesel in 1986.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Following the fashion theme from Dawn's previous post, today it was Liverpool One's turn to host a series of fashion shows as part of Liverpool Fashion Week. Performing arts students from LIPA worked the catwalk (with plenty of attitude) wearing sports and casual wear from brands such as Blue Ink, Henleys and Fred Perry. Trainers were a big feature, with models carrying them around their necks while walking barefoot! Neon colours featured heavily, perhaps a hangover from the recent nu-rave trend, giving the whole show a bright, spring-like feel. It think my favourite t-shirt from the show was the Mr Men one from Blue Ink with the slogan 'I left Mr Grumpy at home', very cool.

If you are mad about sports/casual wear then take a few photos of your favourite tops or trainers and join our Metro V Retro Flickr group. Or drop in to see our Fashion V Sport exhibition and drool over the funky customised trainers.

I love studying photographs, drawings and plans of the mighty Dreadnought battleships that dominated navies about 100 years ago. I admire the high-quality engineering which combined with great design to produce beautiful fighting machines gleaming from end-to-end with polished brass and steel armour plating.

However, submarine technology advanced during the First World War when undersea warfare became a reality and, along with the development of bomber and fighter aircraft, marked the beginning of the end of battleships.

Dreadnoughts and other huge warships bristling with guns that marked the arms race in Edwardian Europe were sitting ducks to much smaller war machines swooping from the skies or lurking beneath the waves.

Upon the declaration of war in 1914 Britain had around 50 submarines while her allies the French had more than 70. The Imperial German Navy, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, had between 30 and 40 diesel and petrol-powered U-boats.

By the end of the war the UK had 137 submarines in service with another 78 being built, having lost 54 subs during hostilities. The German Navy had more than 170 operational U-boats which were surrendered to the Allies.

In the First World War submarines were slow, fragile and only capable of staying under water for about two hours at a stretch. Early submarines had five or six torpedo tubes and deck-mounted guns, making them also dangerous on the surface.

Around 5,000 ships were sunk during the First World War by U-boats. The most famous was the Cunard liner Lusitania, torpedoed off Ireland in 1915 with the loss of 1,200 lives. There are a number of exhibits from the Lusitania in the Merseyside Maritime Museum exhibition Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress.

The most famous victim of a U-boat was probably British general Lord Kitchener, whose face graced the recruiting poster with the slogan “Your Country Needs You”. He died on a mission to Russia in 1916 when the cruiser HMS Hampshire hit a mine laid by the U-75 off the Orkney Islands.

The Maritime Museum’s display Liverpool: World Gateway has two models of ships linked to submarine warfare in the Great War, as it was also known. One is a superbly-detailed model of the cargo liner Malancha, (shown here) built in 1918 for the Brocklebank Line. It has two quick-firing guns mounted near the ship’s stern as protection against submarines.

The other is the Johnson Line’s cargo liner Barnesmore of 1905. After being sold and renamed Whitehall, she was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic in 1917.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Des Newton, who has died after a long illness aged 67, was one of the world’s leading ship bottlers and I, Stephen Guy, admired him for his astonishing dexterity and well as his cheerful personality.

Des made ship models with amazing skill and precision and it was a delight watching his hands daintily getting things to work.  He could also talk at great length about the history of ship bottling, dealing with the most difficult questions effortlessly. I asked him how seafarers kept the bottle steady as sailing ships pitched and tossed on rough seas. He immediately produced an ancient photograph illustrating the answer – they rested the bottle on a stick.
Des, who also made ship models for the Royal family, was one of the best-known personalities at the Merseyside Maritime Museum where he had a ship bottling and model workshop for 20 years.

He was born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, the son of a seafarer. After his apprenticeship, Des became a welder working on submarines in the Vickers shipyard. He later became a professional entertainer and musician learning his trade on the nightclub circuit.

This was time well spent because anyone seeing Des demonstrating his ship bottling skills knew they were in the presence of a great entertainer. He always jokingly referred to himself as a Glass Receptacle Miniature Artefact Inserter.

Des - who lived in Bootle, Liverpool - appeared on television several times, most notably on Blue Peter and the panel game What’s My Line?

He supported Merseyside Maritime Museum at many exhibitions and events and this led to him demonstrating his skills at maritime festivals around the country. Even after retirement in 2004, Des was still in demand demonstrating his knowledge and skills on cruise ships as well as back at the Maritime Museum where he held his last workshop in September 2008.
Des was passionate about lifeboats and was a former crew member of the Barrow lifeboat and a RNLI life governor. He raised thousands of pounds towards the purchase of a lifeboat through running the annual Southport Model Lifeboat Rally.

Des made a model of the Royal Yacht and presented it to the Queen when she visited Merseyside on board the Britannia in 1993.

There's more on the world's smallest ship in a bottle, created by Des in 1990, and on making ships in bottles in general on this website.

It has been another busy and varied week for the handling and transport team, who have been taking a lot of different objects from storage to the National Conservation Centre for routine condition checking to prevent deterioration. One item in particular caught their eye, as handling technician driver Paul Kelly explains below. You can see more of Paul's photos of this and other objects in our Moving Stories set on Flickr.

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"Way back in the mists of time in the 1960s lots of chaps built model buildings for their model railway layouts using Bayko building blocks. Some chaps obviously got into it in a very big way and produced a very large building - none other than the Empire State Building - which is now in the Museum of Liverpool's collections. It must have taken them weeks to do this and the cost would have been enormous - Grandma must have had a deep pocket money wallet.

This week the handling and transport team delivered the model from storage to the National Conservation Centre for conservation treatment. Naturally the urge to imitate King Kong could not be resisted, although due care and attention was of course paid to ensure the safe handling of the model. Happily the model made it safely to National Conservation Centre in the correct number of components. Afterwards though we had a big problem trying to get handling technician Danny John out of King Kong mode..."

Hello there.

Well unless you have been living on another planet recently who could not have been gripped by the momentous events when Barack Hussein Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. First he is a loving father, a skilled politician, an inspirational leader and role model, who is married to a strong successful and supportive partner, he also happens to be the first African American President. A truly great achievement, especially in a nation that less than 60 years ago had separate seating on buses - white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, whereas Black people who boarded the bus had to sit on the back rows (a certain Rosa Parks disagreed) and where the Jim Crow Laws were in place which segregated everything from schools to public parks and transportation, with a "separate but equal" status for Black Americans.

I could go on, but I think you get the message. As a result unsurprisingly, many people have suggested President Obama go on our Black Achievers Wall and I am sure that he will once we add new achievers to that exhibit. As a museum we are actively collecting Obama related material for our own collections: ranging from campaign badges to a plethora of magazines and newspaper articles. We are planning to have some of this material on display at the first ever US Black History Month event we are holding on 17 February called 'From Lincoln to Obama: a look at the progress of civil rights'.  We have a number of noted speakers such as Simon Woolley from Operation Black Vote and Wally Brown, the ex-principle of Liverpool Community College. See our website for full details.  

Most people in the UK associate Black History Month with October but it actually developed out of BHM events in the US in February founded by Dr Carter G Woodson, a great historian, author and educator. In 1926 Woodson pioneered a week long celebration of African American history and culture, the second week in February, to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. The week of celebration eventually became Black History Month.

It is a particularly good time to visit the museum as we have two exhibitions to see, Shoot Nations and My Life, My Words, opening on Monday, which explores the lives and experiences of people from Liverpool's Black communities and their relationships with the ever-changing city. We had a visitor from the US looking around earlier today and they were blown away at just how much information we have on various aspects of slavery as well as thinking both exhibitions were very interesting and visually stimulating. I have shown many people around the museum but it does not matter how many times I walk through it I always find something to look at or listen to in a new way. Most of the time I am sure people think I am just a visitor like them but I always have an eye on how they react to an exhibit or display, that is my job!

Bye for now. 

Here's the latest picture from Superfiveadaybanana's travels to local schools. Today the handling and transport team shepherded the sculpture from Brae Street School to St Michael's School in Kensington.

This is the latest move in a busy month for the team, which has involved taking plant models from World Museum Liverpool to Wrexham Museum for an exhibition and returning the huge Peter Doig painting 'Blotter' to the Walker after it had been out on loan. Closer to home, the team have also transported some delicate pieces of sculpture from our stores to the National Conservation Centre for assessment and treatment, as well as helping to install the next big exhibition at the Walker, Fashion V Sport. You can see some of what they've been up to in the Moving Stories photographs on Flickr.

I have always enjoyed looking out for famous people going about their everyday lives. Among my coups were screen goddess Bette Davis sightseeing in Liverpool’s Castle Street and Brief Encounter star Trevor Howard wolfing down beans on toast in a Southport café.

Liverpool has always been a great place to people spot – particularly in the days of the great liners.

Sea travel has undergone enormous changes in the past 50 years with the rise of cheap air travel across the globe. Liverpool was, until the 1960s, a major port for transatlantic liners. At that time I was starting work as a junior reporter, but veterans would regale me with stories of meeting film stars as they came down the gangplank.

National newspaper journalists were based in Liverpool so they could meet and interview leading showbiz personalities, politicians, business chiefs and other people in the news as they disembarked at the Princes Stage.

With the growth of air travel, the passenger liner was replaced by the jet airliner and the sea cruise liner. During this period traditional ferries were replaced by multi-deck car ferries, high-speed vessels and hovercraft. For most people travel by sea became much more a matter of choice than necessity. While luxury and style were still available on many ships, the trend was towards cheaper and more accessible transport for all.

One of the ships which fell victim of the growth of air travel was the 13,345-ton cargo liner Media, the first ship to be built for Cunard after the Second World War. She was built by John Brown & Co of Clydebank and began her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York in August 1947. Both Media and her near-sister Parthia struggled to compete with the growing competition of aircraft in the Atlantic passenger trade in the late 1950s. They were sold in 1961.

A fine 1:64 model of Media by Bassett Lowke Ltd (shown here) is on display in the Art and The Sea gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum. It was given by the Liverpool, North Wales and Irish region of the GMB union in 2005.

Exhibits in the Life at Sea gallery include cocktail “swizzle sticks” from Canadian Pacific passenger liners in the 1950s. A small red plastic holdall was bought on the Southern Cross sailing from Southampton to Cape Town in 1961. Less glamorous but no less evocative is a sea sickness bag from a modern passenger ferry.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

 

Regular childhood trips on the Mersey ferries gave me my first taste of the sea even though we didn’t go further than New Brighton. I have never sailed on the high seas apart from in an ocean-going yacht around the Canary Islands - the Isle of Man and Irish ferries are more my style.

The Mersey ferry is perhaps the most famous ferry service in the world – deservedly so because of the dramatic maritime setting of river estuary, open sea and Liverpool waterfront.

The song Ferry ‘cross the Mersey is known all over the globe and is played on the Mersey ferries as they ply their triangular route between Liverpool, Seacombe and Birkenhead.

We have to go back to the 1150s for the start of the Mersey ferries when the monks at Birkenhead Priory would row passengers across the estuary for a small fare. At that time it was a wild and desolate area when the Priory was the biggest building for miles around – there was no castle or tower at Liverpool. This was 50 years before King John granted Liverpool’s charter in 1207. Even then the population never exceeded 500 until the 16th century.

A painting at Merseyside Maritime Museum dates from the era when steam was just beginning to make an impression although sail still held sway in the maritime world. The Rock Ferry (shown here) was painted by leading marine artist Samuel Walters about 1834 (other Walters paintings can be seen on our main site). It gives an insight into the type of craft in use before the advent of steam. Relying upon sails and oars, crossing the Mersey was often unpredictable. The ferry boat in the painting is the James, built in 1826 by Mottershead and Hayes of Liverpool. Walters shows the return trip to Liverpool laden with passengers along with fresh fruit and vegetables from the Wirral.

In the past there were up to 10 ferries between Liverpool and the Wirral – Rock Ferry, Eastham, New Ferry, Tranmere, Birkenhead, Woodside, Egremont, Seacombe, New Brighton and Monks Ferry. There was also a ferry terminal at Garston, Liverpool.

Also on display is a designer’s prototype model of the paddle steamer Alliance of about 1854, showing the dramatic change in ferry boat design in just 30 years. She was later built in Glasgow and served as a ferry on the River Clyde. Unusually, the model has identical stern and bow, each housing a small paddle wheel, with four funnels arranged in a square.

On our main site there are a number of ferry related features including a 1945 photograph of the Royal Daffodil II, a 1959 photograph of the Pier Head and ferry, and an information sheet providing a brief history of the Mersey Ferries.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

The idea of a fleet of small ships being mustered to support the Normandy landings in the Second World War is something I find very inspirational.

It was part of an audacious plan to hoodwink Hitler’s forces but it paid off handsomely. I also think this element of surprise is very British and the D-Day landings rank with other victories over the centuries.

They were workhorses of the sea, but 362 coasters played a vital role in Operation Neptune – the landings in northern France which heralded the end of the war.

The Battle of Normandy was launched on 6 June 1944 when the Allies landed on the beaches of German-occupied France.

Once they had a foothold and had forced the Germans back, substantial Allied contingents poured through the beachhead and joined the battle to liberate Europe.

One of the little ships involved was the 577-ton Clara Monks, a sturdy Liverpool-owned steam coaster dating from 1920.

She was part of convoy ETC.16 which left Southend on 23 June 1944, arriving the following day at Seine Bay, east of Cherbourg, with crucial supplies.

There were a total of 24 merchant ships in the convoy, with two escort ships. Small coasters were perfect for maintaining the continuous flow of supplies of ammunition, cased petrol and general stores from more than 20 Allied ports to the Normandy beaches.

There is a model of the single-funnelled Clara Monks in the Life at Sea gallery in Merseyside Maritime Museum which captures the robust construction of the original ship.

She had a long and varied career carrying diverse cargoes around the west coast of England for John S Monks of Liverpool, one of the major coastal companies of the day. After the war the Clara Monks carried goods between Le Havre and the Channel Islands and Liverpool before being scrapped in 1959.

A photograph shows her at sea with members of the crew on the monkey island (the roof of the wheelhouse).

Two similar ships are featured in the display – the Cornish Trader, also of 1920, and the Slievenamon.

A plan of the Cornish Trader shows the layout of crew accommodation as well as cargo holds. There is a page from the cargo book of the Slievenamon dating from 1922, the year of the Irish uprising, when her cargoes included coal, stout – and IRA prisoners.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Here's a recommendation for anyone who like me (I'm ashamed to say) doesn't often make it further into the Walker than the exhibition galleries. If you venture as far as the far end of room 3 upstairs you can see a study for the Murillo painting 'Virgin and Child in Glory', which is really rather sweet.

The study is on long term loan to the Walker and is on display in a cabinet in front of the finished painting. Apparently the small oil sketch was probably painted as a 'modello' to show Murillo's patron Ambrosio Ignacio Spinola, Archbishop of Seville, before starting on the large altarpiece that is now in the Walker's collection. It's rather cool to be able to see them together and compare the two

If you have you ever wondered what the North West was like millions of years ago then get yourself down to 'From coal to carnations', the new exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, which runs until 30 November 2008.

The exhibition tells the story of plant evolution starting more than 500 million years ago, when the local area was positioned on the equator on a dense forest-covered plain. The displays include fossilised evidence of the ancient plants that thrived in this environment, including material from a recently discovered fossil forest near Wrexham.

A number of items from National Museums Liverpool's Science collection are on loan to the exhibition, including seven Brendel plant models from the Botany department which are shown in this photo. The Geology department have also loaned nine fossil plant specimens, the oldest of which is around 370 million years old, and a replica of an ancient Argentine arthropod called Megarachne, that lived in forests during the Carboniferous age.

Whenever I look at Merseyside Maritime Museum’s collection of miniature ship models I marvel at these wonders created without the aid of plans or drawings. I could manage plastic construction kits of HMS Hood and the Bismarck but when I see these beautiful sailings ships – some little more than and inch long – I’m amazed. They are the ship model equivalents of beautiful humming birds – tiny vessels built by French prisoners-of-war.

Many of these models have - comparatively speaking - as much detail as those at the other end of the spectrum in the museum’s collections, such as the 20 ft-long model of the Titanic.

The Pilkington Collection of French Prisoner-of-War Models illustrates a vanished art when prisoners used materials such as wood chips or shavings, bone and straw to create wonders of model building. This collection of 39 miniscule warships and boats is one of the museum’s outstanding treasures.

Little is known about the captives who honed their skills to create masterpieces which they could sell or barter to improve their poor food, illustrating that hunger is a great motivator. The talents of the model-makers indicate that they may have been trained as jewellers or watchmakers. The prisoners were held in Britain during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars which lasted between 1790 and 1815.

Many French prisoners were held in Liverpool as well as other places around Britain. There is no evidence that the models in the Pilkington collection were made in Liverpool. They were discovered in Dublin and brought to England on behalf of Sir George Pilkington in the early 20th century. The models were in poor condition and they were skilfully restored by renowned model-maker AW Kiddie, of Southport. He used hair from the heads of his wife and daughter to repair the rigging – a very unusual practice at that time. 

Kiddie (born 1844) had had an extraordinary life, serving three years on sailing ships when he was regularly beaten and flogged. He jumped ship and trained as an engineer which no doubt sharpened his eye for detail and trained his nimble fingers.

The collection was bequeathed to Liverpool Museum in 1921 by Lady Dame Mary Elizabeth Pilkington, of the St Helens-based glass-making family.

The models on display are built to different scales. Some are in miniature wooden glass cabinets, others under glass domes.They range from men o’war and other ships of the line bristling with cannons to two-masted brigs and rowing boats.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

 

Ruined castles have unique atmospheres with oodles of the “if these walls could speak” factor. I have always been attracted to these stone piles which have miraculously survived for centuries, relics of a vanished way of warfare. Liverpool once had a castle which dominated the town but it was swept away nearly 300 years ago.

Liverpool owes its existence to the River Mersey which was created about 8,000 years ago as global warming melted massive ice fields. This blanket of ice as high as St John’s Beacon covered the whole of Merseyside during the Ice Age. About 18,000 years ago the area was covered by an enormous glacier. Over many centuries the movement of ice and water changed the course of an earlier river valley. This also exposed the sandstone ridge upon which Liverpool was later built.

The warming process gradually created the River Mersey as sea levels rose. A small tidal creek on the north bank of the estuary also appeared. Eventually this became known as the Livered, or Muddy, Pool from which Liverpool took its name. This is the most likely explanation for the name of Liverpool, although its origins are lost in the mists of time and there is no documentary proof about the name.

A display in the Magical History Tour exhibition at Merseyside Maritime Museum focuses on the river. A map shows the coastline of the British Isles about 10,000 years ago. Exhibits include part of a prehistoric oak tree from the Weaver Valley in Cheshire, dating from around 2500 BC. In many areas of the North West, prehistoric forests were flooded as the sea rose.

Among the first people to use the river regularly were the Benedictine monks from Birkenhead Priory, the remains of which still stand near the Cammell Laird shipyard. The monks offered food and shelter to travellers and ran the first ferry across the river.

For centuries the fledgling port was dominated by the castle built in 1235 by William Ferrers, Sheriff of Lancaster. Although it was small compared with the great castles in North Wales – being only about 180 feet in length – it was the largest and most important building in Liverpool for nearly 300 years. By 1559 it was described as an “utter ruin” and it was finally demolished in 1720. The exhibition includes this fabulous model of the castle which I am seen admiring.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Here's a sneak preview of a brand new model of the 'Mimosa', which commemorates the ship’s role in taking the first Welsh emigrants from Liverpool to Patagonia, in southern Argentina, in 1865.

The Merseyside Welsh Heritage Society commissioned the model from Tony Fancy of Trade Wind Models in Poole, Dorset, with sponsorship from the Liverpool Culture Company. The model will be officially presented to the Merseyside Maritime Museum by the Merseyside Welsh Heritage Society this weekend, and will go on permanent display in the Emigration gallery soon.

Many people emigrated from Wales in the 19th century to escape poverty, mostly to the United States. However, as the Welsh language and traditions were being neglected and forgotten by these settlers, it was decided to create a Welsh colony. Land for the colony was granted by the Argentinian government in Patagonia.

'Mimosa' was a wooden clipper built in 1853 by Alexander Hall and Sons of Aberdeen and owned by Vining and Killey of Liverpool. On 28 May 1865 Mimosa sailed from Liverpool for Patagonia carrying 160 Welsh emigrants. After a 2 month voyage the settlers landed at Porth Madryn, then trekked 40 miles south to create the first settlement by the Chibut River.

Today there are more than 150,000 people of Welsh descent living in Patagonia. Although Spanish is the main language, Welsh is still spoken there.

My first flight in a helicopter was on a Royal Navy facility trip to the Ark Royal aircraft carrier in Liverpool Bay. It was an amazing experience with the deck opening up underneath as a huge lift transported us below. Most of all I remember the delicious meal they served.

In contrast, HMS Audacity was the Royal Navy’s first merchant aircraft carrier. Her role was to protect convoys crossing the Atlantic with vital supplies for Britain during the Second World War. Surprisingly, Audacity started life as a German passenger ship captured early in the war. In 1941 she was converted into a flat-top escort carrier, also known as a MAC ship. She could operate just four light Grumman Martlet aircraft from her short flight deck with no hanger.

There is a 1:300 scale model of the camouflaged Audacity in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Battle of the Atlantic gallery. She did not have a long life as she was sunk by a German U-boat submarine in December 1941 after just four escort passages.

The need to close the 400-mile ‘air gap’ in the mid-Atlantic led to the development of the MAC ships. Most were grain carriers or oil tankers fitted with a basic flight deck for three or four Swordfish bi-planes. The MAC ships not only provided air cover for convoys but also carried much-needed supplies of grain or oil for Britain. From mid-1943 at least one MAC ship sailed with every north Atlantic convoy.

They were joined by new purpose-built British and US naval aircraft carriers. US Liberator bombers closed the ‘air gap’ by late April 1943. At the same time, long-range British and American aircraft attacked U-boats in the Bay of Biscay near their French bases. Equipped with powerful searchlights for night operations, air-to-surface radar and increasingly effective weapons, these aircraft enjoyed many successes.

The fitting of highly-accurate centimetric radar on long-range aircraft was another major turning point in the anti-U-boat campaign. More U-boats were sunk by aircraft than by ships during the last two years of the war. The RAF Coastal Command played a decisive role in the Battle of the Atlantic. In all, it sank at least 155 U-boats in Atlantic waters.

Other exhibits include a green-coloured 100 lb air-dropped anti-submarine bomb from about 1941 – the earliest of its type used by the British.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from www.merseyshop.com (£1.50 p&p UK).

As a child I had some difficulty grasping how the huge metal ships on the Mersey stayed afloat. I could understand wooden ships floating – after all twigs and sticks thrown in our local brook never sank – but steel and iron? This was the big question nobody seemed to be able to answer – just as, how do planes stay in the air?

The notion of building a ship entirely of iron challenged many owners and shipyards in the 19th century: “Who ever heard of iron floating?” was a familiar cry. But float it did and within a few decades ships made entirely of wood were the exception rather than the norm.

Prior to the 19th century, for many centuries ships were built of wood. As Britain became a naval world power, ancient forests were cleared to build warships.

The Napoleonic wars between 1803 and 1815 marked the high point of Britain’s naval sea power under sail. They were followed by 100 years of comparative peace when new sea technologies came to the fore. Before the Napoleonic wars, merchant ships were relatively small. Although much of the globe had been explored, maritime trade hadn’t developed enough to support an industrial society.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain and saw the start of the factory system, created a demand for larger ships to carry more raw materials and manufactured goods. The material which made their construction possible was iron. At first the builders of iron ships tried to copy the trusted methods used in wooden ship production. Iron hulls were vulnerable to corrosion and marine growths, since no effective anti-fouling paints had yet been developed. As a result, ship builders compromised by constructing an iron framework covered with wooden planking.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there are three models (shown here) showing cross-sections of hulls made from wood, iron and wood and iron alone. Copper sheathing remained the most effective barrier against barnacles and marine worms before the arrival of anti-fouling paints. From the 1870s steel, with its greater strength, began to offer overwhelming advantages over iron. Plate thickness and other metal parts of the hull and superstructure could be reduced by 25% with no loss of strength. This weight-saving resulted in greater speeds, fuel economy or cargo carrying capacity – whatever the needs of the owners.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from www.merseyshop.com (£1.50 p&p UK).

More on the progress of this reconstruction project from Kathy Wedge (here's the background to the project in case you've missed previous instalments), plus progress snaps on Flickr.

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The finished clay sculpting has now been approved by Liverpool City Council, but that is only part of the story. We now have to produce the actual foundry cast bronze reliefs from these clay sculptures.

The clay panels which as previously mentioned are very heavy were loaded onto a van using a hoist and fork lift truck and taken to a fine art foundry.  The panels are being cast using the ‘lost wax’ method of casting. This involves a thin layer of silicone rubber being painted over the clay models which defines the detail of the sculpting, further thicker layers of silicone are then applied until an accurate mould is produced. But of course  silicone rubber is not rigid, so a plaster jacket to hold the rubber stable and reduce the risk of distortion also has to be made.

Once this mould and jacket have been produced, wax is painted into the mould to form a wax model. The mould is taken off leaving a hollow wax sculpture which is cleaned and the detail checked for imperfections. The hollow wax sculpture is cut into sections for ease of casting, particularly where there are extending features, and wax sprues are added to the sections of the wax model, that will act as air vents when the wax melts at the casting stage.

The pieces of the hollow wax model are the dipped several times into a ceramic mixture which form ceramic shell around the sections which are strong enough to withstand the high pressures and thermal shock of the molten metal used in the casting.

The molten bronze is poured into the shell via a cupped sprue or air vent and as it is poured the wax melts running out of the air vents leaving the bronze casting encased in the ceramic shell.

The ceramic shells are broken off the bronze castings and the sections are welded together very carefully, and polished so that the joins cannot be seen. That is the end of the actual casting process but not the end of the story. More about the rest of the process in our next post.

This Saturday, 23 August, is Slavery Remembrance Day which I have been involved in since its inception in 1999. It is a very popular and moving occasion which involves commemorations including a church service, lecture, drama, music and dancing.

The transatlantic slave trade involved the notorious Middle Passage between Africa and the New World when many enslaved Africans died in horrific conditions on board ships. Journeys took five weeks or more and the slaves were held in cramped, airless spaces below decks. Food and water were limited, with no fresh provisions available.

An exhibit in the new International Slavery Museum, in the Merseyside Maritime Museum building, represents the journeys of three slave ships called the Brooks, the Bud and the Rose which all sailed out of Liverpool in 1788. It is based on a chilling document called “Printed dimensions and names of ships in Liverpool employed in the slave trade with the details of provisions and mortality rate etc 1788."

The Brooks (297 tons) sailed from the Gold Coast (now Ghana) to the West Indies with 609 slaves on board. The journey took 49 days and 19 Africans died on the voyage. The daily food ration was about 1.5 lbs of beans, 2 oz of bread, 8 oz of yams, 1 oz of dried fish and eight pints of water.There were 351 captive men on the Brooks, confined to a hold measuring about 46 ft by 25 ft. Women and children were held separately in similar conditions.

Disease, brutality and suicide led to between one quarter and one tenth of slaves dying during the Middle Passage voyage. Crew members also died.

The displays also feature exhibits linked to the Watt family who had plantations in Jamaica. As a boy, Richard Watt drove a one-horse carriage around Liverpool. He later went to Jamaica to seek his fortune and when he retired in 1772 he was a wealthy plantation owner. Displays include a fine builder’s model of the sailing ship Watt dating from 1797 along with a painting by William Jackson (shown here). Richard Watt bought Speke Hall, Liverpool, in 1795. His descendant Adelaide Watt was the last member of the family to live at the Hall, which is now cared for by the National Trust.

Next week we look at slave trader James Penny of Penny Lane. In the meantime there is more on the history of the slave ship in a fascinating lecture by Marcus Rediker, available to listen to on our main site. In it he talks about the Brooks and conditions on it and other slave ships.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from www.merseyshop.com (£1.50 p&p UK).

I live in West Derby - an ancient community, now part of Liverpool, with links to the famous White Star line. Near my house is beautiful Broughton Hall, now part of a school, where the company was set up over a game of billiards in 1869. White Star, owners of the Titanic, operated sailing ships before steam triumphed and dominated the seafaring world.

Ironically, the last sailing ships to be built were among the most beautiful ever constructed and marked the high point of the traditional shipbuilders’ powers. The last and largest sailing ship to be owned by White Star was the 318-ft long California, a deep-sea barque built by Harland & Wolff of Belfast in 1890. She belonged to the North Western Shipping Company whose principal shareholders also owned White Star. Possession of the White Star sailing ships was transferred to the new North Western Shipping Co in 1886.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a striking model of the 3,099-ton California, a steel-built four-master. She had relatively small cargo hatches which made freight handling slow but provided better protection from the heavy seas which frequently swept her decks. The California was sold when the North Western Shipping Co was dissolved in 1895. The ship passed through several German firms and was renamed Christel Vinnen in 1912. After the First World War she was allocated to Italy as part of war reparations. In April 1927 she became stranded near Panama and became a total loss.

Among the other last White Star sailing ships was another four-masted barque, the Gilcruix. Built in 1886, her crews included the 16-year-old John Masefield who was Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967. His wrote Sea Fever which starts with the immortal lines: 

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

Masefield’s voyage on the Gilcruix in 1894 was as an apprentice. It was his first voyage, sailing from Cardiff bound for Iquique, Chile. The ship had to negotiate the notorious Cape Horn and Masefield was so ill that he had to be hospitalised.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from www.merseyshop.com (£1.50 p&p UK).

This summer our talented sculptors in the sculpture conservation department have been recreating three missing bronze panels from Sefton Park's monuments. Here's the latest news on the project from Kathy Wedge in Conservation Technologies, and pictures following the progress of the project from the beginning are on our Sefton Park monuments Flickr set.

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"The clay models for the three missing relief panels from the Sefton Park monuments to William Rathbone and the Right honourable Samuel Smith have really taken shape now as the photograph shows. They are almost ready to be sent to the fine art bronze casting foundry.

The warm weather, although lovely for us, has caused a few problems for the sculptors to overcome. The clay has been drying out faster than normal and even started to crack in places that were more exposed to the air than others.

The way around this was to make sure that the clay was kept as hydrated as possible. Each clay panel has been sprayed with water on a regular basis and covered with damp flannelette blanket and then a polythene sheet to keep the moisture in when not being worked on immediately. Even so a few cracks were noted after a weekend break when there was nobody here to spray and it took some gentle but steady applications of water to bring them back to the right condition to be worked on. Fortunately they had not dried out too much.

On Friday 1 August the officials responsible for Sefton Park will give their approval (hopefully) for the clay models to then be sent to the fine art bronze casting foundry where they will then be made into the magnificent reliefs that will complete the monuments. More pictures will follow in a couple of weeks when they get to the next stage."

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

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.

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.

Here's a quick update on the project to recreate missing bronzes for two of the Sefton Park monuments.

The clay models that Conservation Technologies are making for the reconstruction of the three missing relief panels from the Sefton Park memorials are now really taking shape. They will be used to produce the foundry cast bronze panels that form part of the memorials to William Rathbone and the Right Honourable Samuel Smith. Two of the panels have reached the stage where the fine detail is being sculpted and the third panel has been blocked out. Blocking out is the term the sculptors use to say that the main body of the clay shape is in place, before being fashioned into a more accurate form.

The sculptors are off at the moment so the clay panels have been wrapped in damp flannelette sheeting and are being sprayed everyday to keep them moist until work starts again. It's best not to disturb them while they are wrapped up like this so we don't have any updated photos to show at the moment.

Here's a reminder of what one of the clay plaques looked like a couple of weeks ago. You can see the rough shape of one of the figures sketched into the clay on the right, while other figures are starting to be 'fleshed out' in three dimensions. Further pictures of the early stages of the process are on our Sefton Park monuments Flickr slideshow and we will be adding more when they are available, so do check back in a couple of weeks to see the progress.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the sculpture conservation team are recreating missing bronze relief plaques from two of Sefton Park's monuments completely from scratch using traditional techniques. As you can see from this photo, they are making good progress with some of the sculpted figures starting to take shape in the clay. Further photos are on our Sefton Park monuments Flickr slideshow and more will be aded as the project progresses, so do keep an eye on it. Kathy Wedge from Conservation Technologies has this update:

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"The project to produce the clay master models that will be used to cast the bronze relief panels that will reconstruct the memorials to William Rathbone and the right honourable Samuel Smith is now well under way. As seen in the first pictures in the Flickr slideshow the wood supports were fixed into place to support the clay and create a rough shape. The clay has been applied and then the design was sketched out in the clay before building out the 3D contours. More wood and metal armatures have been added to support parts of the relief which are almost free standing, such as some of the arms, legs and the occasional head.

Whilst Christopher Dean and Samantha Sportun are sculpting some of the sculptures, elements which have more air around them are drying out faster than the other sections of the panels which can be quite critical to the working of the clay. For this reason both sculptors need to keep a careful watch over the condition of the clay in all areas whilst also concentrating on the area that they are working on. If it appears to be drying out too fast it is sprayed with water and when the work has to stop at night they are covered with a polythene sheet and a wet flannelette blanket.

Once Christopher and Sam are satisfied with the general shape of an area of the sculpture it can then be allowed to dry to leather-like consistency which will allow them to then develop and work on the fine detail of the relief.

So far so good, and for once we are grateful that the weather has not been too warm, but watch this space as the panels develop."

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.

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.

 

Conservation Technologies are probably best known for the cutting edge work they do using laser technology to clean and replicate sculpture and other precious objects. However for their latest major commission they will mainly be using traditional techniques to hand sculpt missing elements of Sefton Park's monuments.

The memorials to William Rathbone and the Right Honourable Samuel Smith in Sefton Park both originally had four bronze relief sculptures on their bases. Over time the some of the bronze reliefs have been damaged and three of them have gone missing. The only record of the missing bronzes is a small black and white photo of each, so Conservation Technologies will be recreating them from scratch using these pictures as a guide.

The first stage of this process involves sculpting master models of the replicas in clay. As they are quite large pieces the process involved is quite a feat of engineering. The amount of clay used to provide the master models weighs a ton (literally) in weight, so special frames have been built to support that amount of wet clay and then enclose the finished pieces in order to transport them safely to the foundry for casting. The frames are shown below; the first is empty, the second has wooden supports in place to support the clay and the third has a layer of clay in place already.

As this is such a large and ambitious project two members of the team will be working to recreate the missing reliefs. Christopher Dean will be sculpting the two larger pieces, while Sam Sportun works on the third smaller bronze.

You can see further photographs in our Sefton Park monuments Flickr slideshow, which we'll be adding to over the next few weeks. At the moment there are also photographs of the damaged bronze relief of 'Charity' from the base of the memorial to William Rathbone, showing where the arm of a woman kneeling at the front has been broken off. This will be replaced as part of the conservation process.

We'll be bringing you updates as this ambitious project progresses, so watch this space.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You’d think that Michael Palin  would have had enough of travelling, wouldn’t you? Well apparently not, because he has kindly trekked up north to open the Walker’s new transport-themed exhibition, ‘Art in the Age of Steam’. I can’t help being stoked at the prospect. Not only are his travels compulsive viewing, he’s an ex-Python.

He won’t be the only star in the gallery though, as the exhibition features pictures from the likes of Manet, Monet, Van Gogh and Hopper. I haven’t actually managed to see the finished article myself yet - so more about that later - but we’re getting a great response from those who have.

At Liverpool Cathedral’s craft fair this weekend, another star of the rail Frank Hornby will be in the spotlight. As well as model trains on display there will be a track where model enthusiasts are invited to try their own Hornby trains out. (Rather bizzarely, one of the office has just spotted French and Saunders hanging out there).

If all this transport talk has whet your appetite, there are lots of steamy activities about - as long as you’re willing to travel of course. There’s East Lancashire Railway,  Ullswater Steamers,  Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways , Snowdon Mountain, Ribble Steam Railway, Severn Valley Railway, and Middleton Railway, Leeds.  

As a special treat this Summer, you can also catch a steam train from Lime Street. 2008 is the 40th anniversary of the last ever scheduled steam train, which departed from Liverpool, so the Rail Touring Company will be running some special events.

Once you’ve run out of puff, come and relax in the exhibition. I hear it's first class.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The nearest I, Stephen Guy, have got to embarking on a New Year cruise is taking a ride on the Mersey ferry. Taking a sea cruise has added attractions at this time of year with opportunities to swap dull days in Britain with azure seas and exotic places to visit.

Holiday cruises by sea to and from Britain began on a modest scale in the late 19th century. Originally they were beyond the means of most people and were the preserve of the rich. They became more widely available from the 1920s when many passenger liners began cruising because their usual routes were becoming less profitable.

Although enjoying a boom period in the 1950s and early 60s, cruise holidays remained expensive. In recent years lower prices and wider choices of destinations have made them more popular than ever. Cruise liners have grown in size and prestige, becoming floating holiday resorts with many attractions.

Displays in the Lifelines gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum look at cruising on the River Amazon in South America. Visitors can listen to an audio account by Mary Harte of a Christmas and New Year cruise on this mighty river in 1934. Mary made the trip on the Booth Line passenger cargo liner, Hilary, with her mother and sister. Mary’s father, Charles Good, was in charge of the Booth Line’s affairs in the Amazon Basin and was based in Pereira, Brazil. The Hilary berthed at Pereira where Charles met his family and they spent Christmas Day on board before lodging in a company house for two days. Mary later spent two weeks on the Amazon travelling 1,000 miles to Manaos.

In 1866 the Booth Line began regular passenger and cargo services from Liverpool to north Brazil and the Amazon. From the 1920s to 1964 the company ran popular holiday cruises to Manaos. Among the display items is this colourful Booth Line poster showing the Hilary. The ship called first at Portugal, then Madeira and on to north Brazil before sailing up the Amazon.

Souvenirs of a cruise on the Hilary include a Booth Line notebook, playing cards and paper knife. Also displayed is a deck chair from the ship. A hilarious photograph shows passengers in a fancy dress revue with such characters as a devil, French maid, sailor and clown. Also featured in the display is a prize-winning model of the Booth Line’s Hildebrand which operated on the Liverpool – Amazon service between 1911 and 1934. She could carry up to 218 First Class and 406 Third Class passengers.

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

This beautiful builder’s model of the Empress Queen is to me, Stephen Guy, one of the finest in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. It may not be the most skilfully made or the most detailed but it perfectly captures the style and dash of the original ship.

Jagged pieces of seaweed-infested and barnacle-encrusted metal clearly visible at low tide are all that remain of the beautiful paddle steamer Empress Queen. The 2,500-ton, 360 ft long Isle of Man ferry boat was built in 1897 and was powered by mighty triple-expansion engines. She was the fastest and most powerful paddle steamer afloat.

The Empress Queen was well known to the travelling public as she was on the regular service between Liverpool and Douglas, when the Isle of Man was known as 'the playground of Lancashire'. She was a great favourite because of her fast runs and the ease with which she carried her 2,000 passengers to fun-filled weeks or fortnights on Mona’s Isle.

When the First World War broke out the Government saw she would be ideal for transporting troops and she was chartered for this purpose. She saw successful service travelling between Southampton and Le Havre, ferrying troops across the Channel to and from the Western Front in northern France. Everything went well until 1 February 1916 when the Empress Queen met her end. She was returning from Le Havre with some 1,300 “liberty men”, as soldiers returning from the trenches were known. The Empress Queen ran ashore in thick fog at about 5 am on the Ring Rocks at Bembridge, Isle of Wight, about a quarter of a mile from the cliffs.

She ran well up on the flat rocks and lay nearly upright with the bows on the rocks and the stern afloat. The weather was calm, the ship was close to land and there was no danger to life. The troops were taken off by destroyers and all sorts of craft from pleasure boats to fishing smacks which came alongside in reply to her calls for help.

At first it was thought it would be relatively easy to salvage the Empress Queen but it proved an impossible task. All that was retrieved were large amounts of metal from the engine room and other parts of the ship. Details on the model include the paddle wheel cowls decorated with the Legs of Man.

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

You wait ages for a great Christmas themed performance on William Brown Street then two arrive at once. Not only is the BBC Three Liverpool Nativity taking place there on Sunday, as I reported yesterday, the characters from 'A Christmas Carol' will be invading World Museum Liverpool over the weekend as well.

The theatrical invasion is in anticipation of the retelling of the famous Dickens story in the museum's Treasure House Theatre later this month. This Saturday and Sunday members of the National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre will be roaming the museum in costume as Dickens characters, chatting to the public and sharing a good dose of Christmas cheer or ‘humbugs’. So come along and join in the Christmas spirit - or spirits, depending on who you meet!

The Treasure House Theatre’s production 'A Dickens of a Christmas' premieres on Thursday 27 December and is on every day until Monday 31 December with performances at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. See the World Museum Liverpool What's on page for further details.

And while I'm on the subject, here's some trivia about the author to impress your family with over Christmas dinner. Did you know that Charles Dicken's daughter Kate was the model for the painting 'The Black Brunswicker' shown here? Usually on display in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, the painting is currently on loan to the fantastic Millais exhibition at Tate Briatin in London.

The technical side of engineering holds for me, Stephen Guy, many mysteries but I am fascinated by working steam engines which I find strangely soothing.

Steam power transformed the world of shipping as it did when land transport moved on to railways – pioneered by British innovators and inventors. When James Watt gave the world its first efficient steam engine in 1769 he provided the means for ships to eventually carry cargo reliably to all corners of the world. Sailing ships had to make the best progress they could depending on the winds. Only with the advent of steam was it possible to introduce dependable timetable services.

Single cylinder engines between 1800 and 1850 worked at low pressures of less than 20 lbs per square inch (psi). More economical compound engines, introduced in 1854, extracted useful work from higher pressure steam (up to 60 psi) by passing it through two cylinders. Triple and quadruple expansion engines took this principle further in later decades.

Long after the introduction of steam, merchant sailing vessels remained profitable on longer routes. Early steamships had limited cargo space because they had to carry so much coal. Clipper ships such as the Liverpool-built Fiery Cross dominated the trades in China tea and Australian wool.

The 1869 opening of the Suez Canal was crucial because it shortened voyages and steamships became economically viable. Coaling stations were built at intervals, the colonies of the British Empire providing many suitable locations so that steamers could reach all parts of the globe.

A memorable Royal Naval tug o’ war was staged in 1845 to test the power of the propeller. The screw steamer Rattler beat the otherwise identical paddle steamer Alecto. Not only was the propeller shown to be more effective but it was also less vulnerable than paddles and therefore more suited to naval duties.

Continuing improvements to the efficiency and reliability of steam engines ensured that, by the end of the century, steamships no longer had to carry sails to bring them home in the event of an engine or boiler failure.

There is a fine set of real and model engines at Merseyside Maritime Museum to illustrate the power of steam. A Thornycroft compound steam engine is from the 63 ft-long torpedo boat No 71 of 1880. Model engines include: side lever engine (1836), an oscillating engine used on paddle steamers (1847), triple expansion engines (1887 and 1937) and a compound engine (1890). The largest oscillating engines ever built were those on Brunel’s legendary giant Great Eastern (1858) with four cylinders of 74 inches in diameter.

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

Did anyone mention that it's almost Christmas? Just a few times so far this year but it is only the first week of December.

This year we've got some brand new Christmas e-cards on the website. The latest selection features images from the fantastic Stewart Bale archive, which is held at Merseyside Maritime Museum.

They're accompanied by a Stewart Bale at Christmas online exhibition, with zoomifiable pages of all the photos. You could for example zoom in even closer to the photo shown here of the giant Father Christmas in Blackler's department store. But be warned, he's quite scary up close. Obviously designed to be seen from much further away...

To me, Stephen Guy, the story of the Liberty Ships shows brilliantly what can be done when people and nations are threatened and have their backs to the wall.

The United States built three Liberty Ships a day to boost the convoys which acted as Britain’s lifelines during the Second World War. In early 1942, President Franklin D Roosevelt set in motion probably the greatest shipbuilding programme in world history. The aim of this huge US-Government sponsored scheme was to produce 750 new ships by the end of 1942 and a further 1,500 in 1943. This amounted to three new ships every day. To meet these targets, many new shipyards were opened and thousands of extra workers – male and female – were recruited. Ships were built in sections and then assembled, like cars, on huge production lines.

The first of the 2,700 Liberty Ships built in the USA during the war slid down the slipway in mid-1942. By the end of the year, the Americans were building ships faster than the German U-boat submarines could sink them.

The astounding success of the Liberty Ship programme was to be a major reason for the Allied victory in the Atlantic. At least 290,000 civilian seafarers served in the US merchant marine and army transportation service during the war. Of these, 114,000 received the Merchant Marine Combatant Ribbon, indicating that they had been in combat action. More than 6,000 were killed while serving in merchant ships. The United States lost about 278 ships on the north Atlantic and Arctic routes, almost one half of the total US merchant ship losses during the war.

At the Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a model of the 7,200-ton Liberty Ship Samarina of 1943. Built by the Bethlehem-Fairfield company of Baltimore, USA, she carried valuable war cargoes throughout the rest of the conflict. Like all Liberty Ships, she was based on a British tramp steamer design and was rather an “ugly duckling”. She had good anti-aircraft armament and her bridge was shielded by “plastic armour”. This was a British invention made from granite, limestone mineral and bitumen which could be moulded, hence the term “plastic”. It was applied in a layer two inches thick and backed by half an inch of steel. Plastic armour was very effective at stopping armour-piercing bullets from German war planes. The plastic armour was applied by pouring it into a cavity formed by the steel backing plate and a temporary wooden frame.

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

Local press attended a preview this morning of the lovely exhibition Victorian Visions, which opens to the public at the Lady Lever Art Gallery on Saturday.

There are some big names in the world of Victorian photography included in the exhibition such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Francis Frith. But my favourite work is by Lady Hawarden, an artist I had never heard of before this exhibition.

What I love about her photographs is their intensity. Hawarden was a master of composition and used light and shadow to give her images an amazing elegance. I also love the models. She used her own daughters who appear to be experts at striking dark, moody poses. Their gloominess may well have more to do with being forced to pose for hours for a perfectionist mother than artistic expression, but they might have been comforted to know that their intense and unusual photographs could easily be on the pages of modern day fashion spreads. Contestants of America’s Next Top Model should watch and learn!

I, Stephen Guy, love the wonderfully refreshing qualities of pure water – especially from a natural spring on a hot summer’s day – and can well imagine the terrors of seafarers unable to quench their thirsts.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

These famous lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge sum up the fear seafarers have always had about running out of fresh water.

Captain George Peacock, RN, came up with an apparatus to help turn seawater into drinking water in 1828. There is a contemporary scale model of the device on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum. It was designed to remove the salt from seawater at a time when the lack of drinking water on sailing vessels was a common problem. From 1906, merchant seafarers were allocated three quarts (six pints) of water daily. The scale metal model is inscribed:

“Model of Captain Peacock’s apparatus for aerating fresh water condensed from salt water. Invented by him and fitted on board HM steam ship Echo in September 1828. On board HM steam ship Salamander in March 1833 and on board HM steam ship Medea in Feb 1834.”

Captain Peacock’s apparatus features a crank handle which operated a series of cogs and paddles in the water tank. Drinking water was then obtained from a tap.

Peacock, a prolific inventor, later became master of several steamships of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company of Liverpool. In later life he received a medal from the Columbian Government for his services in first proposing building the Panama Canal.

The display also focuses on sailors’ diet over the years. A ships’ biscuit dates from about 1914.  They were jokingly known as Liverpool Pantiles (roofing tiles) because of their shape and texture. By 1850 tinned food was readily available for use as ships’ provisions and later became standard. On display are tinned codfish, dried yeast and chicken broth manufactured by Henry Gamble & Co around 1850. Nautical cookery books on display include Cookery for Seamen by Alexander Quinlan and NE Mann (1896) and the Nautical Cookery Book for the Use of Stewards and Cooks of Cargo Vessels by TF Adkins (1916).

Before 1900 most seafarers had little choice but to accept whatever food and drink was provided. Their inadequate diet consisted mainly of poor quality salt meat, hard biscuits and dried peas or oatmeal. This led to widespread health problems, especially on long voyages. Surprisingly, salt meat and ships’ biscuits remained standard provisions for seafarers on British vessels until 1957.

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

To me, Stephen Guy, the sinking of the Arandora Star was one of the great ironies of the Second World War because of the nature of the tragedy. The Arandora Star was taking hundreds of internees and prisoners of war to Canada when she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of more than 800 lives.

The modified passenger liner had left Liverpool on 2 July 1940 with more than 400 German and 700 Italian internees and 86 German prisoners of war, guarded by 200 troops.  Some of the internees, all of whom were civilians, had previously been held in the internment camp at Huyton, near Liverpool. Internees were mostly citizens of enemy countries who were living in Britain at the start of the war.
Their deportation to Canadian internment camps was ordered by the British Government due to heightened invasion fears following the fall of France and the evacuation of the British army from Dunkirk.

At 6.45 am on 3 July the 15,500-ton Arandora Star was torpedoed by the U47 about 75 miles west of County Donegal on the north west coast of Ireland and sank within an hour. It is believed that the U-boat crew mistook her grey wartime livery for that of an armed merchant ship.

There were more than 1,600 people on board. The shortage of lifeboats, the lack of boat drills and the use of barbed wire around the boat deck all contributed to the terrible death toll. Deaths among the Italian refugees were particularly high probably because many were middle-aged or elderly, housed in the lower parts of the ship and unable to reach the open decks. Italian and German survivors of this appalling tragedy were promptly sent again by sea from Liverpool to Canada. However, eventually the controversy surrounding the sinking led to the end of civilian deportation and helped to change British policy on internment.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a fine exhibition model of the Arandora Star showing her in peacetime livery of white hull and twin red and black funnels. Built by Cammell Laird’s for the Blue Star Line in 1927, she was 535 feet long and capable of transporting 354 first class passengers at a speed of 16 knots (nautical miles) per hour.  She was originally called Arandora and spent 1927- 8 sailing from London to the east coat of South America. She was then rebuilt as a full-time luxury cruise ship and renamed Arandora Star. This was to avoid confusion with Royal Mail ships which typically had names beginning and ending in A.

There is more on the Huyton Internment camp in this Liverpool Blitz interactive, and more on the Arandora Star on the BBC website.

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

This story for me, Stephen Guy, typifies the versatility of Liverpool’s shipbuilders at the height of the innovations of the Victorian age.

The beautiful steam yacht Said was built in Liverpool for the viceroy of Egypt when the country was part of the Turkish Empire. His name was Said Pasha and he ruled the country between 1854 and 1863. Said’s reign was marked by liberal reforms which followed trends in contemporary Europe. Today he is best known for granting a concession to the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps to start building the Suez Canal. Both Said and the Turkish sultan later opposed the plan.

Despite official opposition, the canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea was completed in 1869. It transformed sea travel between Europe and the East. Combined with the American Transcontinental Railroad completed six months earlier, the canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade, speeding up travel times across the globe.

Said tried unsuccessfully to abolish the slave trade which was long established in Egypt. However, there were too many important, wealthy people involved. 

There were successful important reforms in land ownership and taxation. The land reforms supported individual land ownership and reduced the influence of the sheiks who exercised almost feudal local powers. Said imposed direct taxation on big landowners, thus removing a burden which had rested hard on the peasants. Some land owned by the largest landowners was confiscated.

Said was born into an influential Egyptian family in 1822 and was educated in Paris. He joined the navy and became Admiral of the Fleet at an early age.

There is a very detailed builder’s model of the Said on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum. It shows the remarkably graceful lines of this elegant ship which was fit for a powerful potentate. The screw steam yacht was built of iron by Jones, Quiggin & Co of Liverpool for Said Pasha in 1858.

The 230 ft long Said was luxuriously appointed and the 1:60 scale model hints at the splendour of her unseen saloons below decks. Tiny details include her twin-bladed screw. Her 250 hp engines were of the two cylinder oscillating type, geared up to the screw shaft and made by Forrester & Co of Vauxhall, Liverpool. The 891-ton Said left Liverpool for Alexandria, Egypt, in October 1858. She must have made a splendid and exotic sight heading out of the Mersey with her white hull and two raked white funnels flanked by three masts.

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

It is a constant source of fascination to me, Stephen Guy, how some people and things seem to pick the short straws in life. Take White Star’s Titanic and Olympic liners, for example. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong for Titanic on that terrible night but her sister Olympic just went on and on with hardly a hitch. She successfully completed 257 round trips across the Atlantic between 1911 and 1935.

Four of the leading characters in the Titanic drama are pictured here on the deck of Olympic just weeks before they transferred to Titanic. They are (l to r): Officer William Murdoch, Chief Officer Henry Wilde, Third Officer Joseph Boxhall and Captain Edward Smith. Only Boxhall survived the sinking.

Olympic’s maiden voyage was on 14 June 1911 and from then on she gave stalwart service both as a troopship in the First World War, often sailing to and from Liverpool, and as a luxury liner. However, during her long years of service Olympic did have her share of dramas.

On 20 September 1911, commanded by Captain Edward Smith later of Titanic, she collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke. Olympic was carrying a capacity load and the voyage had to be cancelled.

The Titanic disaster revealed weaknesses on board Olympic, not least the shortage of lifeboats. This was rectified and the ship also refitted with a double hull in case the unthinkable happened again.

The next notable incident took place in October 1914 when Olympic neared New York during the First World War. She encountered the sinking British battleship HMS Audacious and rescued her crew. Olympic later served as a troopship carrying thousands of Canadians to the Western Front. It was during this period that she was nicknamed 'Old Reliable' because of her trustworthy service. But her most memorable achievement during the war was ramming and sinking the German submarine U103 on 12 May 1918. Olympic, with her vast bulk of 46,000 tons, has the distinction of being the only merchant ship to sink an enemy warship during the war.

In 1934 Olympic was involved in a tragic accident when she hit and sank the Nantucket lightship on the approaches to New York. Seven of the 11 lightship crew died.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum, as well as the 20ft builder’s model of Titanic, there is a single bed from cabin C-97 of the Olympic. Other items in the museum’s collections include leather-bound timetable lists the sailings of Olympic in 1912 – plus the ones Titanic would have made if disaster had not struck.

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

What makes the Lusitania disaster even more horrific to me, Stephen Guy, is the circumstances in which the great ship went down – a bright spring day on a calm sea within sight of land. Unlike the White Star Line’s Titanic, that other great doomed ship, the Cunarder Lusitania was a regular visitor to Liverpool as she plied the seas between that city and New York.

She was heading for Liverpool on a May day in 1915 when she was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank in just 18 minutes.

The Lusitania had been a popular liner on the Atlantic run since she came into service in 1907. Many thousands had experienced life on board during the crossing.

The First World War had been raging since August 1914 but the Lusitania continued to carry passengers across the Atlantic to the neutral United States of America.  A torpedo thudded into the side of the huge vessel. Almost immediately she began to list as water poured through the gaping hole. Passengers heading for the open decks after lunch were trapped in the lifts, going to their horrific deaths struggling to escape.

Throughout the ship passengers and crew made for the lifeboats. But such was the speed of the ship’s sinking that many were trapped on board to meet their fate. Around 1,195 out of 1,959 people on board died – including 123 Americans.

There are a number of Lusitania items on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery. There is an elaborate dusky pink sofa cushion from the first class music room. It was fished out of the sea by a Royal Navy seaman using a boat hook – the repaired damage can still be seen.

A gruesome German Dance of Death propaganda medallion shows a skeleton looking at the sinking Lusitania.

A deckchair from the stricken vessel was recovered from the water by fisherman Patrick O’Driscoll, who relaxed in it for many years outside his Cape Clear Island cottage.

Ship’s carpenter James McKee made the striking model of the Lusitania (shown) from solid teak taken from a piece of the liner’s damaged handrail.
 
Smaller items include a lady’s souvenir fan marked 'Cunard RMS Lusitania', a silver snuff box and tea spoon – and a brass key which opened the door to the ship’s deck store.

But perhaps most poignant of all is one of the Lusitania’s propellers which was recovered from the wreck 360 feet down in the Irish Sea and is now on the museum’s Historic Quaysides.

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

Yachting is very popular in and around Liverpool and the sight of them, particularly off Otterspool where the river is generally quiet, is a constant source of pleasure for me, Stephen Guy. Among the great ships entering and leaving the Mersey can often be seen yachts scurrying before brisk breezes.

Steam yachts were popular 100 or more years ago when wealthy people used them for relaxation and travelling in style.  They were status symbols and often had luxurious fittings to reflect the wealth of the owners. Some yachts were used for coastal waters and beyond and others were steamed in the Lake District, for example.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there are the original engine and paddle wheels from the steam yacht Firefly II (shown). She was built for Lord Newborough, who lived in Anglesey, by W Roberts of Chester in 1900. The compound direct-acting diagonal steam engine gleams with its brass, copper and polished wood fittings. These parts of the vessel were discarded shortly after the First World War when Firefly II was converted to screw propulsion. Builder’s plans on display show that the 42-ton Firefly II was an elegant yacht which cut a dash around Liverpool Bay. She was 72 ft long and the 12 hp engine had a steam pressure of 140 psi.

Another contemporary yachtsman is commemorated in the museum displays. Baden Percival was a member of the West Lancashire Yacht Club and achieved fame among the local yachting fraternity when he won the 1908 Liverpool to Isle of Man Midnight Race in his boat Zulu. Percival was awarded a beautiful silver epergne (table centrepiece) which is now on show with photographs of the Zulu. At the time the Manchester Guardian ironically reported about the Zulu’s crew:

“Lancashire courage is unquestioned and now Lancashire modesty may range alongside it. They said that at 2 am they had had  about enough of it and didn’t care whether they won, as all by then had forsworn yachting, intending in future to keep hens instead.”

Built in 1900 at Fleetwood, Zulu is now in the United States and is called Zulu Chief.

There is a model of the 1906 Royal Mersey sailing yacht, Myfanwy, which was built by Samuel Bond of Birkenhead for WS Taylor and NA Hall of Liverpool.

The Royal Mersey Yacht Club, founded in 1844, promotes yacht racing in the River Mersey and adjoining waters. It is one of the many yachting and sailing clubs which thrive in and around Liverpool.

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

To me, Stephen Guy, Samuel Cunard is one of the most inspirational figures in the history of the business side of seafaring. Cunard (1787 – 1865) was the founder of perhaps the best-known shipping line in the world which had small beginnings in Liverpool (more on the main site). Merseyside Maritime Museum has many exhibits linked to the Cunard line but today we focus on the Canadian entrepreneur’s first ship, the paddle steamer Britannia.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Cunard was a civil engineer who came to Britain to operate a fast mail service using steamships between the UK and America. A fine portrait bust of him can be seen on the top floor.

A huge shipping line grew from the early days of Britannia which is represented in the museum by a superb, finely-detailed model made by legendary ship modellers Bassett Lowke Ltd. Britannia was built by R Duncan & Co in Greenock in 1840 and was Cunard’s first purpose-built Atlantic liner. She was way ahead of sailing ship competition in terms of passenger accommodation and speed but there were some disadvantages to this ultra-modern mode of transport. A display panel in the museum’s Lifelines gallery shows Britannia leaving Liverpool on her maiden voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Boston, Massachusetts, on 4 July 1840.

Because she was designed for speed, passengers had to put up with some inconveniences. About half the space on board was taken up by her engines and coal bunkers. The noise and vibrations of the engines and paddle-wheels and the smoke on deck from the belching funnel were very unpleasant. However, compared with contemporary sailing ships her passenger accommodation was considered luxurious – small cabins housing 115 people on the main deck below. There was also a dining saloon.

Cows were carried on deck to ensure supplies of fresh milk. The holds could carry up to 225 tons of cargo.

A model of a First Class stateroom shows the best that early Victorian sea-travellers could experience - little more than a pokey cubby-hole but luxurious by the standards of the time. It was used by popular author Charles Dickens and his wife during a 14-day voyage on Britannia from Liverpool to Boston USA in 1842.
   
The tiny detailed model shows two narrow bunks, a bench, primitive washing facilities and a few coat hangers and no wardrobes. There is even Dickens’ minute silk top hat, overcoat, boots and duck-headed cane. Dickens wrote in his American Notes: “Nothing smaller for sleeping in was ever made than a coffin”. (You can read Dickens' American Notes on the Free Library website).

A PS Britannia wallpaper is available on our main site.

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

Back in the 1950s when I, Stephen Guy, was a child, Pilot matches were sold and used everywhere as many Britons smoked like chimneys and houses were heated with open fires. The trademark on the box included a wonderful old engraving of a pilot dressed in sou’wester hat and oilskins, clutching a ship’s wheel. This was obviously from the days of sail. After more than 100 years using sailing ships, it was not until 1896 that the first steamship - the Francis Henderson - was used by Mersey pilots.

Many pilots were against the introduction of steam, believing that the manoeuvrability of sailing ships and their ability to function in heavy weather could not be matched. However, the Francis Henderson – named after the chairman of the Pilotage Committee – proved them wrong and she saw successful service until 1917. A fine model of her is in the Merseyside Maritime Museum collections.

In 1913 an Act of Parliament laid down the framework for the modern system of pilotage, bringing all British ports into line. In Liverpool, pilotage is compulsory for all vessels over 250 tons. Certain ferries making regular visits, whose captains are familiar with the port, do not require pilots.

Until 1982, pilots stayed on board pilot boats anchored in Liverpool Bay. These could accommodate up to 40 pilots and apprentices. The last of these pilot cutters was the 701-ton Edmund Gardner, now preserved in dry dock on the Historic Quaysides - the largest ship in the Maritime Museum’s collection. Built in 1953, she was one of a new generation of diesel-electric powered vessels built to replace the pre-war steam cutters. Lovingly looked after by museum staff and volunteers, she is preserved as she appeared during her working life.

Today pilots travel to incoming vessels using high-powered launches after being alerted exactly when the ship will arrive in Liverpool Bay. The Shearwater was one of these fast pilot launches, notable because she sank in an accident in 1987. Fire broke out in her engine room and she foundered off the Mersey Bar. Her crew, having fought the blaze for 20 minutes, were picked up by another pilot launch.

Even in the days of sail, pilots sometimes could not board vessels because of atrocious weather conditions. A painting by J Witham (1831–1901) in the museum collections shows a remarkable incident that took place in February 1881. The pilot schooner, Leader, led a fleet of vessels safely over the Bar during a north-westerly gale in conditions too severe to allow pilots to board.

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

One of the most popular TV cartoons when I, Stephen Guy, was a child was Popeye. The pipe-smoking sailor always opened a can of spinach to give him extra strength to get out of a tight corner.  My parents assured me that cans of spinach had been brought over from America on the wartime convoys. Liverpool played a key role in the Battle of the Atlantic as merchant ships in convoys guarded by the Royal Navy ran the gauntlet bringing vital supplies to Britain from north America.

Captain Johnnie Walker (1896–1944) was based in Liverpool and achieved legendary status as a hunter and destroyer of German U-boats.

Liverpool paid a heavy price for the success of the convoy system. By 1945 its shipowners had lost more than three million tons of shipping, mostly in the Atlantic. This was the equivalent of more than 630 ships of 5,000 tons each and amounted to more than a quarter of all British merchant ship losses (12.5 million tons) during the Second World War. This compares with the total of four million tons of merchant shipping lost worldwide by the United States merchant marine during the war. And to put the devastating losses into a broader perspective, Liverpool shipowners lost more than the entire merchant navies of Norway (two million tons), Netherlands (1.5 million) and Greece (1.1 million). It is probable that at least a quarter of men who were in the British Merchant Navy at the outbreak of war did not survive until the end of the conflict. This was a higher fatality rate than that suffered by any of the British armed services taken as a whole.

The Battle of the Atlantic gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum focuses on many different aspects of this crucial period.There are excellent models of two British freighters sent to the bottom at the start of the war in 1939. On 5 October the Newton Beech was stopped south east of Ascension Island by the infamous pocket battleship Graf Spee. Two days later the Newton Beech was sunk by the raider’s guns - one of nine British ships sunk by the Graf Spee during a two-month period. The Graf Spee was later scuttled after being badly damaged by three British cruisers in the Battle of the River Plate off Uruguay, South America.

The other model is of the Liverpool-owned Malabar (shown), torpedoed by U34 west of the Scilly Isles on 29 October. She sank the following afternoon. In her holds were tobacco, timber and general cargo. Five of her crew of 81 were lost.

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

The Walker Art Gallery's County Sessions House was the scene of a glamorous Vivienne Westwood  fashion shoot for the Daily Post yesterday, as models, make-up artists and photographers took over the former courthouse for most of the day. Wearing pieces from Westwood's new Autumn/Winter collection, models posed in doorways and amongst the pillars outside the gallery.

Purple is the big colour of the Autumn/Winter season (yes, it's the new black don't you know?) and the stylists reflected this by choosing a tight fitting purple dress from the collection, along with a ruffled stripy dress and slouchy grey overcoat. 

Westwood's trademark huge heels threatened to cause problems for one of the models, as she teetered around on the extra seven inches of patent leather, but she managed to carry it off in the end as no broken bones were reported. When the article goes on the Daily Post website, I'll give you an update on how it turned out!

 

Shipwrecks have always fascinated me, Stephen Guy, since I first explored one at low tide on holiday at Llanddona, Anglesey, as a five-year-old. Stood inside the remains of the hull, I felt like Jonah in the whale.

Liverpool Bay is littered with the remains of ships that have come to grief over the centuries.

Until quite recently one of the sights at the mouth of the Mersey were two half-submerged shipwrecks, their masts and decks at crazy angles, clearly visible from ferries crossing the Irish Sea.

Shifting sands on the coast between Liverpool and Southport occasionally reveal the remains of ships that ran aground on this treacherous shore.

When disaster strikes at sea, the saving of life is paramount – an area where Liverpool has had many achievements. Lifeboat stations, Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society, HM Coastguard and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board have all played their part.

Liverpool can justly claim to have had the first lifeboat station in the world. About 1775 a boat was set aside at Formby for the sole purpose of saving people from shipwrecks.

Merseyside Maritime Museum has collections looking at many aspects of saving life at sea. They include shipwrecks where everyone on board was rescued. One such was the emigrant ship Dakota outward bound for New York when she struck the notorious Skerries rocks off Anglesey in 1877.

About 580 passengers and crew were taken safely shore. Items include a food plate recovered from the wreck.

A map shows original lifeboat stations at Southport, Formby, New Brighton, Magazines (an explosives store on the Wirral), Hoylake and West Kirby.

There is a model of a lifeboat called Manchester and Salford Sunday Schools because she was paid for with money collected by the schools in 1868.

The Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society was set up in 1839, evolving from the grimly-named Liverpool Institution for the Recovery of Drowned Persons.

Among the Society’s awards in the collections is a pair of binoculars and certificate presented to Robert Bence, relating to an incident in 1881.
He was the first officer of the White Star liner Germanic which came across the steamship Hurworth in distress in a mid-Atlantic storm.

The gallant Mr Bence led volunteers in a lifeboat through tumultuous seas to successfully rescue the crew of the Hurworth.

Other items include a dock rescue hook, standard equipment used for rescuing people who had fallen into Liverpool docks 100 years ago.

My uncle, Alfred Guy, a police officer on the docks, would relate gruesome tales of fishing bodies out of the water using similar hooks.

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

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

I, Stephen Guy, have many family stories about the Mersey ferries – including one memorable day when the gangplank landed on my toe, happily without breaking anything.

As Liverpool grew, so did the ferries until they reached their zenith in the 19th century. These days the ferry only links Liverpool with Birkenhead and Seacombe. Until the 1970s there was one to New Brighton. However, in my parents’ and grandparents’ times there were also ferries to Egremont, Tranmere, Rock Ferry, New Ferry and Eastham. My maternal grandmother, Lillian Potter, described an horrific incident she witnessed around the time of the First World War on Eastham ferry. She had a friend at Eastham village and would enjoy a day out taking the ferry then walking to see her pal. After one such visit, Gran was boarding the return ferry with other passengers. They were regaled by a drunk perched on the paddle wheel cover, bottle in hand, laughing and joking. As the ferry lurched from its moorings, the drunk toppled over the side and was killed by the churning paddle wheels. The ferry searched unsuccessfully for any trace of his body.

My father George remembered going on Eastham ferry to visit a large pleasure garden in the woods. It was reached through an ornate gateway and attracted large crowds. You can still see parts of the old ferry landing stage and ticket office at Eastham, which remains a very pleasant spot with marvellous views over the river.

Ferries have criss-crossed the River Mersey since at least 1150 when the monks of Birkenhead Priory used to row passengers across the windswept, desolate estuary.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a model of the paddle steamer Elizabeth – both the first steam ferryboat on the Mersey and the first steamship on the river. She entered the river on 28 June 1815 and inaugurated a service between Liverpool and Runcorn making one trip daily at a speed of between nine and 10 knots.

There is a builder’s half-model of Royal Daffodil II which, unusually, is marked with dimensions for her outer hull for plating purposes. She was later renamed St Hilary and sold for scrap in 1962.

Perhaps the most interesting exhibit is a model of a prototype circular chain ferry (shown here) that never saw the light of day. Dating from about 1865, the two-funnelled vessel would have sported covered passenger saloons and a central area for carriages and wagons in those pre-tunnel days.  This idea was rejected mainly because the huge chains needed to haul the ferry across the river would have been a danger to other ships.

There is an information sheet with a brief history of the Mersey Ferries available on our main site.

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

When I, Stephen Guy, was a child we visited Bidston Hill with its windmill and glorious views. I was always intrigued by a series of neat holes bored into the solid rock. It was many years before I learnt the purpose of these strange holes. In the Merseyside Maritime Museum’s collections there is a painting which explains the mystery.

It shows the Bidston lighthouse in 1825 – and there next to it is a row of flagpoles, standing in the holes. Shipowners had their own flags which were hoisted when one of their ships was identified. This meant shipowners and others had notice that one of their ships was approaching port. Use of the flags was discontinued in 1826 following the introduction of the more sophisticated Hoylake to Liverpool telegraph.

Great ingenuity is used to guide ships safely to Liverpool – lighthouses, lightships, buoys and signals have all played their part during the long history of the dynamic port. Before the days of radio and modern communications, various methods were devised to announce the imminent arrival of a ship to dockmasters and owners.

Today the Mersey approaches are comprehensively marked according to the system agreed by the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities. This ensures that the meaning of every buoy and light is clear even to the master of a foreign vessel on his first visit.

Other items in the collections include a wooden buoy made by a cooper (barrel maker) and a model of the buoy tender Vigilant (1978) which is shown here. The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company is responsible for the maintenance of buoys within the port limits. This ranges from the routine changing of gas bottles which power the buoy lights to bringing buoys ashore for repair and repainting. Fine detail on the Vigilant model shows a crane for lifting buoys in and out of the water. A buoy in the shape of a boat is used to mark a single hazard or point of interest.

A model depicts the buoy that was stationed at Spencers Spit off Hoylake. This had a bell with four clappers on each side so that the bell rang regardless in which direction the buoy rocked. The museum has a large model of the Mersey Bar lightship Alarm (1912) and the original lens from Hale lighthouse on the banks of the Mersey between Speke and Widnes.

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

The closing days of Liverpool as an emigration port were witnessed by me, Stephen Guy, as a teenager watching the Empress liners embarking from the Pier Head decorated with bunting and streamers.

Liverpool was probably the most important mass emigration port in world history in terms of numbers of people carried. Between 1830 and 1930 more than nine million emigrants from all over Europe sailed from the port to seek new lives.

During the Victorian age sail gave way to steam including ships involved in the emigrant trade.  By 1870 almost all emigrants to the United States and Canada went by steamship. Liverpool-based steamship lines such as Cunard, Inman, Guion, White Star, National and Allan dominated the carriage of emigrants to North America.

On the Australian run, steam did not overtake sail until the late 1870s. There were a few steamships taking emigrants to Australia from the 1850s. However, they had sails and only used steam for part of the voyage. 

Between 1860 and 1900 conditions improved on the emigrant ships. The 1855 Passenger Act had introduced cooked meals for all emigrants and a doctor on larger ships.

Exhibits at the Merseyside Maritime Museum include a model of the Inman Line steamship City of Paris built in 1866 for the Liverpool to New York run. In 1852, Liverpool-based William Inman had introduced the first transatlantic steamer service for emigrants. On display is a Swedish emigrant’s Guion Line ticket from about 1890. The emigrant travelled by sea to Hull, then by rail to Liverpool before joining a ship to New York.

By the early 1900s steamships were bigger and faster. There is a fine detailed model of the Cunard Line’s Saxonia built in 1900 specifically for the emigrant trade without a cheap steerage section.  All the passengers on Saxonia were accommodated in cabins, including 1,600 emigrants in third class.  She operated on the Liverpool to New York and Liverpool to Boston routes before being transferred to the Mediterranean to carry emigrants from southern and eastern Europe to America.

A new generation of super liners came into service during the Edwardian age. Ships like the Mauretania and the ill-fated Titanic and Lusitania had elegant, luxurious first class accommodation but they also carried many emigrants in third class.

The First World War brought a temporary end to emigration. From the 1920s emigration was limited by newly-imposed entry restrictions to the US and Canada.

More information on Liverpool emigration and emigration to Australia on our main website.  There is also an interactive following the fate of a family emigrating to Australia through Liverpool - Leaving from Liverpool.

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

The idea of millions of people setting off to new lives is slightly unnerving to me, Stephen Guy, perhaps because my family has stayed put in Liverpool for 300 years.

An astonishing nine million people emigrated through Liverpool between 1830 and 1930, usually to start new lives in the USA, Canada and Australia. For most of this time Liverpool was the greatest mass emigration port in the world. Huge numbers came from Britain and Ireland but they also travelled from as far away as Scandinavia and Russia.

Until the early 1860s, most crossed the Atlantic on sailing ships. On the Australia run, sail continued to be more important than steam until the late 1870s.

Initially, emigrants were of secondary importance to cargo on sailing ships but by 1850 the majority were carried in American-owned sailing packets. The passage to the USA or Canada took about 55 days and the voyage to Australia usually lasted between 10 and 16 weeks. Most emigrants arrived safely but sometimes there were outbreaks of typhus and cholera in the overcrowded conditions.

At the Merseyside Maritime Museum visitors experience what it was like to be emigrants heading for new lives in the 1850s. They walk along a re-created Liverpool quayside with a noisy lodging house and warehouses. They board the emigrant ship and see how the vast majority of passengers travelled in steerage class. Trunks were piled up and a table was available for simple meals, with the constant roaring of the sea day and night.

Exhibits in the museum's Emigrants gallery include a model of the Black Ball Line clipper Marco Polo, one of the most famous of the Liverpool-based ships carrying emigrants to Australia. In 1852 she made a record-breaking passage from Liverpool to Melbourne in 68 days, an amazing 50 days less than the average. However, the achievement was marred by a measles epidemic which claimed the lives of 55 of her emigrants. Legend has it that upon her return to Liverpool she passed through the Canning Half Tide Dock, now part of the Maritime Museum, flying a banner proclaiming The Fastest Ship in the World.

James Baines was the founder of the Black Ball Line and a statuette (shown here) depicting him in a green frock coat and carrying a grey top hat is among exhibits. On his death in 1889 Baines was buried in Smithdown Road Cemetery, Liverpool.

More information on Liverpool emigration and emigration to Australia on our main website.

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

The very name Tirpitz spits out menace and death for me, Stephen Guy. Here was a beautiful ship which never, thankfully, achieved her full potential.

The Tirpitz and her sister, the Bismarck were the largest and most powerful German battleships to serve in the Second World War. While the Bismarck was sunk in a sea battle with four British warships, the Tirpitz blew up and capsized during an air attack in a Norwegian fjord.

In Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a superb eight-foot long model of the Tirpitz made by David Wooley of Wallasey (shown).

The 42,900-ton Tirpitz was not completed in time to join the Bismarck on her ill-fated Atlantic voyage in May 1941. Instead in January 1942 she sailed for German-occupied Norway where she hardly ever left the shelter of the fjords. There she posed a threat to allied convoys carrying war supplies to northern Russia.

Many attempts were made to sink her before two huge bombs finally did the job. The best-known attempt was in September 1943 when British midget submarines travelled 1,000 miles during which they negotiated a minefield and dodged nets, gun defences and enemy listening posts. The submarines then planted explosive charges beneath the Tirpitz, doing so much damage that the battleship was out of action for several months. Lieutenants Basil Place and Donald Cameron each received the Victoria Cross for gallantry for their parts in the action.

By April 1944 Tirpitz was repaired and presented a renewed threat to the Allies. Waves of air attacks on her through the summer of 1944 did some damage. In August she was able to undergo sea trials, making it imperative that she be destroyed. More air attacks followed.

In October Tirpitz was moved south to act as a floating gun battery against the expected Allied invasion of Norway. Crucially, she was now within range of air operations from Scotland. By this time legendary British weapons inventor Barnes Wallis had perfected his five-ton Tallboy bomb. British Lancaster bombers from Lossiemouth in Scotland finally destroyed Tirpitz on 12 November 1944. She was struck by three Tallboys – one glanced off turret armour but the other two blew a 200 ft hole in her side. A magazine blew up and the Tirpitz capsized within minutes. Nearly 1,000 German sailors, out of a crew of 1,700, died.

The Tirpitz was broken up after the war although part of the bow remains where she sank. It is said that sections of the Tirpitz’s armour plates are still used in Norway as temporary road surfaces during roadworks.

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

The film A Night to Remember about the Titanic disaster was a most unforgettable film for me, Stephen Guy, as a child. The sinking of the Titanic is probably the best-known shipwreck of all – everything went wrong for the supposedly unsinkable super liner in April 1912.

The huge ship never visited Liverpool but she had connections with the great port where she was registered as part of the mighty White Star Line.

The very name Titanic almost shouted defiance to the mighty seas that had claimed so many ships and lives across the centuries. Her construction would ensure that the vessel stayed afloat despite being holed. But her designers could not have foreseen the catastrophic damage that a huge iceberg could inflict on what was, by comparison, a puny mass of wood, metal, rivets and bolts.

The Merseyside Maritime Museum has many fascinating relics of the Titanic in its Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery. A 20-foot long model of the ship is as old as the original Titanic – it was made by the builders Harland & Wolff to promote the great ship.

A white cotton apron tells a remarkable tale. Possibly the only surviving item of clothing worn on the night of the disaster, it belonged to Laura Mabel Francatelli, personal maid and secretary to Lady Lucy Duff Gordon.

They were involved in a notorious incident when they were among just 12 people in a lifeboat - built to hold 65 - which was later dubbed the millionaires’ boat. Those in the lifeboat were criticised for ignoring the cries of hundreds of drowning victims because they feared the lifeboat would be swamped if they tried to pull people out of the bitterly cold sea.

Two gold watches in the museum collections tell another story from that momentous night. They belonged to Thomas and Ada Hewitt from Orrell Park, Liverpool. Thomas was a bedroom steward on Titanic. As the stricken ship lurched towards her doom, he is said to have passed the gold pocket watch to a stewardess. “Please give this to my dear wife,” he urged. She did so. Thomas died along with 1,500 other people on board.

Other items include a lifejacket, personal belongings, parts of the lifeboats, the massive report of the Board of Trade inquiry into the disaster, and the only known surviving firstclass ticket. There is also a list of the Titanic-related archives held by the museum.

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

In the 1970s as a news reporter I, Stephen Guy, attended a ship naming ceremony at the Cammell Laird shipyard. What I remember most was the memorable meal that followed!

The Laird family of Birkenhead built their first iron ship – the paddle steamer Lady Lansdowne – in 1833, heralding a long and illustrious history of shipbuilding on the Wirral. Lairds - later Cammell Lairds - was one of the most famous names in British shipbuilding during the 19th and 20th centuries. Many innovative vessels were launched from its shipyard - originally in the Wallasey Pool but from 1857 at the Birkenhead site it occupied for the rest of its existence.

Scotsman John Laird (1805 – 1874), son of company founder William Laird, was described as “the Father of Birkenhead”. John retired in 1861 and became the first MP for Birkenhead. As chairman of the Birkenhead Improvement Commission, he was influential in the design of the town. John’s three sons William, John and Henry took over the business. Sailing vessels and steamships of all types continued to be built. Laird Brothers merged with Sheffield steel manufacturers Charles Cammell & Co in 1903. Under the new name of Cammell Laird & Co the shipyard continued to grow.

The two world wars brought unprecedented demand for new warships and repair work. Cammell Laird responded in exemplary fashion. In the Second World War an astonishing 106 warships – an average of one every 20 days – were built. More successes followed. In 1956 the 30,000-ton ore carrier Leader was the largest of her type in the world. Three years later the Auris was the first petroleum tanker powered by gas turbines. Also launched in 1959 was the Windsor Castle, at 36,277 tons the largest passenger liner built by the company.

These are just some of the firsts scored by this hugely-successful company which later became the victim of changing times. The last ship to be built at the yard was HMS Unicorn in 1993.

Displays at Merseyside Maritime Museum chronicle the remarkable story of Cammell Laird’s with photographs, ship models and exhibits. Its first iron ship Lady Lansdowne worked as a pleasure steamer on Lough Derg and the River Shannon in Ireland. She sank at her moorings and in 1967 the wreck was identified. On display is a porthole, glass bottle and a metal bar from the wreck. Other ship models include the seventh HMS Liverpool, a Type 42 destroyer built in 1980 and still in service. 

Wirral Archives holds many Cammel Laird related records. You can find out what they hold on our main site.

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

Museum of Liverpool curator Kay Docherty has turned roving reporter and celebrity photographer after attending a special event last Friday. It's all in the name of work of course, as she explains.

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On Friday Yoko Ono was at John Lennon Airport to cut the ribbon for a special ceremony to mark the departure of the first scheduled airline service from Liverpool John Lennon Airport to New York. As you can see from from the Flickr slideshow of photos from the airport, the aircraft on this route have been specially painted with the famous self portrait drawing by John Lennon and the strapline “above us only sky”. The aircraft has also been named 'Across the Universe', following a suggestion by Yoko. This new flight is the first airlink with New York from Liverpool and it took off almost 100 years to the day that the first passenger sea link departed from Liverpool.
 
Many thousands of people have travelled between New York and Liverpool through the many years of maritime trade and emigration between these two great cities.

This Dinky Toy of the Queen Mary in the collections of the Museum of Liverpool, complete with a New York skyline and Statue of Liberty, highlights one of the many strong and historic connections between Liverpool and New York.

The Flickr slideshow of photos from Friday also includes an image of Harry Goodwin, photographer for Top of the Pops 1964 to 1973, next to one of his famous photographs of John Lennon which he took only a few weeks before John was killed in 1980. Harry's new exhibition 'Legends' was also unveiled at Liverpool John Lennon Airport on the same day. The exhibition features many stars from the world of pop, showbiz and sports including Jimi Hendrix, George Best and Muhammed Ali.
 
As part of the Museum of Liverpool on the Road project, passengers at Liverpool John Lennon Airport will soon be able to see a Bayko model of Speke Airport from our collections on display - watch this space for further details.

The story of the Imperator seems to me, Stephen Guy, to be one of the great ironies of the First World War. The Imperator was built by Germany in an attempt to create the ultimate luxury liner but she ended up as the flagship of Britain’s Cunard fleet. This symbol of the prestige of the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II – complete with a huge bronze Imperial eagle figurehead on her bows – was launched just five weeks after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. As a result, changes were made to both her hull design and the equipment on board to increase safety.

Imperator was the last word in luxury and comfort  - for the First Class passengers, at least. The 52,226 ton, 919 ft long leviathan – the biggest ship in the world at the time (and larger than Titanic) – boasted incredible attractions. Its public rooms included a relaxing Palm Court, a smoking room in the style of a Bavarian hunting lodge and huge Pompeian marble baths befitting a Roman emperor.

Her maiden voyage was on 20 June 1913 and she worked on the Germany to New York run until just before the outbreak of the First World War. Anxious not to loose such a valuable ship, officials of the German Imperial Navy ordered her to stay in port. Imperator spent the war moored to a pier on the River Elbe. After Germany’s defeat she was handed over to Britain as part of war reparations – compensation for losses such as the Lusitania, sunk by a German submarine.

Imperator was acquired by Cunard and first sailed under its colours – without the eagle - in June 1920 following a refit in Liverpool. Her name was later changed to Berengaria after the wife of Richard the Lionheart, England’s crusader king. Berengaria regularly sailed between Southampton and New York and is still the largest liner ever to enter Liverpool docks.  She worked largely without incident on the transatlantic run for many years until she was withdrawn in 1938.

There is a stunning model of the Berengaria in Merseyside Maritime Museum (shown above). It is 19 ft long and can be viewed from all angles, making a memorable opening exhibit in the Lifelines gallery focusing on Britain’s Merchant Navy. Also in the museum collections are six photographs of the ship’s luxurious public rooms filled with fittings of the highest quality. There is an early publicity brochure published when she was the Imperator in 1913 which proclaimed: “The world’s largest ship embodying maximum comfort and safety for all”.

You can see more on the model of Berengaria on our main site.

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

Since childhood I, Stephen Guy, have loved visiting Sudley House, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, which reopens this Saturday 26 May following a £1 million refurbishment.

It is the former home of George Holt, a member of the Victorian shipping family dynasty. When he retired from his company, Lamport and Holt, he extended Sudley to house his magnificent art collection where it remains to this day.

One of his brothers was Alfred Holt, founder of the legendary Blue Funnel Line. Alfred aimed to build safe, reliable and economic ships and achieved this with great distinction. From the 1890s his vessels were of such high quality that the term Holts’ Class was used to describe such excellence. The technical distinction of Holt ships became a great source of pride within the company.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was a major boost to Blue Funnel because it shortened the UK to China route by 3,300 miles. From the 1890s it had a worldwide network covering Java, Australia, USA and across the Pacific Ocean. However, the China and Far East trade remained Blue Funnel’s core business until the early 1970s. Blue Funnel later became the Ocean Group, ceasing to own ships in the late 1980s.

The Merseyside Maritime Museum has many Blue Funnel-related items in its collections. The ship models include the motor vessel Priam of 1966, among the last conventional cargo liners to be built for the company. In just a few years she became outdated due to the advent of huge container ships.

Another model is one such container ship - the 58,000 ton Liverpool Bay of 1971 built for Overseas Containers Ltd (OCL), of which the Ocean Group was a founder member.

A fascinating map shows where 41 Blue Funnel ships were sunk in the Second World War. A total of 324 of the company’s seafarers lost their lives. There is a builder’s half-model of one of these unfortunate ships – the Cyclops of 1906. She was sunk by the U-23 submarine in the north Atlantic in 1942 with the loss of 87 lives.

There is the ship’s bell from the Demodocus (1912) which hung for many years in the old Liverpool Institute (now Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts). It was presented by Lawrence Durning Holt, chairman of the school governors, in the early 1950s.
 
A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.
 

The legendary Holt family left their mark on Liverpool and I, Stephen Guy, have always admired their talents and business skills.

Alfred Holt (1829 – 1911) revolutionised sea trade with his remarkable fleet of steam ships in what became known as the Blue Funnel Line. In 1865 Alfred founded the Ocean Steamship Company with its technologically advanced ships featuring distinctive black and powder blue funnels which made them instantly recognisable around the world. He came from a family of five wealthy and talented brothers, the sons of successful cotton broker George Holt.

Alfred showed early promise as a railway locomotive engineer. However, it was as a marine engineer and ship-owner that he was to make his name. In 1864, when he was in his mid-30s, Alfred developed a type of compound steam engine enabling ships to travel much further and more economically than ever before. His engineering talent and business acumen were to make him a wealthy man living in an impressive mansion called Crofton, which still stands in North Sudley Road, south Liverpool (more on the Holt family and Sudley House here).

Alfred Holt was highly regarded by his peers and among the items in the collections of Merseyside Maritime Museum is the James Watt Medal awarded to him by the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1878. There is a scale model of the steam engine from the Blue Funnel Line’s Prometheus of 1886. Alfred designed this compound marine engine of the type used in all his ships until the 1890s. Compound two-cylinder engines made better use of steam than one-cylinder engines. The steam drove two pistons instead of one, producing more power at less cost. Like most great ideas, it was a simple concept.

There are two models of the Agamemnon of 1865 (one is shown here) – first of the Blue Funnel ships and one of the most influential steamships ever built. Agamemnon was important because she showed that long-distance ocean voyages were economically practical for a steamer.

The museum has personal possessions of William Elston of Birkenhead, a crew member on the Agamemnon between 1866 and 1873. Among other items is his concertina and an embroidered book mark believed to have been made for him by his first wife. It shows a sailing ship and bears the poignant message: “Think of me when far away.”

More about the Blue Funnel Line next week.

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

The tragic story of the Ellan Vannin has fascinated me, Stephen Guy, since childhood holidays on the Isle of Man. Everyone on board the Manx ferryboat perished in a terrible storm when 24ft waves sent the sturdy vessel to the bottom as she approached Liverpool.

Ellan Vannin (Manx Gaelic for 'Isle of Man') left Ramsey on 3 December 1909 with 14 passengers, 21 crew and 60 tons of cargo including sheep, pigs and vegetables. The weather was reasonable when she set out but deteriorated as the voyage progressed. By the time she reached the Mersey Bar the wind was near hurricane strength with mountainous waves crashing into the ship.

The court of inquiry concluded that the most probable explanation for the disaster was that the 339-ton Ellan Vannin was overcome by the huge seas, although the precise cause of the tragedy remains a mystery.

When the storm abated, her masts could be seen sticking out of the sea. Divers examined the wreck and found damage to the bows. The lifeboat davits were swung out ready for lowering. The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board later blew up the wreck as it was a danger to shipping.

In the Merseyside Maritime Museum collections there is a builder’s wooden half model showing the doomed ship when she was first built in 1860 as the paddle steamer Mona’s Isle. In 1883, she was converted to twin-screw propulsion and renamed Ellan Vannin. The model reflects the view that she was a strong ship. She had put to sea in many a storm when other vessels had run for cover in Ramsey Bay.

A contemporary broadsheet carries photographs of some of the people who died in the shipwreck. Dressed in their finery or everyday clothes, they are frozen in time. They include passengers Mr and Mrs Heaton Johnson looking the personification of respectability – he is in his immaculate high-collared shirt, she in a fashionable ruffled dress. Another passenger, WE Higginbotham, appears in full Highland costume. Manxman Mark Joughin stares out of the picture with a full beard, sporting a trilby hat. Captain Teare is in smart uniform while seaman T Corkish wears a lifejacket and sou’wester. Stewardess Mrs Collister has her hair in a bun. All very different people who shared the same fate.

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

Isambard Kingdom Brunel is for me, Stephen Guy, one of the world’s greatest engineers who created two remarkable ships before building the legendary Great Eastern.

The first was the 2,340-ton Great Western of 1837, the first purpose-built transatlantic steamship which more than halved the time to cross from Britain to America. Powered by sail and paddlewheels, the timber-built Great Western set new standards of travel. Her first journey to New York took just 15 days, with 14 days to return. This was a great success as a one-way trip under sail took more than a month. The 236-ft long Great Western sailed initially from Bristol but later switched to Liverpool. She was for several years the most popular and successful Atlantic steamer, making a total of 74 crossings to New York. 

There is a detailed model of the Great Western in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. She has one funnel and four masts plus an unusual circular poop deck at the stern.

Great Western was later bought by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company for service on the Southampton – West Indies mail run. She ended her days as a troop carrier in the Crimean War before being broken up on the Thames in 1857.

A more worthy fate awaited Brunel’s next vessel, the 3,676-ton SS Great Britain – the first modern ship because of many innovative features. This time she was built from iron and was the first propeller-powered ship to cross the Atlantic. Great Britain – also featured in the museum’s model collection - was a tremendously strong ship. On an early voyage the 322 ft long vessel was beached off the southern coat of Ireland for nearly a year. She showed no sign of serious structural damage.

This was another very successful ship, staying in service for 30 years. She sailed with emigrants from Liverpool to Australia for more than 20 years and San Francisco was another destination. Great Britain also served as a troopship.

Towards the end of her career she had her engines removed and operated as a sailing ship.  She was badly damaged in a storm off Cape Horn – a notorious ships’ graveyard – in 1886. However, she managed to make her way to the Falkland  Islands. For more than 100 years Great Britain lay in Sparrow Cove, Port Stanley, in a remarkable state of preservation. She was salvaged by a group of enthusiasts and towed back to Bristol in 1970 where she remains a big visitor attraction.

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

Just been talking to Kyle who works in our new media unit and is currently working on an interactive for the forthcoming International Slavery Museum - it looks pretty good even at this stage. There are going to be a number of interactives on the gallery, and this one is based on documents in our collection (the Davenport collection actually). It will tell the tale of the Essex, a typical Liverpool slave ship, and follows the vessel as it sets sail from the port (that's a Liverpool dock in the image) to Africa and then on the the Americas.

Must admit, I wouldn't have the patience or eye for detail to do Kyle's job. Just about five minutes worth of interactive is literally taking him weeks to create, as every aspect of the interactive needs to be built from scratch.  Just the ship in this image took about a week to complete - the surfaces of all the ropes, wood, sails etc needed to be individually built in 3D Studio Max (that's an industry-standard application used to create 3D models of the type you'd see in any video game). The harbour walls themselves were a lot easier as they are basic 'boxes' with relatively little detail.

Also, Kyle's job isn't just about the technical side of things. He needs to think about everything from the story boarding, scripting and voice overs, to building, editing and combining his creation. Then there's issues like creating the right atmosphere for the piece (cartoony wouldn't work for such a serious issue), making sure the interactive itself is engrossing, and all the while sticking to the facts by creating historically accurate ships, buildings, clothes etc.  Who knew it took so much?  I'll pop in again in a few weeks and see where he's up to with it.

More progress images are on our Flickr page.

95 years ago today, on 10 April 1912, a certain ship left Southampton on a voyage for New York that ended in tragedy just four days later.

It's a well known story and I'm sure many of you will have seen the films and bought the t-shirts already. However, did you know that the Titanic is actually a Liverpool-registered ship, and carried the city's name on her stern? This was because her managing company, the White Star Line, had its head office in James Street, Liverpool.  About one in ten of the crew on her last voyage were either from Liverpool or based in the area. You can find out more about the Titanic's Liverpool connections on our website.

If you haven't seen Merseyside Maritime Museum's recently refurbished Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery yet then this week is a good time to go, with a series of free events to commemorate the anniversary of the sinking. There's an adult learning day tomorrow, a chance to meet one of the crew (played by our roleplayer) on Saturday and a spotlight talk on Monday. For more details, times etc see the Maritime Museum's What's On page.

Today is architect Sir Edwin Lutyens's birthday. Born in 1869, he would have been 138 in the highly unlikely event that he was still around today.

I don't know if anybody out there is up to the challenge, but I think that Angela had the right idea in her blog about potentially edible buildings in Liverpool. The only suitable way to mark the occasion would be with a cathedral-shaped cake, ideally the size of the model in the Walker's exhibition The cathedral that never was (I'm being practical, not greedy - the cake needs to be big to fit all the candles on).

Or you could just treat yourself to a normal size piece of cake in the Walker cafe in Lutyens's honour if you don't have an industrial size oven of course.

Most people decorate their garden with a nice pot from the garden centre, or maybe an ornamental bird bath or fountain. The gardens at Het Loo Palace in the Netherlands are pretty spectacular however, so they have commissioned a specially made replica marble sculpture from conservation technologies at the National Conservation Centre to grace their lawn.

The replica is a life sized copy of a 17th century marble statue of the goddess Pomona, part of the Royal Collection, that's on display in the Orangery of Kensington Palace, London.

The original statue was laser scanned to produce an accurate 3D computer model. As it is such a large sculpture it had to be divided into 8 pieces that were machined separately out of Carrara marble. These were then carefully assembled, rather like a huge 3D jigsaw puzzle that weighs around 400 kg. The joins are cleverly hidden in the sculpture, so you would think it was carved from a solid piece of marble.

You can see a Flickr slideshow of photos of Pomona being carefully packed into a crate ready for the trip to the Netherlands. 

Update: see pictures documenting the replication of Pomona and read more about the process in a new case study on the National Conservation Centre website.

Tug boats attend vessels much larger than themselves, performing a vital role which to me, Stephen Guy, has always been a source of admiration.

The great ships using the River Mersey are attended by tug boats helping to manoeuvre them in and out of the port. As ships became bigger the role of tugs increased in importance, making them a vital component in the vast machinery of the bustling port.

Until steam tugs were introduced in the 19th century, muscle and brawn played a much bigger part in manoeuvring sailing ships alongside jetties and into docks. Energetic crew members helped line up the vessel in the dock entrance before the ship was towed through using a capstan – no doubt to the rousing choruses of sea shanties and popular songs.

During the 19th century sailing gig boats carried out a variety of tasks. Their main purpose was to assist in docking by passing lines between the ship and the quayside. They would also ferry passengers, agents and owners to and from ships lying at anchor. Today’s large ships cannot easily manoeuvre within the Mersey and its dock system. Their turning circles are too large and they can’t maintain enough speed for their rudders to be fully effective. They need the help of tugs and there are several companies providing this vital service.

The power of a tug is expressed in terms of the bollard pull she can exert. Modern tugs with engines up to 5,000 horse-power can exert a pull of 70 tons.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is the only British museum to have a sea-going vessel in its collection – the motor tug Brocklebank (above) dating from 1964. She is crewed by enthusiastic volunteers from the Friends of Merseyside Maritime Museum who are all qualified mariners. When not attending maritime festivals around Britain Brocklebank can be seen moored opposite the museum.

There are several fascinating tug models among the museum collections. The William Jolliffe (1885) was a twin-funnelled, iron screw steam tug. This fine model has some tiny details including copper port and starboard lights and a wheel house with bronze bells. The 96-ft long North Cock was one of the best-known tugs on the Mersey, known to generations using the river. Built by Laird Brothers at Birkenhead in 1903, the sturdy vessel had an amazing 61-year career until she was scrapped in 1964. An oil painting by an unknown artist shows the barque Dicky Sam, supported by Mersey flats (sailing barges), being towed by tugs off New Brighton about 1866.

A beautiful tug boat image features in the current Bernard Fallon exhibition.

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

There are several streets in Liverpool named after slave traders along which I, Stephen Guy, walked many times before discovering the connections.

During the 18th century many of Liverpool’s leading families were actively involved in the trade, including mayors and MPs. Around the city centre today you will see streets named after citizens who owed much of their fortunes to enslaved Africans. A display at Merseyside Maritime Museum highlights these places which are still a part of modern Liverpool.

The Tarletons were one of the most vigorous slaving families in Liverpool over three generations. They were politically active locally and at Westminster. John Tarleton left a personal fortune of £80,000 in 1773 – the equivalent of many millions today. Three of Tarleton’s sons were involved in the slave trade. The fourth son, Banastre, served in the army and later as an MP was a major opponent of abolition. Tarleton Street links Church Street and Richmond Street.

Richard Gildart was Mayor of Liverpool three times and MP for Liverpool from 1734 to 1754. Gildart Street is off Islington.

Cunliffe Street, off Tithebarn Street, is named after Foster Cunliffe, another Mayor of Liverpool.

Although Admiral Lord Rodney (1719-92) was not a slave trader, he spoke against abolition in the House of Lords. Famous for his victories against the Spanish and French, Rodney Street is named after him.

The Transatlantic Slavery Gallery at the museum has several exhibits showing the terrible conditions in which captive Africans were taken across the Atlantic – including a part-replica of a slave ship hold. This shows the cramped conditions in which the slaves were chained closely together below decks, often in stifling temperatures.

A plan of the Liverpool slave ship The Brooks shows 482 figures fitted in the hold. However, on one voyage in 1782 she had an astonishing 646 Africans on board, while in 1786 she carried 609 slaves and 45 crew.  A model based on The Brooks shows in great detail how all these people were accommodated. A thatched partition – or barricado – reaches across the ship to divide the sexes.

A painting of a Liverpool slave ship about 1780 (above) has few clues that she is carrying hundreds of captives. One is a series of ventilation holes below the gun deck.  At some stage three small boats approaching from the coast with Africans on board were painted out – perhaps following abolition.

Details of the records our archives department holds on the subject of Liverpool and slavery can be found on our main site. There is also an online tour of the slavery-related sights of Liverpool, including Tarleton and Cunliffe Streets.

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

We haven't heard from the field archaeology unit for a while, which usually means that they are way too busy uncovering interesting finds out on site to make it near a computer. Here's the latest news from Rob Philpott:

The excavation on the site of Manchester Dock has continued for several weeks and we have made good progress in revealing the walls of the dock. The dock had been filled in with crushed sandstone excavated from the first Mersey Tunnel so it could be safely removed by mechanical excavator to a depth of about 4 metres.

Several details of the dock construction were also revealed. Variations in the quality and finish of the sandstone masonry may relate to different phases of the dock construction, in particular the creation of a narrow entrance and locks to convert the original open tidal basin into a wet dock. The stonework still bears the groove marks worn by the ropes. Masons’ marks – mostly in the form of an initial letter – are visible on many of the stone blocks. Other features include the rollers set within fine arched chambers which held ropes to open and close the dock gates.

The dock gates and a wooden tidal gauge have been exposed and recorded in detail. The dock walls have so far partially been recorded by three-dimensional laser scanning which creates a detailed computer model of the walls.

Near the dock the excavation has exposed the foundations of a series of brick sheds along the quay as well as extensive cobbled yards and road surfaces. Two small square pits, lined with plaster, may have been tanks to hold water for the hydraulic systems or steam engines in the dock area. A brick engine house has been identified and the settings for cranes and other machinery.

One interesting find has been a dump of broken sugar moulds. These provide a direct link to two of the major industries of Liverpool: pottery manufacture and sugar refining. These pottery vessels, made in a smooth red earthenware, were probably made in Liverpool by one of the numerous potteries in the town. In shape they are a rounded cone with a small hole at the narrow end. They were used to refine sugar imported from the Caribbean and elsewhere. The mouth of the sugar cone was set over a pottery jar to collect the molasses that slowly drained out of the sugar during refining.

We have a good idea of their date as they were dumped in the land-fill which was deposited to reclaim this part of the Mersey in the period 1796-1801. At that date, the sugar was processed from the products of plantations which were worked by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

This was a story which I, Stephen Guy, worked on as a young journalist.

In 1971 divers from a sub aqua club discovered by chance a remarkable wreck near the Skerries, a treacherous group of rocks off the north coast of Anglesey. Scattered over the seabed was all that remained of a ship that once carried the highest in the land – Britain’s first Royal Yacht, the Mary.

She was presented to Charles II by his allies the Dutch in 1660, the year he came to the throne. Britain had been in the grip of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell since 1649. With the return of the monarchy, popular Charles and the people wanted to party. Bright colours replaced the drab hues that had dominated the Commonwealth world.

The Mary reflected the mood of the age. Her cabins were decorated with gold leaf. Her furniture was made from the finest leather and her figurehead was a unicorn. Charles used her for racing and later she was given to the Royal Navy to transport the great and the good. Not only was the Mary the first yacht outside Holland but she was the ancestress of the thousands of racing yachts and sailing dinghies sailing around Britain today.

Disaster struck in 1675 when she was wrecked on the Skerries, a notorious graveyard for ships. A total of 39 passengers and crew survived – 35 died, including the Earl of Meath. Survivors huddled two days on the rocks before being rescued.

Merseyside Maritime Museum supervised the salvage of items from this important wreck. A gold signet ring with an unidentified coat of arms was worn on the finger of a noble victim who perished in the cruel seas. A silver sword guard is all that is left of a deadly weapon once wielded with great skill. A large pewter plate with the crest of Charles II may have been used by the captain, William Burslow, who died trying to save Lord Meath. The pewter chamber pot was used by the upper classes – the common sailors relieved themselves over the side. A silver porringer bowl for drinking hot, spiced beverages is also in the collection with other silver items such as coins, a spoon and an ornate lion’s head which once graced the handle of a walking cane.

There's more on The Mary, and this model in particular, on our main site.

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

They may not be the most glamorous of ships but I, Stephen Guy, have a soft spot for the dredgers which play a vital role in keeping ports open.

In the Port of Liverpool an incredible three million tons of silt is removed by dredgers every year from shipping channels and docks. The silt is taken to specially-designated spoil grounds out to sea well clear of the Mersey Bar.

Two modern dredgers, the Mersey Venture and the Mersey Mariner, now perform this task.

Dredging the Mersey started in 1890 to counteract the increasing problem of silt deposits in the port, especially in the vicinity of Askew Spit at the entrance to the Mersey estuary. Two hoppers equipped with sand pumps set to work at the Bar. During the first 10 months of dredging, 350,000 tons of silt was shifted.

The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board then decided to build larger dredgers including the 300-ton Brancker which started work in 1895.

Improvements to the port channel through dredging - together with better facilities at the Prince’s Landing Stage and neighbouring Riverside Station - placed Liverpool in a good position to maintain her hold on the north Atlantic liner trade. Liners and other ships continued to grow in size.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there are several models and photographs linked to dredging. Am impressive10 ft long model of the Leviathan (shown) gives some idea of the huge capacities of dredgers. Built by Cammell Laird’s, she was a familiar sight on the Mersey between 1909 and 1963 when she was scrapped. The 465 ft long Leviathan was fitted with a triple-expansion steam engine and could carry 10,000 tons of sand. The machinery used in removing silt is shown in great detail including four huge sand pumps that were lowered to the riverbed.

Not all dredgers work in the approach channels. Another method of removing silt was employed by the Mersey No 26 of 1948, a grab hopper dredger. A model at the Merseyside Maritime Museum shows her with three cranes which scooped up the silt. Mersey No 26 was designed to work within the confines of the dock system where silt, brought in each time the dock gates open, has to be cleared regularly. She used crane grabs rather than buckets or suction pumps, and took 1,350 tons of silt to the spoil grounds before opening the doors of her bottom to dump the load.

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

Curator Alan Scarth is about to unleash not just one but three international disasters in a national museum. If I had done that I'd probably make a dash for the airport as fast as my little legs could carry me. Luckily for Alan though, it's all in a day's work for him, which is why he looks so cheerful in this photo. You see, Alan is the curator behind the new gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Museum about a tragic trio of ships - the Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress.

The gallery highlights the poignant stories of many of the people involved in the disasters, including new research into local connections. Many of the crew who perished in the tragedies were either from Liverpool originally, or had moved here looking for work on the ships. The Lusitania sinking for example devastated the tight-knit dockland communities in north Liverpool, where most of the crew lived.

Of course, lots of the museum's popular exhibits are also on show. Have a sneak preview at the new zoomable photo of the Titanic model on the website. 

You can see the gallery when opens to the public this weekend, on Saturday 10 February.

This little-known story of the Great War conjures up dramatic pictures for me, Stephen Guy. The sight of two luxury liners battling it out must have been amazing.

The 19,524 ton luxury liner Carmania sank the German liner, Cap Trafalgar, earning a unique accolade in the First World War.

The historic engagement took place off the southern coast of Argentina in September 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war.

Requisitioned by the Government and converted into an armed merchant cruiser, the 675 feet long Cunarder, Carmania was one of the few ships to make good use of this role change. She intercepted Cap Trafalgar, a Hamburg-Amerika liner before the war but now also converted and armed. The two ships pounded each other with shells. Carmania was struck 79 times and her bridge caught fire but she was able to give as good as she got.

Following an hour of fierce fighting Cap Trafalgar developed a list and went to the bottom. This was the only occasion when one liner sank another in battle.

Carmania was later escorted to Gibraltar where she was repaired in dry dock. She later patrolled the coast of Portugal and the Atlantic islands before taking part in the Gallipoli campaign. In 1916 she was returned to Cunard and acted as a troopship between Liverpool and Halifax, Nova Scotia, along with her sister. After the war the two ships were used to return Canadian soldiers home.

Cunard liners Carmania and Caronia (1905) were identical apart from their engines. Carmania was powered by newly-invented steam turbines while Caronia had traditional reciprocating engines. The success of Carmania’s turbines led directly to the building of the Lusitania and Mauretania and put Britain back at the forefront of marine design.

Carmania operated between Liverpool and New York and the Mediterranean in winter. She carried 300 First Class passengers, 350 Second Class and some 200 others, mainly emigrants travelling westwards in Third Class and Steerage.  She had major refits in 1920 and 1923 before the economic depression following the 1929 Wall Street Crash made times hard for shipping companies.

Carmania had become outdated and more modern ships were around to take her place. She was withdrawn from service in 1931 and later sold for scrap.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a fine 10 ft long model of Carmania (shown) with painstaking detail right down to the rigging and lifeboats.

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

The Great Eastern was the wonder of the age when she was launched in 1858 and for me, Stephen Guy, this is one of the great stories of the sea.

There had never been a ship of this length and size – an amazing 692 feet long. The immense 18,915 ton vessel was not equalled for almost 40 years.

Great Eastern was designed by the visionary engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 – 1859). The stress and strain probably killed him.

With her four towering funnels and six huge masts, Great Eastern was to be dogged by misfortune throughout her 30 years in a world not yet ready for such giants.

An incredible six times larger than any ship ever built, she was originally called Leviathan. Her launch was an epic feat, taking three months to complete after she became stuck on the slipway. Then the money ran out.

During sea trials a huge explosion sent a funnel shooting into the air like a rocket. Scalded men ran screaming from below decks – one leapt over the side and was mangled up by the paddle wheels.

People must have been wary of the vast ship because Great Eastern was nearly empty when she made her maiden voyage to New York in 1860. She never carried her full compliment of 4,000 passengers.

Great Eastern successfully laid transatlantic cables before ending her days on the River Mersey as a vast floating advertising hoarding for Lewis’s department store. There was a public exhibition on board and attractions such as trapeze artists in the rigging.

As a girl of 18, my grandmother, May Kendrick saw her many times and the extraordinary sight remained with her always. Great Eastern was scrapped at Tranmere in 1888.

Mythical stories relate how one or two skeletons were found in the double bottom. One version says they were a riveter and his apprentice, another that it was a man with a bag of gold!

There is a model of the Great Eastern at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. Also in the collection is a section of the ship’s transatlantic cable.

Relics of the Great Eastern include a meat dish decorated with a picture of the ship, a silver-plated coffee pot and a candle lantern. An ibex horn is inscribed with a view of the floating colossus.

If you've not already seen it following the link at the top of this post, you should check out this photograph of the Great Eastern, which is part of our Maritime Archive photography collection.

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

Coming in on the ferry this morning, I couldn't help wondering what the Liverpool skyline would look like if Lutyens' Cathedral that never was had actually been built. It's hard to imagine something that big towering over everything around it.

The new Museum of Liverpool is another significant building that at the moment only exists as a model. However, it took a step closer to becoming a reality yesterday, when the HLF announced that a major grant has been earmarked to support the fit-out of the new museum. Read more about HLF announcement in our newsroom.

How long would you spend getting ready for an evening event at the Walker Art Gallery? A few hours perhaps? How about thirteen years? That's how long it has taken to conserve the huge and intricately detailed Lutyens cathedral model pictured here. However, everybody who attended the preview of the exhibition The cathedral that never was yesterday evening agreed that it was time very well spent, as the model is truly breathtaking.

I managed to pin down four of the conservators who worked on the model, David Parsons, John Whitehead, Chris Moseley and Bernie Morgan, at the end of the evening for this photo. You can see the whole team of ten conservators involved in the project and behind the scenes pictures of them at work in the Lutyens cathedral model image gallery.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't a real cathedral and maybe there wasn't a beanstalk in sight. In reality conservators have been busy working on our huge model of Lutyens' Cathedral, David Parsons is pictured here adding some finishing touches. Discover more about the story behind the cathedral that never was at the Walker from this Saturday.

Conservators are busy constructing the enormous model of Lutyens' cathedral at the Walker Art Gallery. Pictured are the three sections of the dome waiting to be the crowning glory of this amazing architectural model - and you thought Blue Peter's Tracey Island was impressive! The exhibition, The Cathedral that never was opens on 27 January, I'll be keeping you updated on the model's progress.

Good news for everyone who has missed the old Floating Palaces gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, which closed for refurbishment in the autumn. A brand new gallery featuring the Titanic, Lusitania and Empress of Ireland disasters is currently being installed on the first floor of the museum. It has now been confirmed that the gallery will open on Saturday 10 February.

Being a nosey type of a person, I had a sneak preview of the new gallery when I was in the museum last week and must say it's looking fantastic so far. When the gallery opens visitors will be able to walk all the way round the Titanic model and see it from all sides for the first time. Most of the other favourite obects from the old gallery will be on display, along with some new items.

One exciting addition will be video footage that Steve Rigby of Warrington, the honorary secretary of the British Titanic Society, took of his submarine trip to the Titanic wreck, two and a half miles deep, in 2001. Visitors will be able to listen to a recording of Steve describing his amazing experiences on the trip.

Audio downloads of the Lady Lever and Walker Art Galleries' December artwork of the month talks are now online.

At the Walker, Curator of British paintings Alex Kidson took a look at Henry Fuseli's 'The Death of Oedipus' (mp3/transcript/links). Fuseli's painting portrays a scene from the Sophocles play 'Oedipus at Colonus'.

At the Lady Lever, Dr Paul O'Keeffe gave a seasonal talk on 'The Annunciation' by Edward Burne-Jones (mp3/transcript/links). Paul discusses buying a bible and concordance, the connections between Eve and Mary, original sin, the V&A exhibition 'Renaissance domestic life in Italy', the model and her famous daughters, the history of the Grosvenor Gallery, Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Patience', Oscar Wilde, William Morris and Clause 8 of the Trust deed of the Lady Lever collection.

Welcome to the first of my online Maritime Tales. In this post I'm looking at CSS Alabama.

The warship Alabama wreaked havoc on the high seas for the breakaway Confederate States during the American Civil War – and she was built in Birkenhead. Alabama sank or captured 67 Union sailing ships and one steamer before the USS Kearsage sent her to the bottom off Cherbourg, France, in 1864.

Laird Brothers built the Alabama for agents of the Confederate Navy in 1862. There was a lot of support for the Confederates in Liverpool because the huge cotton industry had been badly affected by the Civil War. Cotton from the Confederate states was hit and thousands of cotton workers in Lancashire thrown out of work.

The British government had adopted a neutral stance in the Civil War. When they found out where the Alabama was destined, ministers ordered that she be detained in Birkenhead. However, the Alabama managed to slip away, steaming down the Mersey supposedly to carry out engine trials. She made for the Azores where she was fitted with armaments.

During her two-year campaign, she cruised the seas looking for prey. First she created havoc from Newfoundland to the Caribbean. Then she was off the coast of Brazil before crossing the Atlantic to South Africa.

The Alabama sailed the Indian Ocean and travelled as far east as Singapore. She met her nemesis after going to Cherbourg for an extensive refit. Her captain, Raphael Semmes, wanted to stay for several months but the French ordered him to leave. The Alabama went out to meet the Kearsage. The two ships fought while spectators watched from the shore. After being at sea so long, Alabama was no match for the Kearsage and was reduced to a battered hulk in an hour.

There are a number of fascinating exhibits associated with the Alabama at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.  A signet ring bears the name R Hobbs, possibly a Liverpool man who was quartermaster on the Alabama. He was wounded in the famous showdown with the Kearsage. A miniature anchor is believed to be made from brass from the Alabama’s engine room. 
A model of the Alabama has fine details including eight cannons on deck.  The oil painting of the ship by Samuel Walters is also on show in the Art & the Sea gallery.

On our main site you can see photographs taken on board ship, plus there's more about Liverpool's role in the American Civil War.

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

I can’t help thinking that superhero Sportacus from the BAFTA-winning children’s programme LazyTown would be impressed with our LoveSport exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. The exhibition concentrates on encouraging visitors – especially children – to get active and it educates them about the benefits of sport for health.

LazyTown’s Sportacus – who was created and is played by Icelandic gymnast Magnús Scheving – goes one better. Not only is he credited with reducing the obesity levels of children in Iceland, but he has done it without ever mentioning exercise! The idea is that children find Sportacus' heroic flipping and darting around LazyTown so compelling that they decide to follow their role model on the road to fitness. Meanwhile, baddie Robbie Rotten (or is that Rotten Robbie?) is stuffing his face with goodies such as cream cakes.

Sportacus is a total hit with the children, but is also proving popular with the mummies who can’t help but admire the guy’s impeccable physique and mind-boggling agility.

If you haven’t heard about LazyTown before, you soon will. The theme tune ‘Bing Bang’  is in the race for Christmas number one single … and it’s just a teenie-weenie bit annoying. Where’s the superhero that wipes out tacky chart music when you need it?

After looking at Sam's photos of the Lutyens model on our flickr account I came across this photograph recently posted by Andrew Cullen. It shows Antony Gormley's 'Another Place' sculpture on a beach in Belgium shortly before it was moved to its current home in Crosby.

Andrew had made the trip specifically to see the sculpture but arrived too late (the website had the wrong information, would never happen here of course...). Fortunately Andrew was able to see and photograph the sculpture recently in Crosby.

There are thousands of photographs of 'Another Place' on Flickr and you can see a great slideshow of the most 'interesting' photos of Gormley's sculpture.

It will be all go on Liverpool's waterfront over the next few years with lots of exciting new developments planned, including a new canal and of course the fantastic new Museum of Liverpool.

All these changes can be a bit hard to get your head round, so Liverpool Vision have put some very useful information, images and audio visual presentations together in a small display that is now open at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Highlights include a flythrough video display of the Museum of Liverpool and a model of the new proposals around the Mann Island area of the waterfront. While you are there you can get a panoramic view of the site of the new developments from the window of the museum.

You can see the display on the 2nd floor of the Maritime Museum until 21 December 2006.

Chris Moseley, the head of ship and historic models conservation, is shown relaxing after what must have been quite a nerve racking day. Chris and his colleagues have been conserving the model of Lutyen's unbuilt design for Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral for more than a decade. Today the finished pieces of the model were assembled for the first time, to make sure that everything fitted together. Luckily they did!

There isn't enough room to fully assemble the huge model in the sculpture conservation studio, so it had to be put it together in the nearby paintings conservation studio. The model is being photographed there this week, then it will be taken apart again and transported to the Walker Art Gallery, ready to go on display in the exhibition The cathedral that never was in January 2007.

Update 22 November 2006: you can now see a slideshow of photos of the model being assembled on flickr.

You can find out more about the exhibition in our advance news release or read how you might be able to help out with an exhibit.

A few months ago I told you about the new Egyptian gallery at World Museum Liverpool and said I'd keep you up to date with progress. Well now we've got to the interesting bit - the mummies.

Curatorial staff and conservators have been in our stores selecting mummies and coffins to be featured in the new gallery. This image shows a female of about 19 years of age who died during the Roman occupation of Egypt (30BC to 640AD). The contours of the head and body were modelled before the external wrappings were applied and the eyes and mouth were painted on. A framework of palm-fibre tightly bound with linen thread hangs around the neck, threaded with small amulets of wood. They still retain traces of gilding. The ancient Egyptians believed that the amulets were magical and would protect the mummy.

More photos, including a coffin, can be found on our Flickr page. One of the images features Vivien Chapman, head of organics conservation. You can contact her here.

Also, I've been asked to thank Graham, one of our volunteers who has been helping select objects for the gallery. He's been a star.

You may remember that during Architecture Week in June Sam wrote about the incredible Lutyens' model which is to go on display in our exhibition ‘The Cathedral That Never Was’.  Sir Edwin Lutyens' model of his magnificent design for a Catholic Cathedral is to go on show at the Walker Art Gallery. Construction on the actual building started in 1933 but only the crypt was built. The outbreak of the Second World War and the resulting lack of funds put a stop to it.

The National Conservation Centre has taken 13 years to conserve the giant model and this will be the first opportunity to see the breathtaking interior fully-restored.

There are plans to show photographs and memorabilia but there is one key item that we are trying to trace. Keeper Julian Treuherz wants to display one of the tin collecting boxes used to raise money for the Cathedral Building Fund. You can see one of these in the Metropolitan Cathedral crypt – but we would like an additional one to accompany our exhibition.

If you have a collecting box, or any other artefact connected with the Lutyens' Cathedral, Julian would love to hear from you. His colleagues working on the new Museum of Liverpool are also collecting memories and stories about the Cathedral, including the laying of the Foundation Stone and the building of the crypt. If you can help, please contact Julian Treuherz at the Walker Art Gallery, William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8EL.

You can find out more about the exhibition in our advance news release.

The textile conservation studio currently resembles the dressing room of a Paris fashion show, with tall glamorous models haughtily waiting to have their hair and make-up done before donning fabulous designer clothes.

We haven't been invaded by Kate Moss and her mates though, these are actually mannequins that textile conservator Anne-Marie Hughes and curator of costume Pauline Rushton are preparing for an upcoming display at the Walker.

The new display in the Craft and Design gallery will feature designer clothing from our collections spanning the last four decades, including outfits by Andre Courreges, Jean Muir, Bill Gibb, Yves St Laurent, Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney. You can't put frocks like these on just any old clothes horse, so the mannequins have been specially made for the display, each with the right hair and make-up to suit the era that their clothing is from.

If they look this good now I can't wait to see them properly dressed. The new display will open at the Walker in December.

Health and safety officer Colin Parr and Chris Moseley, head of ship models conservation, are pictured overseeing the move of the Titanic model this morning.

The model is shown carefully packaged, padded and protected from the elements (and icebergs) in the large crate that is being lifted by the crane behind them.

Moving it was quite a major operation, which involved wheeling the crated model from its old home in the former Floating Palaces gallery, out of a third floor window onto the specially constructed scaffolding. The crane then lifted it safely down.

The model will go back on display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum early next year, in a new gallery on the first floor about the Titanic, Lusitania and Empress of Ireland disasters.

While sculpture conservation are best known for their work repairing large monuments, they also do a lot of smaller scale, more delicate work. On a recent visit I saw this batch of cast lion heads in the studio. The casts have been made as part of a scheme to restore some of Liverpool's historic drinking fountains, funded by United Utilities and the Liverpool Culture Company.

Conservation technologies have replicated the lion head spouts from the fountains, which was quite a challenge as only the only remaining original head had a broken jaw. A new jaw was modelled, based on old photos of the fountains, then the casts were taken from this.

The original head is shown on the right, held by children from local primary schools at the launch of the project in July. An education programme has involved Liverpool children in a range of projects about the fountains, with some even composing their own 'water music'.

The new casts should be appearing on fountains near you (if you live in the Liverpool area) soon. The Woolton Road Melly fountain is the first of four that are being considered for renovation.  The others are located at East Prescot Road, West Derby Road, and Chapel Street.

Terry Chapman of United Utilities said: "When these fountains were first introduced in the 1850s it was a tremendous breakthrough in public health - and these are beautiful civic monuments in their own right which deserve to be restored."

The project has been supported by the Libraries and Regeneration Departments of Liverpool City Council, National Museums Liverpool, The National Trust and Friends of Liverpool Monuments.

Well, OK, it is just the model of the Titanic (and if you really want to split hairs it's actually the model of the Olympic/Titanic, but that's a whole other story that you can read on the Maritime Museum collection pages).

I'll start again. Justin Garside Taylor, head of industrial and land transport conservation, is shown gently easing the Titanic model up on trolleys, ready to be moved out of the former Floating Palaces gallery and into a brand new display, due to open early in 2007.

Moving such a large and important model is quite an operation. The preparations have involved staff from several different departments, including shipkeeping, the handling team, conservation and maritime history. Once everything is ready the model will actually be moved later this week, depending on the weather.

It's all go at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. The Floating Palaces gallery, which looks at the golden age of travel on liners including poignant reminders of the Titanic and Lusitania disasters, is due to close soon and be replaced by a much bigger better gallery on the first floor of the museum.

The new gallery will explore the story of the sinking of the Empress of Ireland as well as the Titanic and Lusitania, highlighting new research and Liverpool connections. New material on display will include recent acquisitions such as a medal awarded to Able Seaman Leslie Morton, who rescued many of the survivors from the Lusitania. These will be shown alongside existing highlights from the collection, such as the huge model of the Olympic/Titanic.

In order for the changes to take place the Floating Palaces gallery will close on 1 October 2006, so you've got just over a week to go if you want to have a last look around. The new gallery is expected to open later in the year, we'll keep you posted when the date is confirmed.

During Architecture Week, which finished yesterday, I took the opportunity to go behind the scenes and see an incredible architectural model that is currently being restored at the National Conservation Centre.

The model, built in 1933-34, shows the original design for Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral by Sir Edwin Lutyens. If it had been built this cathedral would have been much larger than St Paul's in London and only slightly smaller than St Peter's in Rome.

The vast scale of the project is clear from the huge model, which dominates the conservation studio. No wonder the actual cathedral was never built - only the crypt was completed before the money ran out.

Conservators have been working on the model for a decade to have it ready for display in a special exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery next year. Fully-assembled it takes up too much space, so it will now be dismantled while the final preparations for the exhibition continue.

Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the birth of the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. To mark the anniversary we've produced a trail leaflet showing relevant items from our collections on display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Items include an oil painting of SS Great Britain and an exhibition model of PS Great Western.

I don't know if it's something in the water, but there's some serious artistic talent in evidence in these parts at the moment.

Last weekend saw the last drawing workshop in the Pre-Raphaelites Drawings exhibtion at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Participants, helped by artist Julia Midgeley, spent the day sketching our very own Pre-Raphaelite model, Lisa. You can see some of their drawings in our online people's gallery.

Tomorrow is the opening of Dare to Dream at the Maritime Museum, a display of paintings produced by past and present staff. The organisers, Liverpool Front House, aim to promote the creative talents of the city's working community.

For sheer colourful exuberance though you can't beat the cool art pics displayed on the Little Artists' fridge in the Big Art website. These guys may be too young to enter the current John Moores competition, but who knows what the future may bring. Remember, you saw them here first!