You may well have seen that the Tall Ships visited Liverpool over the weekend. I paid a visit to Wellington Dock on Friday evening while there was still room to swing a cat, but missed the Parade of Sail on Monday as I was here in work (boo!) Luckily (and lucky) other staff saw it though and took plenty of fab snaps. There's a selection on our flickr page (the slide show is here), taken from the old pilot's platform at the Pilotage on Liverpool's waterfront, including this one of a helicopter over the Brazilian entry with Cammell Laird's in the background.

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.

Basically, we need you to help us to help you. We're developing a new feature for our main site and need to understand how teachers - one of our biggest user groups - would use the system.

We've got well over a million objects in our care, ranging from microscoping plants to ships. Of these collections we currently have about 1,500 objects on our website but want to increase this number substantially. We also want to make our collections more easily searched and to provide much more in depth information, so are creating a single, comprehensive online collections system. We already know that teachers use our website in their work and want the new system to meet their needs as closely as possible.

The questionnaire, which you will find here http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/57097/online-collections, basically asks teachers how they are currently using the site and what features they would like to see. We've given you a bit of a shopping list to chose from plus the option to mention anything we've missed. There are eight questions which should take about 5 minutes. Any feedback teachers, or other learning professionals, could give will help us enormously and will in turn allow us to support you as best we can. I realise we're right at the end of term so any feedback would be doubly welcome.

Any questions just email me using the link below this post.

On Sunday I went with my host Mother, Kalsang, to Swayambhunath, an important Buddhist site to the south of Kathmandu. Unlike Boudhanath, Swayambhunath sits on a hill overlooking the city, so for the first time in a few weeks I got to look up from my text books and have a really good look at the cityscape. Swayambhunath is affectionately known as the Monkey Temple, due to the many monkeys who live in and around the stupa. I’d been warned that these monkeys could be pretty mean and vicious, but the monsoon rains seemed to have dampened their spirits as they just watched as we climbed the steps to the smaller hill that sits to the west of the main stupa. This site holds a smaller shrine to Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning, and while Kalsang had her reasons for visiting the shrine I also had high hopes that Saraswati would give me a little helping hand with my Tibetan studies.

We were there for a very particular reason: Kalsang had read the Tibetan calendar and consulted her Lama, and Sunday the 13th was a very good day for dedicating a series of prayer flags that she had bought. As the rain started to pour, Kalsang wrote her family's names (including mine) on a series of white silk scarves called Khatas. The khata is an important part of Tibetan culture, given as offerings in the gompas and stupas and also as gifts between people. Once all the names were written, each scarf had a small prayer said when it was placed on the forehead and then each was tied to a series of prayer flags.

Once the prayer flags were ready, the boys and men working at the stupa nimbley climbed the many trees to find a good place to attach the flags, so that their prayers could be sent out into the world. Kalsang gave offerings of juniper twigs to the stupa fire and recited a small mantra, to ensure the prayer flags' success. Finally, handfuls of tsampa (roasted and ground barley flour) were offered and thrown into the air.

Athough, the rain poured down, and it was unusually cold, Kalsang was happy with the day and was sure the prayer flags had been successful. I think she was right as my reading has really improved this week.

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.

Hello there.

Well I visited Ireland for the second time this year but this time the South, Dublin to be precise. It was for WAC-6  which I know sounds like a 60s TV space drama but it is in fact the World Archaeological Congress. In fact come to think of it some of you might be wishing I was now going to talk about a 60s TV space drama! If not, keep reading. 

Now at first you might be thinking what is the connection between archaeology and museums? Well in the case of the International Slavery Museum we believe that archaeological research can help us further understand what life might have been like on some of the many plantations in the Americas. For instance within the Enslavement and Middle Passage Gallery we have a replica of a plantation in St Kitts where Dr Rob Philpott, Head of Archaeology here at NML has carried out fieldwork for a number of years.

I was part of a session on 'Archaeologists, Museums, Monuments and Anti-Monuments' (academics love long titles!) which I co organised with some old friends from the US, Professor Bob Paynter from UMASS and Dr Warren Perry from CCSU. I met Bob and Warren in 2002 when I was researching for my PhD in Archaeology. Bob has worked on the WEB Du Bois boyhood site for a number of years. Du Bois was a major figure who wrote The Souls of Black Folk a classic work of American literature and is quite rightly on our Black Achievers Wall. I visited a number of African American archaeological sites when I was over there; including the African Burial Ground in New York City which Warren worked on as did another session participant Michael Blakey.

I have to say that the session went really well (no heckling or people falling asleep is a good start in my book) and included some fascinating papers. One was given by Daryle Rigney, Yunggorendi First Nations Centre, Flinders University with the interesting title - 'Encountering the Common Knobby Club Rush: reconciliation, public art and whiteness'. For those of you like me who are not experts on Australian plant life a knobby club rush is a plant which grows along the coastline and was used in the paper to symbolize how indigenous cultures, like this resilient plant, did not break under the force of the prevailing wind, in this case represented by European settlers and their early encounters with the indigenous population, in an already occupied land. Truly fascinating. Another interesting few days in a consistently interesting job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, tomorrow I'll start my third week at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute, where I'm studying the Tibetan language. Classes are really hard work, but although progress is slow, I was actually able to understand a little bit of a conversation I heard on the street today so something is sticking!

Here's a little insight into my day.

I get up at 4.30am every day (weekends included) and go with my host Mother, Kalsang, to do Kora, which means to circumambulate (go clock-wise) around the large stupa at Boudhanath, which I showed you last week. I go for the exercise rather than to build up merit, but there is a good mix of people jogging, walking and prostrating at this time in the morning. After a hour taking the circuit, we meet up with Kalsang's friends and go to a local tea shop for sweet tea or jhar and to catch up on the local gossip. The women talk quickly but I'm slowly picking up the odd words.

We're back home for 7am, I have breakfast, do a little bit of study and then off I go to school for 8am. Classes are very intense. In the first week I had to learn the alphabet and the many changes that happen to the sounds of words once another letter is put in front or behind it. I'm still getting to grips with this and I hope that the extra classes I'll be fitting in from next week will help me get this straight in my mind! The unique thing about the school is that for two hours a day we get to practice our Tibetan language skills, one-on-one with Tibetans. This is an amazing experience which allows you to pick up pronunciations and changes in tones much easier.

This image shows part of my route to school. You can see the stupa in the background.

Classes finish at 1.30pm, but that's not the end of the school day. We have homework everyday and there is plenty to go over from the day's lessons.

On several days during the week, there are 'load-sheddings' across Kathmandu, which basically means that the electric power goes out across Boudhanath for a couple of hours. This is done for all sorts of reasons, to stop the system over-loading, but it means that study is pretty impossible after 7pm, so it's often an early night ready for my 4.30am start the next morning.

I am loving every minute of it, but without a doubt this is the hardest thing I have ever done!

More later in the week, homework permitting!