National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, March 08, 2007

Just added another batch of photos to our Manchester Dock photoset on Flickr. Some pretty nice snaps there including this one taken low down in Manchester Dock.

Just got this snap of an event that took place at World Museum Liverpool recently. Students and staff from EMTAS (Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service) worked with artist, Hilary Manuhwa to create this wonderful piece of contemporary stone sculpture representing the theme of 'freedom'. Hilary uses the shona style of Zimbabwe as his inspiration and showed everyone the traditional skills.  I'm told it was a proper learning experience for everyone involved and that they took a lot of pride in their creation.

The finished masterpiece

The sculpture will be on display in the World Cultures Gallery at the museum during Refugee Week (18-24 June) and for the following three months. Then it's off on tour to Salford, Newcastle and Leicester. This session was run as part of our Engaging Refugees and Asylum seekers programme.

PS This isn't be be confused with the other Freedom! sculpture currently at the Maritime.

Gary Sollars in front of his entry in John Moores 24

The extensive listings include free origami cranes at the Artfinder gallery and free sake whilst viewing art at Sapporo Teppanyaki. We don't have access to instant messenging at work, but anyone with a webcam and an MSN Messenger account might be interested in web cam performance art from Transvoyeur (1-4pm). Amongst the artists performing will be Gary Sollars, whose painting 'When I Grow Up I Want To Go In There' was in last year's John Moores 24.

King Canute couldn't stop the waves but at least Crosby has given them something cool to look at as they ebb in and out, with the Antony Gormley sculptures 'Another Place'.

As Billy blogged back in November, the sculptures were on a Belgium beach before coming to Crosby. They were due to move again, but after a huge campaign it was decided last night to let them stay. Congratulations Crosby on this fantastic news.

Read more about the statues on BBC news or have a look at the 'Another Place' slideshow on Flickr to see just why they have been so popular.

The Ghanian flag was put up this morning at Merseyside Maritime Museum, because today is the 50th anniversary of Ghanaian independence from colonial rule. Ghana was formed from the former colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland and became the first African country south of the Sahara to achieve independence.

Fifty years ago the independence celebrations included races in Ghana's capital city, Accra. A surf boat that took part in the races, rowed by a crew representing Liverpool’s Elder Dempster Shipping Line, is now in the museum's collections. It will go on display in the museum's entrance from Thursday this week.

If you are aged between 12 and 17 and fancy yourself as a budding journo then this could be the competition for you. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Parliament’s decision to outlaw Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, National Museums Liverpool has teamed up with international children’s charity Plan UK and EducationGuardian.co.uk to launch a young reporters' competition. First prize is a weekend in Liverpool followed by a trip to a Plan project tackling child labour in Senegal. The deadline for entries is 27 April 2007.

Find out more on the EducationGuardian website.

This wonderful image was taken by Hamish Mackenzie at Plan UK.

I can't believe I've missed it!

'Shaun the Sheep' has made his new series debut today on Children's BBC.

The BBC have put together this behind-the-scenes set of photos, which should appeal to anyone who enjoyed Animated Adventures. Apparently a children's series like this is made at lightening speed compared to feature films like The Curse of The Were-Rabbit ... but it still takes days with the makers averaging seven seconds of footage per day.

Wallace and Gromit's woolly friend looks set for super-stardom - at least amongst pre-schoolers.

BBC School Radio's 'Together' series has created two programmes on the transatlantic slave trade, based on the Slaves' Stories feature on our website. Both programmes feature dramatisations of the experiences of fictional Africans and interviews with museum staff and are aimed at Keystage 2 pupils. 'A Shocking Trade' goes out on Thursday 15th March, and 'Free at last!' a week later. Programmes are broadcast at 3am with each available as audio on demand for the following week.

A Liverpool Slave ship about 1780

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.

The statue of local rock legend Billy Fury, which many people will remember from the courtyard of the old Museum of Liverpool Life, was moved today to a prominent location outside the Piermaster’s House on the Albert Dock.

Rock stars like to make an entrance, so it was quite fitting that the statue turned lots of heads when it swooped into its new location today. I just hope none of the spectators wanted an encore, this would be quite hard to beat!

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.

Archaeologist Mark Adams examines the excavated dock gates

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 Sunday (4th March) staff from our field archaeology team, who are currently digging up Manchester Dock, will be on Channel Four's Time Team, digging at a site in Warburton in Cheshire. That's at 5.45pm, with information on the dig site, finds etc on the programme website later.

Bernard Fallon finds himself on the other side of the lens

Photographer Bernard Fallon's exhibition, which opens at the National Conservation Centre on Saturday, is called The Long Way Home, and he has travelled a very long way to come home for the opening this week. Although he was born in Liverpool, Bernard now lives in Los Angeles, where I bet it's raining much less than it is here today.

His incredibly atmospheric photos of Liverpool 40 years ago are a world away from the Californian sunshine. However, his humourous reminiscences in the exhibition show that it's clearly a time he remembers with great affection.

This afternoon Bernard had a role reversal when photographer Tracey O'Neill took his picture for the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo. He has a packed schedule of press calls and catching up with friends and family over the next few days, but has promised to return to to give a free public tour of the exhibition on Saturday 3 March at 1pm - see the National Conservation Centre What's On page for details. If that's busy he says he'll do another one afterwards as well. Do try to pop along if you can.

Sharon Brown, curator of land transport, catches the train

The Lion railway locomotive, one of the most popular objects from our land transport collection, returned to Liverpool yesterday after being on long term loan to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

Lion became a bit of a celebrity in 1952 when she appeared in the popular film the Titfield Thunderbolt. More than half a century later it's good to see that she's lost none of her appeal and is still making headlines - you can see her returning home on the back of a lorry on the BBC news website.

Unlike some celebrities (I wont be as indiscreet as to name names), Lion hasn't had to resort to major surgery to keep her good looks and combat the advancing years. However, after decades in the spotlight the locomotive needs a bit of a rest and some TLC before facing the public again. So Lion is going to be treated by our conservators before she goes back on display as one of the key exhibits in the new Museum of Liverpool when that opens in 2010.

The 'Community, faith and fair trade'display

You might have seen in the papers over the weekend that 26 February to 11 March is Fair Trade Fortnight. There is a series of events focusing on Liverpool's modern day 'fair trade' status working with faith groups from across the city. World Museum Liverpool is hosting a flag display which I popped in to see before. Pretty spectacular it looks too.  Kids from local schools have create the flags which were inspired by Tibetan prayer flags we had sent over last year when the Dalai Lama visited Liverpool, and they are hung in the same way. If you fancy making your own pop along to the museum this Saturday between 12 and 4.

Then on Friday night local schools will be setting out their displays on what they're up to for Fair Trade fortnight with prizes for the best ones. All good stuff.

An appeal for help from John Edmondson at World Museum Liverpool. Anyone wishing to reply to him should use our 'contact us' system.
Karen

William Roscoe

2008 is Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. One of its oldest institutions, founded by William Roscoe, is planning to mark the event by holding a special reunion of descendants of William Roscoe (1753-1831). He was one of Liverpool's most distinguished citizens and arguably the person responsible above all others for setting our city on the road to its present status as a 'cultural capital'.

Would any of our readers be interested in any of the following?

* Helping to locate William Roscoe's living descendants by researching his family tree
* Contacting his relatives to ask them to sign up for a reunion in Liverpool
* Meeting at the Athenaeum Club, Church Alley, Liverpool to help plan the arrangements for this reunion

If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes' then I look forward to hearing from you.  I am particularly keen to hear from people who can prove they are descended from William Roscoe. Rumour has it there are plenty of these around.

I am not (so far as I know) related to William Roscoe myself. In fact I am Head of Science at World Museum Liverpool, and a member of the Athenaeum. But I want to help our club to celebrate the Capital of Culture year in a way that honours its founder, and also provide a lot of fun for those lucky people who can trace their ancestry back to Roscoe.

John

The figurehead from the Indefatigable Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

They conjure up to me, Stephen Guy, images of a time when ships were like living beings sailing the seven seas. Ship figureheads evoke the age of sail when no ship was complete without a carved figure decorating her bows. They were brightly-coloured and skilfully carved to reflect the names and functions of the ships.

Figureheads have a long and fascinating history going back to ancient, pre-Christian times with their origins shrouded in the mists of time.  Ancient figureheads were looked on as the guardians of the ships they adorned as well as for frightening enemies. In modern times the golden age for figureheads was between 1790 and 1825.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there are several stunning examples of figureheads from this era when Britain ruled the waves. Among those on display is one from the training ship Indefatigable – originally a Royal Naval frigate launched in 1848. It depicts the famous “Sailor King” William IV when he was Duke of Clarence. He is shown (left) in naval uniform with gold epaulettes and medals across his chest.

TS Indefatigable was used on the Mersey between 1865 and 1912 to train boys for the Merchant Navy. The school went ashore and was at Plas Llanfair in Anglesey for many years, closing in 1996. The figurehead went along too but suffered from being out in all weathers. In 1994 four old boys of the school – Harry Traynor, Jim Clark, John Harrison and Alf Eady – began to painstakingly restore it. The figurehead was presented to the museum by the Old Boys Association in 1997.

The figurehead from the Verajean (see her on our Flickr page), a steel ship of 1891, shows a buxom redhead dressed in a red, blue and white formal Victorian dress. She clutches a bunch of red roses to her breast. In 1943 the figurehead was found abandoned in Preston docks and saved from destruction.

A massive white and gold figurehead came originally from the 76-gun warship HMS Hastings, built in 1818 (see him on our Flickr page). It represents the Governor General of India Lord Hastings. HMS Hastings was converted to screw propulsion and came to Liverpool as a coastal defence vessel in 1857.

When figureheads fell out of fashion with the end of sail, wood carvers who produced them turned to other things. Several figures that decorate Liverpool pubs are believed to have been carved by them.

The Verajean, Hastings and other figureheads can be seen on our Flickr page.
More on TS Indefatigable can be found in our archives section.

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

Merseyside Maritime Museum welcomed some very special visitors yesterday - a group of artists who had travelled all the way from Haiti to deliver their latest sculpture. The Freedom! sculpture was made in workshops with young Haitians, led by sculptors from Atis Rezistans in collaboration with internationally renowned Haitian artist Mario Benjamin. Together they made the piece from recycled materials, to explore what freedom and slavery means to people in Haiti today. 

Freedom! was commissioned by international development charity Christian Aid and National Museums Liverpool to mark 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. It is on show at the Maritime Museum until 18 March 2007 as the first stop in a UK tour.

After visiting London, Bristol and Cornwall, the sculpture will return to Liverpool to become a permanent exhibit in the new International Slavery Museum when it opens on Slavery Remembrance Day, 23 August 2007. Did you know that Slavery Remembrance Day commemorates the anniversary of the uprising of enslaved Africans in Haiti, which led to the creation of the first Black republic? Which makes this new Haitian sculpture an especially fitting way to mark the occasion.