National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, March 08, 2007

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.