National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, June 04, 2007

(l-r) Jenni Whiteside from Lady Lever, award-winner Lynn Taylor, and Big Art marketing officer, Sam Vaux.

A few weeks ago I told you we had been nominated in two categories at the The Mersey Partnership 2007 Tourism Awards. Well, we're pleased to report that we won, and in both categories.  'Big Art for Little Artists' won in the 'Large Visitor Attraction' category, and Lynn Taylor from the Lady Lever Art Gallery won the 'Outstanding Customer Service' category. Obviously we're pretty chuffed with both awards and proud of Lynn's individual achievement.

More on the awards can be found on the icLiverpool website.

The Laird shipyard in around 1840

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.

I really like this photo of the grand interior of Liverpool's Empire Theatre from the latest Entertainment-themed online exhibition of pictures from the Stewart Bale archive. They sure don't make them like they used to. I'm sure I once read somewhere that it was the largest theatre in the country outside of London, but I'm not sure if that's still true, or if it ever was, and can't be bothered looking it up.

It certainly is big though, and when I have found myself sat in the seats at the very back, where this photo was taken from, I have usually splashed out on some opera glasses to get a better view. There's no need for opera glasses to get a better view of this photo though, as you can zoomify the Empire Theatre stage online. If only you could use zoomify in real life.

This is the third monthly Stewart Bale online exhibition, following one on the theme of the Liverpool Blitz last month and the waterfront, docks and shipping the month before.

Here's a few progress images from work on the International Slavery Museum which will open in August. The other images are on our Flickr page and include the Igbo compound in the west gallery.

the outer wall of the Middle Passage immersive

This image shows the Middle Passage immersive in the middle gallery. You can see its curved outer wall - there are two walls which form almost a peanut-shape which you go inside. The text on the wall,  in case you can't read it, says:

My hopes of returning home again were all over.
Cuguana, 1787

dis poem
shall speak of the wretched sea
that washed ships to these shores
of mothers cryin for their
young swallowed up by the sea.
Mutabaruka, 1985

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.

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.

Dinky Toy model of Cunard White Star Liner, Queen Mary, set number 52. Lid on left, background of New York skyline behind model inside the box. Accession number MMM.1990.13.24

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.

Clare Hamilton's Sunday programme came from the newly-reopened Sudley House. You can catch it on BBC Radio Merseyside's 'listen again' facility. Featured are decorative arts curator Robin Emmerson, talking about the history of the house and the Merchant Palaces exhibition, and George Holt (aka Paul O'Keefe) taking about his life and collection.

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.

The Berengaria undergoing conservation work. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

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.

I haven’t posted for a while, mainly because I’ve busily working on the web pages for our forthcoming exhibition, Out of this World: The Art of Josh Kirby  before I go off on maternity leave. The pages aren’t ready yet – but in the spirit of the current Star Wars 30th anniversary celebrations I thought it would be good to share this spectacular artwork. Many of you will know Josh for his work on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, but did you know that in 1983 he also created the original artwork for a ‘quad’ format poster for the British release of Return of the Jedi?

Return of the Jedi. Finished artwork for quad poster, 1983. Used with the permission of the Trustees of the Josh Kirby Estate.

Now I’m no expert, although like many of my generation, the Star Wars theme still brings a nostalgic tear to my eye. But I'm reliably informed that this particular image is pretty special, as it is one of very few that features the Royal Guards (red gowns, upper right), Boushh (masked, lower right) and Boba Fett (masked, firing weapon, far left). The poster was painted for Feref from an Eddie Paul design to promote the film in Britain.

Josh Kirby also has one or two other surprises up his sleeve (do the names Monty Python or Alfred Hitcock mean anything to you?) so don’t forget to check back  when the exhibition opens on 15 June or bob along to the Walker Art Gallery for a closer look.
 

The Sawfly

Guy Knight at World Museum Liverpool has sent me more photos from the fieldwork the entomology team are conducting at Smardale Gill National Nature Reserve in Yorkshire. You can see them all on our Flickr page. One of the more exciting finds so far has been the sawfly Macrophya albipuncta (left), known from few localities outside Scotland. There's a bit more on the research in this previous post.

Guy also thought like-minded people might be interested in the Tullie House Museum virtual fauna website.  There is a new area of the site linking the museum's collections with the wildlife records database, so you can examine their insect collections, with details of over 25,000 specimens available so far.

Helmet worn by a hoplite soldier

Well, we might as well be honest about it! Apparently there's a football match of some sort tonight - I wouldn't know, I only have eyes for Everton - and curator Ashley Cooke thought it appropriate to wheel out something vaguely Athens-related for the occassion, so here goes. Actually, we do have a pretty substantial Greek collection so this post isn't entirely without its merits.

This helmet is bronze and dates from around 460BC. It was beaten from a single piece of metal into a pretty distinctive style, and would have been worn into battle by a heavily-armed solider, known as a hoplite soldier. This hoplite soldier was from Corinth, a city state nestled between Athens and Sparta. During the fifth century BC the city states of Sparta and Athens were at war with each other and Corinth fought with Sparta against Athens, so there's a good chance this helmet was worn in a battle against Athenians.