National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, September 17, 2007

The pilot boat, Pioneer

Whenever I, Stephen Guy, get stuck in a storm or in hazardous conditions the words of the Victorian hymn, Throw Out The Lifeline, always come to mind. My father would sing these opening words in similar circumstances. A gust of wind or the start of torrential rain would always bring a “Throw out the lifeline!” from Dad. The hymn - about dark waters, sinking ships and people drifting away – conjures up all sorts of maritime hazards.

Mersey pilots have been guiding ships safely from open seas to quaysides for 240 years from the days when Liverpool was growing rapidly into the Second City of the British Empire. Local fishermen originally acted as pilots to bring ships safely to shore, supplementing their incomes in the process. But a series of fatal accidents in 1765 prompted the formation of a committee of ship-owners and merchants to consider a more formal arrangement.

The result was the first Liverpool Pilotage Act of 1766 which led to the issuing of 50 pilot licences. At first ships were charged according to their tonnage and the distance from Liverpool but from 1797 earnings were pooled and the pilots paid the appropriate share. Captains of visiting ships were provided with the pilots’ detailed local knowledge necessary to navigate in and out of the port.

These were colourful, exciting times in Liverpool and the Merseyside Maritime Museum has a series of remarkable paintings of pilot cutters and schooners in its collections. One of the earliest was painted in 1830 by legendary marine artist Samuel Walters (1811–82) and his father Miles (1773–1855). It shows the pilot boat, Liver, off South Stack lighthouse, Anglesey. This fascinating painting has intricate detail and shows the two pilots wearing top hats and the apprentices sporting red woollen headgear.

Pilot schooner Pioneer, built in 1852, was the first schooner and rigged boat employed in the Liverpool pilot service. This fine painting (shown) is by William K McMinn (1820 –98) and shows Pioneer at the mouth of the Mersey. In an interesting detail, she is depicted towing a punt which was used to take the pilot to the next incoming vessel.

Another pilot schooner was Queen, painted by seafarer artist Charles Ogilvy (1833 – circa 1890). Very few works are known by this talented painter but he is listed in a local 1868 directory as a marine artist. Ogilvy also painted Pioneer, placing her off Point Lynas, Anglesey, where ships travelling from the west picked up pilots. Pioneer was sold in 1879 and she was later wrecked off west Africa.

More about Mersey pilots next week. In the meantime there is a Maritime Archives factsheet on the history of the Liverpool Pilot Service on our main website.

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

There have been some exciting new additions to the World Museum aquarium! Thornback and Undulate Rays have started to hatch and Rachel Ball, an Assistant Aquarist at World Museum Liverpool, sent us the good news...

The aquarium has been blessed this month with several new arrivals. The flipper-flapper (as opposed to pitter-patter) of tiny fins may be witnessed if one looks carefully into our native marine wedge tanks! Baby Thornback and Undulate Rays (or skates) have begun hatching from their large leathery egg cases after a lengthy incubation period of 6-7 months.

One of the new arrivals - a baby undulate ray

The egg capsules were laid in the native marine ‘rock pool’ exhibit in the Blue Planet Aquarium in Ellesmere Port where a successful breeding programme has been established for some time. It is fantastic that we are able to display the hatchlings here at the museum in order to raise awareness of the plight of these fascinating animals which are arguably the most vulnerable of all marine fishes. The UK is home to at least 11 species of egg-laying skates which use the shallow waters around our coast to breed and lay their eggs. They are very slow growing animals which produce relatively few young after taking over a decade to reach sexual maturity. They are thus struggling to thrive under today’s commercial fishing pressure such that the once Common Skate is now considered to be practically extinct from the Irish Sea.

We’re hoping that by successfully rearing these animals in the museum we are not only promoting captive breeding and collaboration between public aquaria but also encouraging visitors to appreciate the wealth of marine life which our coast supports and to take an active interest in its conservation. 

The Liverpool clipper

This weekend sees the start of an incredible adventure for ten intrepid sailing crews as the Clipper 07-08 round the world yacht race sets off from the Albert Dock. This challenging race will take them over 35,000 miles, visiting 14 ports in 5 continents before returning to Liverpool next July.

You can see the clippers in the Albert Dock over the next couple of days while the crews make their final preparations. I went down to check out their colourful new liveries after a visit to the Maritime Museum earlier today.

The Glasgow clipper seems to have been inspired by the Black Pearl from 'Pirates of the Caribbean' - it's looking very sleek now in black and is flying the Jolly Roger flag. I hope that they're not tempting fate and don't attract any pirates (although I may change my mind about that if they're ahead of the Liverpool clipper in the race as I will of course be supporting the home team).

You can see more photos on a Flickr slideshow of the clippers in the Albert Dock.

The Liver Building in progress

Work on the Ben Johnson commission is continuing and I've put a few more progress snaps on our Flickr page.  These new images include the area around Dale Street featuring the Liver Building (shown) and our venues on William Brown Street (World Museum Liverpool and the Walker Art Gallery).

We've been posting images for just about a year now and you can really see the progress made as you browse them (dates are in the title of each).

Exhibitions really do come to life at the Maritime Museum, as you can find many interesting audio-visual displays there, giving visitors of all ages a lively and engaging museum experience. The International Slavery Museum has its evocative and disturbing 'recreation' of the bowels of a slave ship and the Magical History Tour has several displays which help to tell the story of the history of Liverpool. One of these displays is a set of three huge screens, which take you on a journey from the beginnings of the city when King John first established a town here in 1207, right up to the present day. Another highlight is the 'Talking Portraits', three portraits that come to life to tell you about crime and punishment, politics and quality of life during periods ranging from the 13th to the 16th century. One is a lord, one is a wealthy businessman and one is a peasant - so you get a real sense of what life was like from different points of view, along with some great accents, plenty of humour and name calling! Here is a clip of the 'political influence' part of the display - listen out for the bit when the peasant man gets called a worm! You can find the clips of 'crime and punishment' and 'quality of life' on our Youtube profile. If you enjoy the videos, why not send one to a friend?

We're running an online questionnaire where we are asking members of the public to tell us what they think of our website, what they like or dislike, what they'd like to see more of etc. I'll be taking it down in a short while so if you want to comment on the site (either this blog, our main site or any of our other sites) you'd best do it soon.

Either follow this link to go straight to the survey, or go to this page to learn a bit more about it all.

Rachel Swift has spent the last 12 month on an internship at the National Conservation Centre (NCC) in the Ceramics and Glass section. This is a review of her final major activity - a conference in Slovenia.

Rachel Swift with her poster entitled 'Interned?'

The 4 September was my last day at NCC as part of a 12 month training partnership between National Museums Liverpool (NML) and Icon (Institute of Conservation) funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund Training Bursary Scheme.  Having just spent all of last week, 27–31 August at a fantastic conference I am now all inspired and eager to share my experiences. The conference was an ICOM-CC (International Council of Museums – Conservation Committee) Ceramics and Glass Working Group Interim Meeting, held in Nova Gorica, Slovenia which is on the border with Italy. The last working group meeting was six years ago in Finland so it was a great opportunity for a range of professionals involved with ceramics and glass conservation to get together once again and take part in this information sharing forum made up of sixty five delegates from twenty one countries.  In particular it was an opportunity to meet conservators and museum professionals from Eastern Europe who may normally find it difficult to attend such events. 

Twenty three speakers provided a broad range of interesting presentations on technical, practical, scientific and education related topics.  Complementing these presentations were a display of five posters about specific ceramic and glass conservation projects or related work, which provided a colourful and interesting backdrop to the proceedings.   One of these posters (shown) was about the work I have been carrying out in the Ceramics and Glass Conservation section with Lynne Edge over the last 12 months.  My overall aim was to highlight the benefits of work based training by displaying the range of opportunities availed whilst at NCC in terms of bench-based experience, scientific research and internal and external collaborative projects.  The poster was well received with an hour set aside on the Wednesday afternoon to enable authors to answer questions and discuss the projects displayed. 

The hospitality and the welcome we received from the Slovenian people was astonishing with organised receptions virtually every evening at museums across Slovenia with traditional food and locally produced wine.  The museum hosting the event in Nova Gorica, Goriski Musej, had even re-displayed an entire gallery especially for the event.  From a professional point of view attending conferences such as this one is a highly valuable opportunity to learn, to network and to get to know peers in more sociable surroundings.  I would also highly recommend visiting Slovenia.  As a country the size of Wales with a population of 2million everywhere within Slovenia is easily accessible and from what I saw mainly remains truly beautiful and unspoilt. 

Grateful acknowledgements to: Lynne Edge, Dave Flower, NML design department for assistance with production of the poster and The Zibby Garnett Travelling Fellowship, Icon, and the North West Federation of Museums and Art Galleries for funding the visit.

The Malabar. Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post and 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.

Forget Eastenders, Coronation Street and Neighbours, there’s a new soap storyline in town. Take a tour around the Lady Lever Art Gallery this weekend and experience the amazing architecture and collections through the eyes of a Sunlight Soap worker. You can catch our role-player giving a unique insight into the gallery on Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 September at 1, 2 & 3pm. These sessions are part of a jam-packed Heritage Open Day programme happening across our venues. Check out our full programme for details.

Factory girl

Our conservators are highly trained intelligent people who do serious scientific work. Most of time anyway - the other week they spent the day playing with toys. David Crombie explains that it was all in the name of science:

Baby Annabel as you've never seen her before!

"On Friday 24 August, staff from the National Conservation Centre hosted an ‘x-ray your toys day’ as a fun way of showing children how science can be used to examine things and look inside them.

Children turned up with a variety of toys, and we saw Minnie Mouse, Wilma the teddy, and a little lion from the World Museum Liverpool shop amongst others. Some children who hadn’t known about the day had their toys with them anyway, and joined in the fun.

Apart from finding the squashy stuffing inside the lion, (“I think he’s full of beans!” said his owner…) we found that the inside of the head of a Baby Annabel doll was a complicated mixture of wires, mechanics and such like that gave the x-ray image a very surreal ‘android’ look that wouldn’t have been out of place in an episode of Doctor Who!

Inside a little musical bear, meant to hang on a baby’s cot and play a little tune, we could see the tiny clockwork music-box about 6cm long, with its pegged cylinder ready to turn against the tuned metal prongs.  We could even see the word ‘JAPAN’ in tiny letters on the case.

You can see a Flickr slideshow of x-rayed toys from the event here.

We used the new Konica Minolta Regius 190 digital x-ray reader to look at the items, and the digital plate technology means that the process is quick and easy, with no wet chemical processing of x-ray plates needed. This kind of equipment is more usually seen in hospitals, and has been a very valuable asset to the new Reveal laboratory at the centre.

Everybody had a lot of fun looking at the toys, and we hope to run another one in the future, so look out for the National Conservation Centre What's On listings."

Earlier this week in the Time and Space Gallery at World Museum Liverpool, fine watchmaker Christopher Ward presented the first example of the 'C1 Russell' watch to John Millard, Director at World Museum Liverpool, to be added to the renowned horological collection.

John Millard and Christopher Ward with the 'C1 Russell' watch

This exceptional watch is a modern interpretation of the Hunter pocket watch designed by Thomas Russell, watchmaker of Prescot, Liverpool, in the 19th century. It embodies all the design finesse and top quality components of Thomas Russell watches and reflects the historic traditions of Liverpool watch making. Thomas Russell was arguably Liverpool’s finest watchmaker and built a thriving business producing the finest quality watches and clocks, including the celebrated Russell Hunter pocket watch. His fame spread to royal circles and he was rewarded with royal patronage by Queen Victoria. Thomas Russell’s name is synonymous with the Lancashire watch making industry. He remains an icon for watch purists and enthusiasts around the world

It was party time at the Walker Art Gallery this morning as the gallery celebrated it’s 130th birthday. Staff donned birthday badges and enjoyed a slice of cake in honour of the big day.

Named after brewery owner Sir Andrew Barclay Walker who paid for its construction to commemorate his term as mayor of Liverpool, the gallery was opened on 6 September 1877 by the 15th Earl of Derby. A number of events are being staged over the next month to commemorate the birthday, including a special birthday tour and a lecture by former Keeper Julian Treuherz. 

I only hope when I enter my twilight years I look so well. Don’t worry Walker, you’re wearing well … you don’t look a day over 129.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you ...

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.

The model towers over everyone in seven-inch heels

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!

Detail of display of 'Morley' stockings in Henderson and Sons department store window, Church Street, 1949

I've got some good, bad and more good news for you this morning. The first good news is that the latest themed Stewart Bale online exhibition, this month on the subject of Retail, including street scenes and vehicles, is online. The bad news is that this is the last in the current series of six. However, the last piece of good news is that a small display of copy prints of a selection of the photographs will be going on display outside the Maritime archives and Library on the second floor of the Maritime Museum from 1 October 2007.

As usual, I've enjoyed looking at the details of the photos with zoomify, including a mysterious man in a bowler hat appearing from behind a car in front of the Newsham Motor Company showroom and the staff looking out of the windows of the Fruit Exchange.  However the mannequin in this picture from the window display of Henderson and Sons department store held the biggest surprise, as she is wearing a dress made entirely of stockings.

Archivist Anne Gleave, who has done a brilliant job researching all of the fantastic images in the online exhibitions, is already planning another display from the Stewart Bale archive for next year, so I'll keep you posted when the details are confirmed.