National Museums Liverpool Blog - Sunday, November 18, 2007

Volunteers do extremely valuable work across National Museums Liverpool. Jeannie has been volunteering for the Museum of Liverpool since September, and is getting hands-on collections experience documenting a diverse range of items kindly bequeathed by the late John Hamilton.

Jeannie became a volunteer to gain experience and an understanding of the museum environment after completing her University degree.

She says 'The wide ranging items keep the work interesting as you never know what you may uncover next; from evacuation labels and blow torches to French comics! Every week there is something different that develops my knowledge and understanding, not only of John Hamilton's personal history but also that of Liverpool'.

Today we travelled the 80km from Orissa's state capital Bhubaneshwara to the coastal town of Puri, a major centre for Hindu pilgrimage and the home of one of the most distinctive Hindu Gods, Lord Jaganatha; a manifestation of Krishna.

Along the way we stopped at several rural villages, many known to me through the work of a friend Stephen Huyler, a cultural anthropologist who has worked in Orissa with Babu Mohapatra for over 30 years. It was a privilege to see the work of the potters who effortlessly create beautiful water pots and vessels for the Jaganatha temple in Puri. Having dabbled in potting myself I know just how difficult it is to create the pieces that they shape in a matter of seconds.

We then moved on through several villages to the home of Maashri (pronounced Mousey), a 76 year-old woman who is a renowned alpana (floor painting) and wall painter. We were a little too earlier to see her work, as each home in the village had just been freshly covered in a mud/dung mixture ready for the painting that will take place in 10 days time to celebrate the end of an important month of fasting for women. While we didn't get to see Maashri's wall paintings she created a beautiful little Ganesha (the Hindu Elephant God, who is the Lord of New Beginnings), using a rice flour that she trickled into fine lines through her fingers. This practice of wall painting is slowly changing as many homes in the village are now pukka (cement) rather than the traditional chakka (mud/dung), which women are reluctant to decorate as the walls are not able to be renewed with mud/dung plaster once the painting needs renewing. We sat and drank tea and the family asked me many questions about my life, they were particularly interested in my decision to have a career rather than a family. They were also distinctly unimpressed with my style choices as one of Maashri's grand-daughters quickly ran for nail polish and bindis (a small dot that is placed between the eyebrows) to beautify me!

Reluctantly, we moved on to our final stop, which included several stone carving workshops. Here I made my first purchase for the Weston Discovery Centre. I was particularly taken by the work of one workshop, which used the local sandstone used in the creation of the magnificent sun temple at Konarak (more on that later in the week). I picked out a beautiful piece depicting Lord Krishna with the gopis (female cow herders), which is a very popular Hindu story. The work and detail on the piece is exquisite and we discovered that many of the pieces currently in production would be going to temples in the area. I've included a picture of the stone carving workshop, which is a chakka building. 

Tomorrow I will be visiting the bazaars around the great Jaganatha temple, but tonight I will be relaxing by walking along the wide sandy beach, sorry to rub it in as I know it is snowing and bitterly cold in the UK.

I, Stephen Guy, love the wonderfully refreshing qualities of pure water – especially from a natural spring on a hot summer’s day – and can well imagine the terrors of seafarers unable to quench their thirsts.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

These famous lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge sum up the fear seafarers have always had about running out of fresh water.

Captain George Peacock, RN, came up with an apparatus to help turn seawater into drinking water in 1828. There is a contemporary scale model of the device on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum. It was designed to remove the salt from seawater at a time when the lack of drinking water on sailing vessels was a common problem. From 1906, merchant seafarers were allocated three quarts (six pints) of water daily. The scale metal model is inscribed:

“Model of Captain Peacock’s apparatus for aerating fresh water condensed from salt water. Invented by him and fitted on board HM steam ship Echo in September 1828. On board HM steam ship Salamander in March 1833 and on board HM steam ship Medea in Feb 1834.”

Captain Peacock’s apparatus features a crank handle which operated a series of cogs and paddles in the water tank. Drinking water was then obtained from a tap.

Peacock, a prolific inventor, later became master of several steamships of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company of Liverpool. In later life he received a medal from the Columbian Government for his services in first proposing building the Panama Canal.

The display also focuses on sailors’ diet over the years. A ships’ biscuit dates from about 1914.  They were jokingly known as Liverpool Pantiles (roofing tiles) because of their shape and texture. By 1850 tinned food was readily available for use as ships’ provisions and later became standard. On display are tinned codfish, dried yeast and chicken broth manufactured by Henry Gamble & Co around 1850. Nautical cookery books on display include Cookery for Seamen by Alexander Quinlan and NE Mann (1896) and the Nautical Cookery Book for the Use of Stewards and Cooks of Cargo Vessels by TF Adkins (1916).

Before 1900 most seafarers had little choice but to accept whatever food and drink was provided. Their inadequate diet consisted mainly of poor quality salt meat, hard biscuits and dried peas or oatmeal. This led to widespread health problems, especially on long voyages. Surprisingly, salt meat and ships’ biscuits remained standard provisions for seafarers on British vessels until 1957.

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

As you might have guessed we didn't see any tigers in Similipal National Park. However it was a beautiful place to be for a couple of days. We stayed in what was once the Maharaja's hunting lodge (believe me it was not as glamorous as it sounds), which looked out over a clearing and a salt-lick in the otherwise dense forest. At dusk, a herd of spotted deer appeared where they settled for the night and while we didn't see a tiger the deer obviously did, as with night falling anxious barks from the deer on watch alerted the herd to danger. In the absolute pitch black the barks rang out across the clearing, which sent shivers down my spine, and had me heading for the safety of the villa!

Being in the middle of a nature reserve that has no electric light, apart from one solar-powered bulb in the room, when night closed in it really was pitch-black; you literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face. This made for excellent star-gazing. With a pair of good binoculars we could see thousands and thousands of stars and even a planet, but as none of the group are astronomers we couldn't work out which it was. Still it's one of the best night skies I have ever seen.

Apart from the deer we had another visitor, a rice-eating porcupine! Apparently he was a regular visitor to the lodge and the cook there often gave the porcupine left-over rice. On this particular night the porcupine must have been hungry, as he snuck back into the kitchen, pulled the pot of cold rice off a shelf and ran under our jeep to eat it. It meant that we had a small lunch the next day, but hey I wasn't going to argue with those quills. Here's a picture of our rice-stealing friend on his first visit.

So tomorrow we'll be heading to Puri, a major temple town on the Bay of Bengal. On the way we will be stopping at several villages known for their terracottas, wall paintings and stone carving. I hope to find a piece for the Weston Discovery Centre along the way.

While perusing this week's TV listings I noticed that our very own Lion locomotive will be starring this week. Channel 4 is showing The Titfield Thunderbolt at 1.30pm on Thursday 15 November.  I've never seen the movie but apparently it's an Ealing Comedy about villagers taking on the powers that be, who threaten to close down their railway, and the Lion is the star of the show. Plenty of charm and gently humour! I'm told that there's a scene where the villagers get the train down some steps but that a replica was used instead of the real Lion. Sounds like good viewing for a cold afternoon.

Namaste!
I have finally got round to writing up my first few days in India. Minhazz and I gave our keynote speech to the International Folk Art conference in Chandigarh last Thursday, which went well, despite a few technical hitches. We had a good response from the 50 curators and artists attending the conference, but what made the conference even more worthwhile was that several of the artists Minhazz and I are working with on the Collecting Contemporary India project for NML came to the conference to show their work. In the image you can see Montu Chitrakar, a well-known Bengali scroll painter singing the story relating to his communal violence (this is religious violence often between Hindu and Muslim extremistis) in India scroll.

Diwali the festival of Light took place on Friday and as we travelled from Chandigarh to Delhi the whole landscape looked magical as every home was dotted with electric lights and the little clay lamps called deepas that are placed outside the home to welcome Lakshmi the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity. As we came into Delhi station the noise was deafening as what sounded like hundreds if not thousands of fireworks and fire crackers were going off all over the city. The drive to the hotel was a hazy, smokey one, only interupted by the bright lights of the temples carrying out the pujas (blessings) for the festival.

I was laid low for a couple of days with a strange virus (nothing to do with the food), but I'm back on my feet again now and enjoying Orissa. For the last couple of days we've been sight-seeing, guided by a friend of ours Babu Mohapatra, who runs a tour guide business in Orissa called Inner India Tours. He's extremely knowledgeable about his home state and in the past few days we have seen many beautiful 7th-9th century Hindu temples that have strong Buddhist influences in their carvings. Tomorrow we travel to the very North of the state to Similipal National Park, a beautiful reserve home to the elusive tiger. Don't hold you're breath for a photo on the next blog though!

To me, Stephen Guy, the sinking of the Arandora Star was one of the great ironies of the Second World War because of the nature of the tragedy. The Arandora Star was taking hundreds of internees and prisoners of war to Canada when she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of more than 800 lives.

The modified passenger liner had left Liverpool on 2 July 1940 with more than 400 German and 700 Italian internees and 86 German prisoners of war, guarded by 200 troops.  Some of the internees, all of whom were civilians, had previously been held in the internment camp at Huyton, near Liverpool. Internees were mostly citizens of enemy countries who were living in Britain at the start of the war.
Their deportation to Canadian internment camps was ordered by the British Government due to heightened invasion fears following the fall of France and the evacuation of the British army from Dunkirk.

At 6.45 am on 3 July the 15,500-ton Arandora Star was torpedoed by the U47 about 75 miles west of County Donegal on the north west coast of Ireland and sank within an hour. It is believed that the U-boat crew mistook her grey wartime livery for that of an armed merchant ship.

There were more than 1,600 people on board. The shortage of lifeboats, the lack of boat drills and the use of barbed wire around the boat deck all contributed to the terrible death toll. Deaths among the Italian refugees were particularly high probably because many were middle-aged or elderly, housed in the lower parts of the ship and unable to reach the open decks. Italian and German survivors of this appalling tragedy were promptly sent again by sea from Liverpool to Canada. However, eventually the controversy surrounding the sinking led to the end of civilian deportation and helped to change British policy on internment.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a fine exhibition model of the Arandora Star showing her in peacetime livery of white hull and twin red and black funnels. Built by Cammell Laird’s for the Blue Star Line in 1927, she was 535 feet long and capable of transporting 354 first class passengers at a speed of 16 knots (nautical miles) per hour.  She was originally called Arandora and spent 1927- 8 sailing from London to the east coat of South America. She was then rebuilt as a full-time luxury cruise ship and renamed Arandora Star. This was to avoid confusion with Royal Mail ships which typically had names beginning and ending in A.

There is more on the Huyton Internment camp in this Liverpool Blitz interactive, and more on the Arandora Star on the BBC website.

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

On 17 and 18 November Maghull will be celebrating the life and achievements of its most famous resident with the 'Frank Hornby Experience'. It promises to be a weekend of cranes, trains and automobiles, albeit very small ones, with an exhibition of Meccano, Hornby and Dinky toys. All of these were invented by Frank Hornby, the man credited with changing the world of play for children in the twentieth century.

Some items from the Museum of Liverpool's collections will be on display there, including the shop sign shown above which dates from before the Second World War. Curator Sharon Brown, the person behind the Meccano exhibition held at National Museums Liverpool back in 2001, say that the sign is a bit misleading:

"Meccano was mainly marketed at boys but girls loved it too. I had Meccano when I was little and am currently (with a modern set) building a Meccano Ferris Wheel!"

There are seven more Ben Johnson progress photos up on our Flickr page, all taken on 31st October. They include the work just beginning on the Museum of Liverpool, Neptune Developments and the Paradise Street Development. Admittedly none of these developments are actually finished yet but they will be, and so are being included. Ben has been in close contact with city planners and architects throughout the process and is including buildings which will definitely appear on the city skyline, ie have planning permission, detailed architects' plans etc. 

Michael Aspel and some huge white trucks were stationed at St Georges Hall on Sunday as the Antiques Roadshow came to town. The broadcasting legend that is Mr Aspel was recording his final roadshow and we were delighted he popped into the Walker Art Gallery and Merseyside Maritime Museum beforehand to record some links for the programme. He had a look at some of our treasures including 'And When Did You Last See Your Father?' and our outstanding sculpture collection. I’ll certainly be glued to the TV when the programme airs in January to see whether the experts uncovered any hidden gems from dusty Liverpool lofts.

All eyes are going to be on our fair city and visitors - along with some superstars thanks to the MTV Europe awards - from all over the world will be descending next year, but does this make Liverpool a global city? A public forum being held at World Museum Liverpool tomorrow night is going to be looking at Liverpool’s status as a global city and what the term really means.

The discussion is the second in a series of public forums giving you the opportunity to comment on the main themes that will be focused on in the new Museum of Liverpool. If you want to have your say or just listen to a lively discussion headed by our expert panel of history lecturers and curators the event runs from 6-8pm – although if I was you I'd get there a bit early as complimentary refreshments are being served from 5.45pm ...

Places are limited so if you want to come along call 0151 478 4543 to book.
 

If you missed the Face of the City drop-in session the other day fear not. Because the session went so well the organisers are repeating the session every Monday in November starting today, 5th and then 12th, 19th and 26th. Again sessions will be held at the BBC Radio Merseyside studios on Hanover Street and will run 10am-5pm.  As ever more information is available on the project website.

This story for me, Stephen Guy, typifies the versatility of Liverpool’s shipbuilders at the height of the innovations of the Victorian age.

The beautiful steam yacht Said was built in Liverpool for the viceroy of Egypt when the country was part of the Turkish Empire. His name was Said Pasha and he ruled the country between 1854 and 1863. Said’s reign was marked by liberal reforms which followed trends in contemporary Europe. Today he is best known for granting a concession to the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps to start building the Suez Canal. Both Said and the Turkish sultan later opposed the plan.

Despite official opposition, the canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea was completed in 1869. It transformed sea travel between Europe and the East. Combined with the American Transcontinental Railroad completed six months earlier, the canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade, speeding up travel times across the globe.

Said tried unsuccessfully to abolish the slave trade which was long established in Egypt. However, there were too many important, wealthy people involved. 

There were successful important reforms in land ownership and taxation. The land reforms supported individual land ownership and reduced the influence of the sheiks who exercised almost feudal local powers. Said imposed direct taxation on big landowners, thus removing a burden which had rested hard on the peasants. Some land owned by the largest landowners was confiscated.

Said was born into an influential Egyptian family in 1822 and was educated in Paris. He joined the navy and became Admiral of the Fleet at an early age.

There is a very detailed builder’s model of the Said on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum. It shows the remarkably graceful lines of this elegant ship which was fit for a powerful potentate. The screw steam yacht was built of iron by Jones, Quiggin & Co of Liverpool for Said Pasha in 1858.

The 230 ft long Said was luxuriously appointed and the 1:60 scale model hints at the splendour of her unseen saloons below decks. Tiny details include her twin-bladed screw. Her 250 hp engines were of the two cylinder oscillating type, geared up to the screw shaft and made by Forrester & Co of Vauxhall, Liverpool. The 891-ton Said left Liverpool for Alexandria, Egypt, in October 1858. She must have made a splendid and exotic sight heading out of the Mersey with her white hull and two raked white funnels flanked by three masts.

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

Many moons ago, when there was still the promise of a summer featuring the sun, Guy Knight in Entomology told us about the fieldwork the team was undertaking in Smardale, Cumbria. Well, the 'field' bit of the work has concluded and now they're spending the winter grubbing through their finds. More from Guy.

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Fieldwork finished for the year at Smardale Gill NNR in October. Despite the poor summer, the monthly visits we made to the site were productive and the winter will be spent sorting through samples back at the museum, identifying specimens and preparing information on conserving insect diversity at the site for our report to the Cumbria Wildlife Trust. Several more pictures from the survey have been added to our Flickr page.

It was good to see large numbers of Scotch Argus and Northern Brown Argus butterfly during the summer. They are the only insects which have been studied in detail at Smardale in the past, where they occur towards the southern limit of their British distribution. Several other significant species have been recorded during the survey so far and we were especially pleased to find the Wall Mason Bee Osmia parietina, a Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species which is restricted in Britain to a handful of sites in north-west England and North Wales.

The team will be returning to Smardale next year when I hope to give more updates on how the work is progressing.