National Museums Liverpool Blog - Wednesday, March 19, 2008

I was very inspired after going along to the launch of Liverpool Reads at The Bluecoat recently. It was an event that was made even better as we were the first public to see the new gallery before it opened to the masses!

2008 is the National Year of Reading and Mal Peet is this year's Liverpool Reads author.The books chosen are 'Keeper' and 'Tamar', which are being given away for free all over the city right now, in libraries and other outlets.

Jane Davis (left) and Bea Colley (right) from Liverpool Reads and author Mal Peet (centre) at The Bluecoat.

'Keeper' tells the story of El Gato - the Cat - the world's greatest goalkeeper - and how he, a poor South American logger's son, learns to become a World Cup-winning goalkeeper so good he is almost unbeatable. 'Tamar' is a story of espionage, love, jealousy, and tragedy set in Nazi-occupied Holland and appeals to all ages.

Liverpool Reads are also hoping to bring groups of young people to Merseyside Maritime Museum and the Pier Master's House, so they can learn more about people's experiences in the Second World War, that they will have read about in 'Tamar'.

Mal talked about how important he thought it was for parents to read to their children, to inspire imagination and to create a bond. It was great to hear someone speak so passionately about the power of books.

The second of Samantha Parker's Museum of Liverpool progress videos is now available on the Liverpool Echo website. Fills you in on the progress with the steel structure, the next stage of the build and the view from those big windows at the end of the building.

National Museums Liverpool will be on put on the map during Liverpool's first annual Open Culture Easter Egg Hunt. You can join in and explore the city's cultural hotspots in pursuit of hidden treasures around ten locations, inlcuding some of our venues.

This could be yours...

Submit your completed form to Open Culture when you have solved all the clues for a chance to win the grand prize - a silver egg worth £1000!

Registration for your treasure map is on a first come first served basis and there are limited numbers, so email info@culture.org.uk for more information or go to the Open Culture website.

Margaret Scobie's scrapbook

I always think of Easter in terms of crowded church services, frolicking baby lambs, daffodils and chocolate eggs – it is not a festival which has any obvious seafaring links. Easter is traditionally a time for relaxation and leisure activities but for centuries seafarers would have seen little difference from one day to the next during the days of sail. Pursuits such as model-making and perhaps art work including scrimshaw had to be fitted in during quiet periods.

A cultural change blew in when steam supplanted sail on merchant ships criss-crossing the world as the British Empire reached its zenith. By the 1880s steam ships had largely taken over from sailing ships in the British merchant fleet.

Eventually the steamship era brought better conditions for most seafarers. Only the firemen and trimmers, who kept the ship’s furnaces supplied with coal, continued to work in particularly harsh and unhealthy conditions. Their salvation didn’t come until after the Second World War when oil replaced coal as fuel on most ships.

However, leisure facilities for seafarers on most ships were very limited before the 1950s. Officers and ratings relaxed by reading, writing letters home or playing cards, chess or similar games. Smoking was very popular but alcohol was strictly controlled.

On both passenger and cargo ships, crews often organised elaborate Crossing the Line ceremonies for their own and passengers’ amusement when ships passed over the equator. Boxing matches were also popular.

By the 1950s and 60s better facilities were gradually introduced. These included recreation rooms, film shows, deck tennis, bars and swimming pools. A large ship might also provide gym facilities and a separate TV lounge.

Exhibits in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery include items used by Dorothy Scobie, of Liverpool, who joined Cunard White Star Line as a stewardess in 1939. After serving with the Royal Navy during the Second World War, she rejoined Cunard. From the 1950s until her retirement in the 1970s, Dorothy worked with Ellerman Lines and Belfast Ferries. On display is an embroidered scrapbook cover (shown) made by Dorothy while at sea during the 1950s plus three sketches made by one of her shipmates and kept in her scrap book.

A model of the Atlantic Conveyor, the well-known container ship built in 1985, gives an idea of the scale of this vast vessel. She has a crew of just 18 and the leisure facilities on board surpass anything available 50 years ago. These include an indoor swimming pool, sauna, cinema, sports room, TV and video/ DVD library room and even a conference room.

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

School Champions in the Liver Building

Here's the latest report from our School Champion Charlotte Osborne from St Margaret Marys Junior School, who has been on a visit to check on progress with the new Museum of Liverpool and explore some of the city's famous waterfront.

"I really enjoyed our second champions visit to the museum to learn more about the Museum of Liverpool visit and the three Graces.

We were very lucky to have a tour of the Liver buildings and also visit the Port of Liverpool and Cunard buildings. We all felt really excited inside the Three Graces because not many members of the public visit there!

I concentrated on all the different objects in them and wondered whether any of them would be good to put in the Museum of Liverpool. In the 'Port of Liverpool Museum' there was a marble effect compass and when you looked up the view was really cool! In the 'Cunard Building' there were posters that read 'Cunard to Canada' and many more different posters! In the 'Liver Building' I enjoyed concentrating on the stained glass window. On the top of the Liver Building there was a Liver Bird on each side, one of them looked at the sailors wives and the other looked at the sailors!

We then went over to look at the new Museum of Liverpool with Karen, Dave and Curtis this was the first time we had looked at the building very close up and we are hoping to get inside the building for a tour next time.

I enjoyed watching the slide show of how the new Museum of Liverpool was going to look like, and all the different galleries. Liz asked us questions and I was really excited of how it is going to look when it is finally finished.

In the afternoon we all made a poem about Liverpool and the New Museum with Curtis and mine was about the history of Liverpool and the new galleries in the Museum. I enjoyed doing the creative writing and would really like do it again.

Dave set out loads of objects all about ships and the river and I was really interested in what he was talking to us about and I was focused on everything he was saying! I thought it was amazing that you can measure the angle of the sun from the horizon.
 
Thank you for my wonderful day out again, we are really looking forward to the next time we visit!"

Today many people across Liverpool will be celebrating St Patrick's Day, or maybe even continuing the festivities which seem to have kicked off on Friday evening.

If you are stuck for ideas of a fitting way to spend the day, here's a blast from the past in the form of a handbill from the Museum of Liverpool's collections. It's advertsing a 'St Patrick's Gala Night' held in Liverpool's Rialto Ballroom back in 1939. 

With cocktails, cabaret, dancing until 2am, 'Irish novelties' (whatever that means), a running buffet (for moderate charges) and Ben Reynold's Irish music it sounds like it was a top night. And all for the meagre price of 2/6 - which sounds cheap but somebody will probably tell me that was most your week's wages back then...

Thank you to all the people who have posted comments about their experience of the International Slavery Museum on the Art Fund Prize webpage. It's really good to know that the museum is appreciated by our visitors as well as the judges.

If you've not posted your comment yet, and would like the judges to hear your views before they make their final decision next month, you still have time. Just visit the Art Fund website and tell the judges why you think the International Slavery Museum should win the prize. There you'll also find details of the evening reception we're holding on 2 April.

Can't believe no one's got this yet - thought it would have gone yesterday. The prize in this month's Name That Object game is still not won and today is the last day. This is today's clue - bit of a give away. All of this week's clues, plus the link to enter the competition, are on the Name That Object page. The prize is the catalogue from the recent Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool exhibition.

This month's final clue

Sketchbooks at the ready!

Are you a budding Botticelli, a promising Picasso or would you just like to be able to make you stick figures look less like, erm, a pile of sticks? If so and you’re aged between 11 and 16 then Culture Vultures at the Lady Lever Art Gallery is the place for you. There are still a few places left on this week-long course for young people who want to explore their artistic side running from 25 - 28 March. You’ll get to try your hand at sketching, craft activities and photography all in the inspiring surroundings of the Lady Lever. If you want to book a place call Lauren Gould our Learning Officer on 0151 478 4143.   

I think it’s fair to say we all need a little encouragement to draw out our artistic sides. It took an influential primary school teacher to force, sorry encourage me, to play Joseph in the school musical (Boltonian boys are notoriously tone-deaf) and I’ve never looked back. As my colleagues in the Press and Marketing office will tell you this extensive training has not gone to waste and is regularly demonstrated in the finest Liverpool karaoke establishments.  

Here's what I think is a really rather sad post from John Millard, Director of World Museum.

A press cutting book in the Central Library has revealed the facts.  A seal named Paddy was kept in the aquarium at the museum from 1919 until 1936, and he was probably an Atlantic Grey Seal. 

A cutting from the Liverpool Post and Mercury for 20 September 1933 said…

‘Paddy, Liverpool’s pet seal, lives in the Museum.  He is sleek, intelligent silver-grey creature, spending his time gazing at visitors and swimming round his tank – preferably on his back.

‘He was caught with seven other seals in the North Sea seventeen years ago, but his companions did not survive. When he was presented to the city in 1919 by the New Brighton Tower Company, Mr. Evans, who was to be his keeper, inquired what his name might be.  “Well!” said his late master, “my name is Paddy so you had better name him after me.”

‘Paddy lives almost entirely on herrings.  When herrings are difficult to obtain whitings are substituted, but he does not like them nearly so much.  At 3.30 every afternoon people gather to see him make very short work of 4lbs of herrings...

Underwater Sleep
His coat, which he changes every August, is brown for the first week or so then changes to silver-grey.  Although he does not have his coat pressed, he has it sponged down every morning while his tank is being emptied.  The toilet over he has an underwater beauty sleep of about fifteen minutes.  Some authorities contend that seals do not sleep under water - they should see Paddy.  The extraordinary thing is that he can glide around his tank when it is empty, with a perfect swimming motion.

‘Although Paddy is the very soul of good nature he is not without a little jealousy.  Should Mr. Evans look into another tank too long Paddy makes a great fuss and lashes his water into a foam.  Thousands of children would not consider their holidays complete without paying Paddy at least one visit.’

The Liverpool Post reported the death of Paddy the seal on 17 August 1936 saying…

‘Many thousands of Liverpool people, old as well as young, will be sorry to hear of the death, which took place on Saturday morning, of Paddy the seal at the Liverpool Museum Aquarium.’

Some people have said the seal was called Sammy and back in 1928 a press cutting mentioned Edgar the seal at the museum, but the story of Paddy and his keeper Mr Evans seems to be the most authentic.

Today it would seem cruel to keep a seal in a tank in the museum, but for seventeen years Paddy the seal was a star attraction at the museum.

Joanna Rowlands, Floella Benjamin and Lois Momoh in the International Slavery Museum

If, like me, you were born in the seventies the name Floella Benjamin will evoke happy memories of jolly people, multiple-sized Teds and variously shaped windows… when Opal Fruits were Opal Fruits and Pacers still existed. This weekend my lifelong ambition to meet the lady herself was realised when she visited the International Slavery Museum to give a talk for International Women’s Day.
 
Floella’s come a long way from looking through the round window and has a CV that most people would die for. She’s impossible to define in a word - actress, TV presenter, businesswoman, author, this list isn’t exhaustive. She’s been awarded an OBE, runs her own production company, is a Doctor of Letters, Chancellor of Exeter University and works tirelessly for charities such as Barnardo's.

Floella is pictured here with me and my colleague Lois Momoh in front of the Black Achiever’s Wall, a place on which Floella has surely earned? The list of people featured on the wall is by no means exhaustive, so today I’m launching a one woman campaign to make sure Floella gets a good speck next time the display is changed.

Here's a report from Ann-marie Cassidy, our project worker for engaging refugees and asylum seekers, about some of this weekend's activities.

"Saturday was International Women's Day. This special day is celebrated every year on 8th March. Throughout the world thousands of events are held to inspire women and honour their achievements.

Here at World Museum Liverpool we celebrated International Women's Day with a number of special activities.

We began in the atrium, with an activity called 'Home Sweet Home?' We erected a temporary shelter, which we hoped would represent the shelters often used by displaced people fleeing their homes in times of crisis. We wanted visitors to think about the things that were really important to them, by asking the question:

'If you had three minutes to leave your home, what would you take with you?'

We asked visitors to write or draw their answers on the shelter. Answers ranged from the emotional: mum, dad, dog, rabbit; to the practical: tent, Swiss army knife, torch, matches; to the sentimental: photographs, jewellery. A number of people also said that they would bring their computer games - until their friends pointed out that there would be nowhere to plug in their computer! All in all, it was a very thought-provoking activity.

This was followed by a textile workshop with Maryam Patala, based on the textile piece Freedom - who’s set the borders? (currently on display on the World Cultures gallery). Visitors had the opportunity to improve their sewing skills and learn about the appliqué technique used by Maryam to create the piece." 

You can see more photos of the 'Home Sweet Home?' shelter on our Flickr page.

The old gateposts of Bellefield

Whenever I see an imposing gateway, vivid pictures of vanished villas and stately residences come into my mind. Liverpool is a city of many mansions to this day, but a large proportion have been demolished by developers hungry for their land. Their gateways often remain, leading to nowhere.

A Victorian gateway stands on the fringes of a private park, the only reminder of a strange deserted house associated with doomed vessels known as coffin ships. This was Bellefield, in West Derby, Liverpool, and the owner who laid it waste was notorious shipowner Edward ‘Bully’ Bates MP. He was among unscrupulous operators who deliberately sent their overloaded coffin ships to sea. They hoped the ships would sink so they could make inflated insurance claims. Bates once lost six ships in a year. 

Reformer Samuel Plimsoll fought a long, bitter battle to outlaw this shameful practice. It resulted in the now-famous Plimsoll Line being introduced on ships’ hulls showing they were not overloaded. This law still applies today.

Bates was called ‘Bully’ for good reason as his brutish behaviour was legendary. He was said to have confronted an idle crew on one of his ships. Such was his commanding personality that he intimidated them with kicks and blows until all, but one, ran away. This was a slightly-built shipwright armed with an axe who prepared to defend himself. Bates discharged all the crew except the shipwright, saying: “I like pluck and do not mind being faced”.

Bates bought Bellefield in 1871 at the height of the coffin ships scandal. He planned a side entrance through the gateway which still stands, blocked by railings, on the edge of Sandfield Park. It was never used because stubborn Bates refused to pay the park dues.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a large commemorative handkerchief depicting Samuel Plimsoll in 1875. As a result of his tireless efforts, a maximum loading line on ships was introduced in 1876. The handkerchief includes a map of Liverpool plus contemporary personalities and scenes of Liverpool.

Three cut-away models illustrate how typical cargoes were stowed on sailing ships. Some commodities such as coal and iron were carried loose in the hold. Sugar, salt and tobacco were shipped in barrels or sacks while cotton was put into bales.

What eventually happened to ‘Bully’ Bates and Bellefield? He was expelled from the Commons for bribing the electorate whereupon Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli rewarded him with a baronetcy. Bates died in 1896, aged 80. Bellefield was pulled down and the land later used as Everton soccer club’s training ground.

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