National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, December 29, 2008

Jack on a cruise earthenware plaque from 1780

Let me say from the start that I have never been a great one for celebrating New Year. To me there seems to be a lot of phoney emotion around at this time and for quite a few people it’s just an excuse to drink too much. However, it is a good time for families and friends to get together.

New Year and the festive season can be lonely times for seafarers who find themselves in distant countries far away from their loved ones and friends.

Today ships spend little time in port because of the swift turnarounds introduced more than 30 years ago with the arrival of containers carrying cargoes. Few seafarers have opportunities to sample port life. In the past, however, ships often spent several says or even weeks in port. For many mariners, life in port – especially overseas – was one of the main attractions of going to sea and made up for whatever privations there were on board ship.

All seafarers look forward to reaching their destination, particularly after a long and stormy voyage. Ports all over the world - including Liverpool - had sleazy sailor town districts near the waterfront. Many seafarers headed straight for these areas.

Sometimes life in port turned out to be even more dangerous than life at sea. In the early 1800s, press gangs wandered the streets of British ports forcibly recruiting seamen for the Royal Navy. In the 1900s crimps made money by delivering drunken or drugged seamen to ships in need of hands.

From the early 19th century, sailors’ charities saved many mariners from the clutches of the land sharks by providing them with safe havens in port – work which is still carried out today. For example, the Mersey Mission to Seamen has been operating since 1865 (more on them on the Port Cities website).

Floating churches, seamen’s missions and sailor’s homes were established in ports all over the world.

A display at Merseyside Maritime Museum has exhibits reflecting life in port. There is a sailor’s trophy from the 1950s – a red head-dress worn by the waitresses at the Moulin Rouge Club in Recife, Brazil. These were much-favoured trophies among seafarers visiting the club.

There are membership and introduction cards from sailor town clubs around the world in the 1950s.

An amusing decorative earthenware plaque from about 1780 (shown here) depicts Jack on a Cruise while ashore. The smartly-dressed sailor sports a plumed hat, striped trousers and a sword as he swaggers in the wake of a pretty girl dressed to the nines and carrying a furled parasol.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Hello there
Well what a momentous year for the museum it has been.   Where shall I start?  Well how about the fact we have had over 500,000 visitors since we opened, which makes us one of the most visited museums outside of London in a very short space of time.  We launched our exhibitions programme with 'We are one' that celebrated and reflected on the International Slavery Museum's first year and were visited by well known personalities and advocates such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the footballer Lillian Thuram, Doreen Lawrence, Floella Benjamin and the noted academic Eric Foner and a host of other dignitaries.   The year continued as it had finished in 2007 with a high level of media interest from around the world.  Probably the most high profile was a live link from the museum for the Today Show which has over 6 million viewers.  I was interviewed by Al Roker for several minutes so no pressure then!  Thankfully I did not make any gaffs.

Me being interviewed for the Today Show

The museum has been the site of several pilgrimages and has had first time visits from citizens from a plethora of countries from around the world; in particular those from the Diaspora. Not only did many visitors want to visit a museum which focused on one of humanities most heinous acts, transatlantic slavery, but which actively campaigns against contemporary forms of injustice, discrimination and racism.  From the feedback I have personally received, from the thousands of responses left in our response zone area, and the support and interest we have had from some of the leading human rights organisations, we are living up to that objective.

It has also been a year which has had a number of personal high points.  I have been able to attended conferences from Atlanta to Belfast and my personal highlight was the Commonwealth Association of Museums conference in Georgetown, Guyana - the country of my father’s birth.   It is always a pleasure visiting Guyana, a country with unparalleled natural beauty and a rich history but to visit in my capacity as Head of the museum was a very proud moment for me and my family.   In fact, if I had to chose a moment of the year then I would say it was climbing (ok, walking very slowly) up to the peak of Turtle Mountain and overlooking the mighty Essequibo River in the heart of the Guyanese rainforest. 

The museum was also shortlisted for a number of awards which on several occasions we narrowly missed out on.   My own view is that the museum world was not quite ready for a museum which makes such bold statements, being an active and vocal campaigner, challenging contemporary issues.  In time, maybe people will acknowledge this rather than steer away from it.  We are still to hear if we have been successful in being named the European Museum of the Year. The judges who visited were impressed with what we are doing so hopefully 2009 will start with the museum receiving such an accolade.

For those of you who may have visited the museum I look forward to your continued support and hope that those of you who have not feel that 2009 is the year to come to Liverpool and visit the International Slavery Museum.  Liverpool might not officially be the Capital of Culture in 2009 but it is a city rich with culture and cultural institutions on par with any city in the country, London included. 

We are now actively planning the next stage of the International Slavery Museum – a world class educational and research centre located in the Dock Traffic Office adjacent to the current galleries.  We plan to open in 2011 and it will take the museum to a new level.  At times it can be a very challenging job but I would not want to work on any other project.  One that in my view can change the world in which we live.

Bye for now and happy holidays.

A 1950s liner's souvenir shop. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Christmas is, for me, best spent at home but to many people a festive cruise is their idea of bliss. You don’t have to mess about with Christmas trees or decorations, bother about cooking or the washing up. On second thoughts I might try it …

Holidaymakers enjoy sea cruises in warmer climes to escape the cold weather and among the presents they take home are souvenirs from the ship’s gift shop. Cruises recently sailed from Liverpool on a regular basis for the first time in many years visiting such locations as the Canary Islands, Portugal, Spain, Norway, the western Mediterranean, France and Ireland.

There is a souvenir shop display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum featuring some of the items sold on British ships from 1900 up to the present day. They range from cigarette lighters and dolls to books and toys.

On display are playing cards, small construction kits of the original Queen Mary, pens, china and other metal smokers’ paraphernalia includes ships’ crested ashtrays and cigarette cases along with tea spoons. A handkerchief shows the Empress of France while a table mat depicting White Star Cunard’s Britannic dates from the 1950s.

A Norah Wellings sailor boy doll carries the name Lancastria on his cap. The luxury liner completed many cruises before becoming a troopship in the Second World War. She was sunk in 1940 with terrible loss of life.

Bringing the tradition up-to-date, there are souvenirs from Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 (QM2) – billed as the largest, tallest and widest passenger vessel ever built when she made her maiden voyage from Southampton in January 2004. She lost this distinction to Royal Caribbean International's Freedom of the Seas in 2006. QM2's facilities include 15 restaurants and bars, five swimming pools, a casino, a ballroom, a theatre, and a planetarium. The latter is said to have been inspired by the Planetarium in World Museum Liverpool.

For 100 years there have been books of comparisons produced to emphasise the huge size of the liners. The first one appeared in 1907 to celebrate the maiden voyages of the Mauretania and her doomed sister Lusitania (more on the Lusitania on our main site).

The idea was revived in 1936 for the original Queen Mary. The most recent version shows the Queen Mary 2 in imaginary situations. She is seen on the Mersey waterfront where she is as high as the huge Port of Liverpool Building.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Here's a great photo from the Stewart Bale collection. It may look like crowds of Christmas shoppers but it actually shows the very first cars to go into the Queensway Mersey Tunnel on 18 July 1934. After an official opening ceremony the cars took King George V and Queen Mary through the tunnel to Birkenhead.

The photo is one of a series taken by Stewart Bale Ltd which were collected in a souvenir album documenting the day's events. The entire Queensway Mersey Tunnel souvenir album is now available on our website. As always, I've enjoyed using the zoomify pages to have a really close look at some of the scenes - for example you can zoom into the picture of the tuinnel entrance shown here. If one of your relatives was at the opening ceremony then you might be able to spot them standing in the crowd or sitting on the roof of one of the Dale Street buildings. There's one thing that you can't see in the pictures though for the simple reason that it hadn't been built yet - the flyover next to the tunnel. It's quite strange seeing this scene without it.

One of the selection of vintage Christmas e-cards available on our website

I'm getting very excited now that there's less than a week to go before Christmas, especially as I've been fairly organised this year and have sent all my cards and bought or made all my presents already. Can you feel my smugness?

If you're still panicking about Christmas then don't worry, we're here to help. If you miss the last posting date for first class post tomorrow then you could always send a free vintage e-card from our selection from the Decorative Art collection.

Anyone worried about what to do with the family over Christmas may be interested in our programme of free events and activities throughout the Christmas holidays at our venues.

Looking further ahead, keep the evening of Saturday 10 January 2009 free in your diary for the Transition events, celebrating the end of the Capital of Culture in style. The Maritime museum and International Slavery Museum will be open until 10pm that evening with a programme of free entertainment, see our Transition: Liverpool Late Night page for further details.

The fun doesn't end there though as we have lots of great exhibitions to come featuring fashion, Freud, football, French Impressionists and more things that don't even begin with the letter f - see our exhibition programme for 2009 for further details.

And one last thing on the subject of great exhibitions, don't forget to vote for your favourite exhibition of 2008 in our poll.

A five dollar bank note from the wreck site of the Titanic

Movie news is buzzing with anticipation now that Kate Winslett and Leonardo di Caprio are due to be reunited on screen in the film Revolutionary Road. The two first starred together of course in the blockbuster Titanic.

The tragic story of the Titanic has always captured people's imaginations, and many have flocked to see the Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Museum since it opened last year. In fact the popularity of this gallery is one of the factors that has made this a record breaking year for the museum. The millionth visitor to the Maritime Museum is due to walk through its doors today, possibly as I type, making it the first venue in the National Museums Liverpool group to attract one million visitors in a year since the organisation was founded in 1986.  

Even more visitors are expected with the announcement of a new display of previously unseen Titanic exhibits opening today. The exhibits are a five dollar banknote, pince nez spectacles, a White Star Line cup, a lead ventilation grille, a gold wrist watch and five tie pins, all of which are on long term loan to the museum. These personal items are an evoicative reminder of the human cost of the tragedy.

Curator Georgina Young installing the display

The stone cladding on the Museum of Liverpool building is almost complete. On the wall facing the river this morning there was only a small section at the top corner left to do, so from the ferry it looked as if a large monster had taken a bite out of it.

While the construction and fitting out of the building takes place some of the museum's collections have been out 'on the road', with displays of key objects in a variety of locations around the city. The latest object a the rather fancy silver presentation inkstand. It was originally presented to Rabbi Prag, the first minister to serve in Princes Road Synagogue, to commemorate 25 years of his service in 1881. So rather appropriately it is being displayed at the Princes Road Synagogue until December 2009.

Tours of the synagogue can be arranged by appointment only, there are full details on the Princes Road Synagogue website. The tours are recommended by Paul Kelly and Richard Roberts from the handling team and curator Georgina Young, who were shown round after they delivered and installed the display this week.

Detail of the lithograph

If you had a tricky trip to work this morning in the wintry weather then spare a thought for the poor folk on the steamship Britannia on 3 February 1844. The ship became stuck in the ice in Boston harbour at the start of a voyage to Liverpool. Luckily the Boston merchants helped pay for a channel 7 miles long and 100 feet wide to be cut through the ice to free her.

The scene has been captured in a sketch by JC King, which was then turned into this colour lithograph by A de Vaudricourt. The lithograph, which is in the Maritime Museum's collection, is featured in our winter online exhibition of objects related to the cold weather from several of National Museums Liverpool's venues. I've said it before but I'll say it again - possibly the coolest thing on the website.

Yes everyone, it's that time again! The end of the year and time to vote on which exhibition you think was the best from our venues in 2008. Cast your minds back to the dramatic shots of the city from 'Metropolis - capturing modern Liverpool', or maybe your favourite was the 'John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize' exhibition with it's cutting edge contemporary paintings? Here is a selection of some of our exhibitions from 2008 for you to vote on....

If you'd like to find out about our main exhibitions for 2009, then check out the listings page for more details.

If you want to hear an Egyptian Pharaoh telling you about his new fiancé or get the gossip about a runaway Egyptian servant, then check out these videos taken from the new Ancient Egypt gallery. They really bring to life some of the  types of people who would have lived and worked in Egypt at the time. Apparently, the runaway servant in question didn't want to clean his master's smelly clothes anymore, but I won't spoil the story for you!

For more videos including those of an Egyptian priest and a chantress, visit the main Egypt  videos page, where there are also links to transcripts of all the videos.

To view the video subtitles, please select the full-screen option, shown by the four arrows icon. A transcript of this video can be found here.

Hello there

What a few weeks it has been and one with a strong American theme. First of all, as promised, some feedback regards my trip to Atlanta for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database launch at Emory University . The conference was very interesting indeed and had a number of academics, students and members of the public attend. There was a great deal of interest from people in the International Slavery Museum and how we hoped to use the database. The database is the most extensive in existence and includes slave voyages from various countries and ports. Liverpool is obviously central to the database. I was approached by one member of the public who told me that the name Liverpool was given to many enslaved Africans in Georgia to denote where the ship had originally sailed from. I explained I had not heard of this before or had seen any documents but that I would follow it up on my return.

With Kevin the National Park Service guide outside the Martin Luther King Jr birth home, Atlanta, Georgia.

Before I flew back to the UK I managed to visit a number of institutions and historic sites connected to Martin Luther King Jr, who was born in Atlanta, such as the King Center  and his birth home. Along with a number of other visitors I was shown around this historic site by Kevin - a  National Park Service ranger. I don't think people take pictures of him very often as he was 'made up' as they say here in Liverpool.  It was quite moving to be in the house where such a prominent individual was born and spent his early years. But in a sense what was even more thought-provoking for me were some of his personal items on display at the King Center. Such as a denim jacket, small suitcase, shirts, hat and books which he took on short trips to deliver speeches or attend rallies. It personalised this truly iconic figure. 

The week before I had the pleasure of meeting the Rev Jesse Jackson (a patron of the International Slavery Museum) for the second time whilst he was in Liverpool as part of a lecture tour of the North West. Last time the Reverend was here he only had a brief tour of the museum (followed by a mass of media) but this time he was with a small entourage and spent almost two hours in the museum. Whilst watching a film on Civil Rights and Martin Luther King Jr the Reverend turned to me and remarked that he was stood next to the Reverend King when he was assassinated on the landing of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. The site is now the National Civil Rights Museum. 

It reminded me just how much the museum means to people. From internationally recognized individuals like the Reverend Jackson to visitors from around the diaspora and indeed form the local community. Not all museums have the same effect.

Bye for now.  

Regular childhood trips on the Mersey ferries gave me my first taste of the sea even though we didn’t go further than New Brighton. I have never sailed on the high seas apart from in an ocean-going yacht around the Canary Islands - the Isle of Man and Irish ferries are more my style.

The Mersey ferry is perhaps the most famous ferry service in the world – deservedly so because of the dramatic maritime setting of river estuary, open sea and Liverpool waterfront.

The song Ferry ‘cross the Mersey is known all over the globe and is played on the Mersey ferries as they ply their triangular route between Liverpool, Seacombe and Birkenhead.

We have to go back to the 1150s for the start of the Mersey ferries when the monks at Birkenhead Priory would row passengers across the estuary for a small fare. At that time it was a wild and desolate area when the Priory was the biggest building for miles around – there was no castle or tower at Liverpool. This was 50 years before King John granted Liverpool’s charter in 1207. Even then the population never exceeded 500 until the 16th century.

A painting at Merseyside Maritime Museum dates from the era when steam was just beginning to make an impression although sail still held sway in the maritime world. The Rock Ferry (shown here) was painted by leading marine artist Samuel Walters about 1834 (other Walters paintings can be seen on our main site). It gives an insight into the type of craft in use before the advent of steam. Relying upon sails and oars, crossing the Mersey was often unpredictable. The ferry boat in the painting is the James, built in 1826 by Mottershead and Hayes of Liverpool. Walters shows the return trip to Liverpool laden with passengers along with fresh fruit and vegetables from the Wirral.

In the past there were up to 10 ferries between Liverpool and the Wirral – Rock Ferry, Eastham, New Ferry, Tranmere, Birkenhead, Woodside, Egremont, Seacombe, New Brighton and Monks Ferry. There was also a ferry terminal at Garston, Liverpool.

Also on display is a designer’s prototype model of the paddle steamer Alliance of about 1854, showing the dramatic change in ferry boat design in just 30 years. She was later built in Glasgow and served as a ferry on the River Clyde. Unusually, the model has identical stern and bow, each housing a small paddle wheel, with four funnels arranged in a square.

On our main site there are a number of ferry related features including a 1945 photograph of the Royal Daffodil II, a 1959 photograph of the Pier Head and ferry, and an information sheet providing a brief history of the Mersey Ferries.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Rudolf during his Christmas makeover

Since the summer the Superlambanana at the National Conservation Centre has been a Super-lab-banana, complete with a lab coat, goggles and a magnifying glass, ready for action in the working laboratory in the Reveal gallery. This week though he has undergone a complete transformation ready for Christmas, and is now Rudolf the red nosed Superlambanana.

You can see more photos of the transformation, courtesy of Dave Abbott and the learning team at the National Conservation Centre, on our Rudolf the red nosed Superlambanana Flickr page. Dave tells me that just for Christmas Rudolf has found a new home in the window of Café Eros, which should give him a good view as Prancer, Dancer and the rest of the team go past with Santa.

He'll have plenty to do as there are lots of Christmas activities planned over the next few weeks, including carol singing at 10am on Monday, Christmas crafts on the next two Saturdays and Christmas box workshops on Tuesday and Thursday. Full details are on the National Conservation Centre events page.

Rudolf will also be in a great position to try out the brand new menu in Café Eros, so he may put a little weight on over the next few weeks.

Now the Egyptian gallery is open I'll be spending more time in the stores working with the reserve collection. Students and academics from universities use the collection for teaching and research.

One group of students from the University of Liverpool came in this week to study objects from the extensive Roman sculpture collection. The students are reading for masters degrees in the School of Archaeology Classics and Egyptology, which the museum has had links with for over a century.

Apart from examining Roman sculptures they also came to see the replicas we have of Aegean objects. The actual objects are in museums in Greece. Replicas are a good way of becoming familiar with key historical objects that are in foreign museums and is much more instructive than viewing them as photographs in books or behind the glass of showcases. The collection was put together by Professor Bosanquet (1871 - 1935) who taught Greek archaeology at the University of Liverpool from 1906 to 1920 and was the first holder of the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology.

You can see more photos of the Bosanquet teaching collection on our Flickr pages.