National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, June 22, 2009

The first class dining room on the Carmania. Image courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

I believe the attraction of sea travel will continue to grow because there is one priceless thing that crossing the waves gives you – time. Once on board ship you are largely cut off from the rest of the world which to me is great news. There are no phones ringing, texts or e-mails demanding responses or friends and relatives calling.

I think it is pointless to answer mobiles or emails when travelling – nothing is so urgent that it can’t wait until the end of the voyage.
 
Shipping companies involved in the emigrant trade, such as Cunard and White Star, made their biggest profits from large numbers of steerage or third class passengers who were packed into dormitories.

The luxury first class side of the business was often seen as a marketing tool – glamorous, wealthy passengers gave ships such as Titanic and Lusitania a glittering aura which persists to this day.

People seeking a new life made up the bulk of passengers on liners 100 years ago. Others were travelling on business – very few people travelled for pleasure, as is the case now. The reason was that the liners, in the days before cheap air travel, were the only way large numbers of people could get overseas.

In the heyday of emigration by sea, in the years up to the First World War, even third class passengers enjoyed a relatively relaxing crossing. They had comfortable bunks, decent washing facilities and excellent wholesome food.

However, travel was a very different experience for wealthy people who were emigrating or moving to British territories overseas either for business reasons or in service of the Crown.

Before boarding ship, their domestic servants packed and organised the luggage, leaving their employers to enjoy the attractions of Liverpool. Once on board, rich people travelled in style.

Exhibits in the new emigrants’ gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum include a photo of the first class dining room on the Cunard liner Carmania about 1913 (pictured here).

The opulent surroundings include potted palms, starched white damask napkins neatly arranged in place settings and beautiful display cabinets – all under ornate plaster ceilings supported by fluted columns.

On display is the ultimate luxury accessory – a pair of grape scissors used on Allan Line ships about 1900. Elegant ladies and gentlemen did not pull grapes out of the bunch as the juice might squirt over their gloves, gowns or shirts. Instead, they neatly snipped the stalks then languidly nibbled the fruit.

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).

 

We were very excited this morning as staff returned triumphant from The Mersey Partnership’s Annual Tourism Awards with some great news.

National Museums Liverpool won Tourism Experience of the Year and Marketing Project of the Year - both for the fantastic Art in the Age of Steam exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery last summer.

We were also pleased that the Lady Lever Art Gallery shop was 'highly commended' for Tourism Retailer of the year. 

More than 520 guests joined the celebrations to recognise and reward the best of the best during a black tie dinner at the BT Convention Centre on Liverpool's UNESCO world heritage waterfront.

You can see Marketing Officer Sam Vaux (above) with the award for Marketing Project of the Year, which was presented to her by Ranvir Singh from BBC North West Tonight.

Next Saturday 27 June, we’re teaming up with the Liverpool Parks Friends Forum to put on a special event at Merseyside Maritime Museum for anyone out there who has a passion for our city’s parks!

With over 70 parks, Liverpool offers plenty of opportunities to enjoy some free green space, and fresh air away from the buzz of the city, so it’s particularly apt this year that we are staging this free event during the Year of the Environment 2009.

The event will take place from 9:30am – 4pm at Merseyside Maritime Museum, and like our parks is completely free! Click here to register and experience all that is on offer on the day.

Boating on lakes across Liverpool such as Stanley Park was customary in the past

The event has been created as part of a number of community activities taking place in the run up to the opening of the new Museum of Liverpool in 2010, to give the public opportunities to learn all about different aspects of our city, its history and development.

It will include workshops focusing on themes such as parks and controversies through history with local historian Frank Carlyle and creative nature conservation with Richard Scott from the National Wildflower Centre.

There will also be a site visit to discover the ‘hidden side’ of Chavasse Park and talks from Robert Lee from the University of Liverpool and Chairman of Friends of Birkenhead Park, and Janet Dugdale on the new Museum of Liverpool.

Volunteer Qianer Sha receiving her v50 certificate from Lauren Yule, assistant volunteer coordinator

Congratulations to Qianer Sha, our latest volunteer to receive her v50 award for completing 50 hours. Qianer has volunteered regularly since November 2008, starting in Big Art for Little Artists at the Walker before helping out in The Beat Goes On exhibition. Qianer told us:
 
"It is a great experience for me to be able to volunteer in The Beats Goes On exhibition. It is a good opportunity for me to learn a lot of things about the city and its music and discover a lot which I took for granted before. Also, it is not only a chance to learn communication skills but also have so much fun."

Have a look at our website for further information about youth volunteering with v-involved at National Museums Liverpool.
 

'Smugglers unloading barrels in a rocky cove entrance' by Thomas Luny

Two of my ancestors, John Guy (1731 – 1792) and his younger brother Peter (1736 – 1791), were Customs officers in Liverpool during a period of great growth in the port.

They were both tide waiters who would meet incoming vessels arriving on the high tide and make sure they tied up at the right place on the quayside. Tide waiters needed to ensure that the cargo was not unloaded out of sight of three other officials – the Customs controller, collector and surveyor. 

The brothers also spent periods as mariners. Peter was Liverpool’s only letter carrier (postman) about 1775 when the people of Liverpool applied to the Post Office for more postmen to be appointed. However, the application was rejected because only one was allowed in any town in England.

Only two years earlier Liverpool street names were marked and the houses numbered, making Peter’s life a lot easier.

Since the days when tobacco and brandy were landed on remote beaches from sailing ships, beating smugglers at their own game has taken ingenuity and daring. Watching what is going on at our ports, airports and other access points is where much of the day-to-day work lies.

Front line officers check containers, vehicles, ships and aircraft – sometimes examining their contents. They are on constant lookout for suspicious-looking passengers and goods, often acting on information received from law-enforcement agencies abroad. Until the 1960s this was a male-dominated world. It’s only recently that female officers have joined the front line.

These days some tasks once undertaken by Revenue & Customs are carried out by the Border and Immigration Agency.

There are fascinating displays in Seized: Revenue & Customs Uncovered, the gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum.

There is a tuck stick disguised as a walking stick. Manufactured by the Dring and Fage instrument company of London in the late 19th century, it was used by Customs officers to detect contraband. It would be used to probe bundled products such as tea and cotton.

An oil painting, Smugglers Unloading Barrels in a Rocky Cove Entrance by Thomas Luny (pictured), captures the atmosphere of covert contraband operations.

There are examples of seals used by officials. A waterguard’s button seal was used to stamp red wax seals on taxed goods after inspection after 50 years ago. There is an official reference manual from the same period.

A 1960s Customs officer’s cap shows a portcullis topped by a crown, the symbol of Customs until 2005 when the new Revenue & Customs service was created.

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).

Pauline with a fab sparkly dress from the Mrs. Tinne collection.

From an early age I was interested in vintage clothes, fashion and customising. I liked nothing better than rummaging in my Mum's (cool) friend's cast-offs and cutting big holes in tops so that I could look punky - or something close! (I was obsessed with the cartoon Jem and the Holograms).

So it's no surprise that for the first Ask the curator feature I asked Pauline Rushton, curator of costume and textiles, to be in the hot seat.

If you have a question about the fantastic range of costumes in our collections (from Edwardian frocks to Vivian Westwood suits) then take part in Ask the curator, which gives you the chance to ask our featured curator anything you like.

Send in your questions to Pauline by midnight on Sunday 21 June and we'll choose the best ones to ask her in a video interview, which we'll put on the site.

Although curators do gallery tours at the museums and galleries, most of their time is spent working hard behind the scenes. So we are lucky to have Pauline for this short period of time for you to ask her questions.

The video of Pauline's interview will be up from Monday 6 July so come back and check it out. You'll be able to find out her answers and listen to her talking about one of her favourite objects from the collections.

Have a listen to Pauline and I talking to Claire Hamilton about Ask the curator, on BBC Radio Merseyside. (Interview starts at 50 minutes into the program.)

In the centre of Francesco Mellina’s Sound & Vision exhibition there’s a screen slideshow which is well worth dwelling over. There are some really impressive names in terms of rock pedigree – people like Joey Ramone, Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer.  However, the person who took my eye was a youthful, mop-haired Wayne Hussey propping up the bar in The Pyramid Club alongside Pete Burns. I completely forgot that before creating goth band The Mission and spawning a legion of devoted fans Wayne had been a member of both Sisters of Mercy and Dead or Alive. I really like the picture because he looks like an average guy – not the untouchable, lamenting, god-like stage persona that my friends and I worshipped. (Or maybe it's just because he is standing next to the ever-flamboyant Mr Burns!)

I’m still a little bit fond of Wayne as he touched our lives albeit briefly. Tasked with devising a social studies project at school, we set out to find how music impacts on youth culture. While I interviewed local Smiths' fan ‘Sad Eric’ and a Lemmy-alike Motorhead fanatic, my buddy set her sights a little higher and wrote to Wayne to find out how music had helped to shape his identity. Imagine our joy (and I mean the sort of ecstasy that only an unhealthily preoccupied teenager can experience) when a pale purple envelope dropped through the door containing an eloquent, beautifully handwritten letter on Mission branded paper! Pure bliss.

The Sound & Vision exhibition has sparked a lot of gigging memories for me. So much is captured on digital cameras and phones and uploaded to Facebook nowadays, whereas I have rely on my rather grainy recollections. I have this mad idea that I saw The La’s supporting The Mission at the Royal Court and there was a power failure. Someone jumped on stage and did an acoustic spot until the lights came back up and I heard it was Pete Wylie – another Liverpool star that features in the exhibition. It all sounds so unlikely now ... whether or not it was really the case, I can't say. Does anyone else remember?

Anyway, thanks to Francesco I’ve dusted off my God's Own Medicine album and given it a twirl and it still sounds amazing. I’m just glad someone had a camera handy as well as the talent and inclination to capture some of this bygone era.

Here at the press office it can get pretty busy at times, so we are very grateful for the generous help of our volunteers. Matthew Linden has been with us for several months so we felt it was time he had a break from the office and took a trip around the venues. Here is what he discovered:

Henry Moore's The Falling Warrior (bronze)

I’ve been carrying out voluntary work in the Press Office since February 2009.  I have a degree in the History of Art, and was asked to write a piece on a favourite artwork at the Walker Art Gallery.  On visiting I was immediately affected by The Falling Warrior (bronze), originally a public sculpture created by Henry Moore between 1956 and 1957.

The sculpture is seen standing on the first floor, placed centrally, an ornament dominating the interior landscape, and an object designated as the intended focal point of the audiences’ attention.

The sculpture seemingly ‘rests’ on a platform, it possesses a dark, decaying exterior, with a contrasting smooth and rugged organic surface.  As one approaches the enigmatic form, one is drawn in; but on closer inspection, the figure is not ‘resting’ – Moore’s human form is abstract, dynamic, expansive, protecting itself with a shield, struggling for life, close to death, a body with no identity, full of ambiguity.  Who is this stranger, this ‘falling warrior’?

The sculpture suggests the simultaneous act of birth and death, an infant and a corpse, the beginning and the end, echoing Moore’s experience of the pain and trauma of the two World Wars.  ‘I wanted a figure that was still alive…in the act of falling…emphasising the dramatic moment that precedes death’, says Moore.

As the viewer walks away from ‘the falling warrior’, the figure remains on the horizon, evoking history and the past, the memory and experience not forgotten

Press Assistant Alison Cornmell has been looking after the publicity for the exhibition Sound and Vision at the National Conservation Centre. Last week she took a special visitor around the exhibition for the first time:

Jill Furmanovsky visits Francesco Mellina's exhibition

They say that there are no more than six degrees of separation between all people, and I think there is some truth to this. My mum’s sister’s husband’s auntie knows Ben Shephard’s Nan, thus meaning that me and that fine-looking GMTV presenter are practically best mates!

Ok that was a tenuous link but after my meeting with rock photographer Jill Furmanovsky there is now only one degree of separation between me and some of the greatest musicians in the world…of all time...ever!

On Friday 5 June I was lucky enough to be introduced to Jill Furmanovsky by Francesco Mellina. She has captured many of the biggest names in rock music, including Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, Bob Marley, Eric Clapton, Blondie, The Police, The Sex Pistols, The Pretenders, and the night before I met her she had been photographing Oasis at their gig at Heaton Park in Manchester.  

Francesco and Jill know each other from many years ago when Francesco was manager of Dead or Alive and hired Jill to photograph them. Now years on they  have re-established contact and Jill came to visit Francesco’s exhibition Sound and Vision at the National Conservation Centre.

After having a brief chat with her me and Francesco left her to have a look around the exhibition by herself. Twenty minutes later she emerged from the gallery telling us that she thought the exhibition was fantastic, and was filled with quite technical questions, none of which I could answer. So after grabbing a quick picture of them both I let them have some time to catch up and discuss all things photographic.

As I walked out the Conservation Centre on Whitechapel I thought of all the people I am obviously now closely linked with…Debbie Harry, Sting, Chrissie Hynde, Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher. I’m now in very good company..although nothing tops Ben Shephard.

I can see it now – the strange carving of a man’s head on a stout wooden pole half hidden in the shady garden. It was one of the curiosities brought back by the man whose family lived at the house. He was a sea captain who did not return from the Second World War.

The head and pole looked Polynesian, hewn from the wood of a tropical forest before ending up in a Liverpool garden. The face would stare at me as I swung languidly in the hammock slung between the pole and a tree – an indelible childhood memory.

Before 1914, accommodation on British merchant ships was very primitive. Crews usually lived together in cramped quarters with basic washing, eating and toilet facilities. Even the cabins occupied by the captain and other senior officers were usually very small and basic.

Living conditions didn’t greatly improve until the 1950s and 60s when old steam ships were replaced by motor ships. On today’s ships crews have many facilities including comfortably-furnished cabins, excellent food and sporting and leisure amenities.

Displays at Merseyside Maritime Museum include a seaman’s hammock dating from about 1900. Hammocks were used for hundreds of years before bunks and beds became common. Seafarers would sling their hammocks in some convenient place and, when not in use, they could be easily stowed away. If a sailor died, his body was stitched up in his hammock and buried at sea. Hammocks were used on both Merchant and Royal Navy ships until the 1950s

A seaman’s horsehair mattress from the 1920s was used on the steam coaster, Enid. Wooden bunks were fixed to the sides of fo’c’sle (forecastle) below decks in the ship’s bow (front). Mattresses were placed on the bunks. They were known as “donkey’s breakfasts” because they were traditionally filled with straw.

1848 illustration of the fo'c'sle of a sailing ship.

An 1848 drawing (pictured) shows the basic conditions in the fo’c’sle of a sailing ship.  It graphically illustrates the damp, claustrophobic conditions. Two seafarers are seen trying to relax after a makeshift meal as the ship lurches heavily in rough seas.

Crews had to supply their own bedding, towels, soap, a plate, mug, knife and fork.

Photographs include washday on board a modern steamer in the 1930s. On many older ships dhobying or washing clothes was done in a bucket on deck. In contrast is the officers’ saloon on the BP tanker British Duchess in the 1960s. By this time, officers enjoyed particularly good living conditions on board ship.

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).