National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, October 05, 2009

When I started work in 1966 on the Crosby Herald as a junior journalist the big local story was the container terminal planned for the north end of Liverpool docks.

There were protests from local residents who feared the area would be ruined by this new dock – now the Liverpool Freeport. Most of the opposition was on environmental grounds – little did people know how radically the port would be transformed by this project.

Models of the Inventor (shown) and Atlantic Causeway stand next to each other in the new Liverpool: World Gateway gallery in Merseyside Maritime Museum. The two ships were only built five years apart but they symbolised a seismic change in the way cargo was carried as container ships took over.

Model of The Inventor. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

The Inventor, built in 1964, was one of four heavy-lift cargo liners built for the Harrison Line. With their 180-ton lifting capacity derricks, these ships were built to carry machinery to developing countries.

The sudden rise of Roll On, Roll Off (RORO) ships and containerisation, plus changing trade patterns, shortened the lives of many ships like Inventor. In 1981 she was sold to Singaporean owners, renamed Penta World and scrapped in 1985.

Cargo containers had their origins in the 1780s carrying coal on canals and the first standardised container was introduced in the 1920s. The first purpose-built container ships started operating in Denmark in 1951. Over the following decades more and more operators adopted the system until by 1970 it was unstoppable.

The 15,000-ton Atlantic Causeway was a RORO container ship built in 1969 by Swan Hunter at Wallsend-on-Tyne.

In 1966 five major European shipping companies, including Cunard, joined together to form ACL. Their aim was to share the huge costs involved in building and operating a fleet of RORO container ships trading between Europe and North America.

For more than 30 years ACL, now based in Norway but with offices in Liverpool, has been a giant in the North Atlantic trade. Its ships still visit Liverpool every week and continue to dominate ports vital to the North Atlantic trade.

Atlantic Causeway and her younger sister Atlantic Conveyor were owned by Cunard, managed by Cunard Brocklebank and hired by ACL. In 1982 both ships were converted to carry aircraft and serve in the Falklands War. Conveyor was sunk after being hit by two Argentine Exocet missiles with the loss of 12 lives. Causeway returned home safely having played an important part in supporting the British Task Force.

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).

What sort of paintings inspire you? Those with flame-haired Pre-Raphaelite muses or striking 20th century works?

National Poetry Day is on Thursday 8 October and we want you to be involved! Get inspired by a painting at the Walker Art Gallery, write a poem about it and send it to us. 

We'll publish a selection of them on the website and pick one winning poem. The winner can choose one poetry book from the ones listed below:

• 'Rapture' by Carol Ann Duffy (hardback)
• 'The Mersey Sound' by Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri (paperback)
• 'Andraste's Hair' by Eleanor Rees (hardback)

The theme for this year's National Poetry Day is 'heroes and heroines', so we have put together a selection of paintings that we think fit in with this idea. These range from ‘Dante's Dream’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti to 'Pin Up 1963 - For Francis Bacon’ by Sam Walsh. So now it's your turn to look through our selected paintings and get inspired!

Send in your entry by Monday 2 November using the online form on the Get inspired...at the Walker page. Good luck!

Here is Phil Lewis our Aquarium & Bughouse Assistant to tell you about the forthcoming Shark Week at the World Museum...

European Shark Week runs from Saturday 10 to Sunday 18 October when we'll have an array of activities at the World Museum's Clore Natural History Centre. There will be badge making for children and lots of posters and pockets guides to give away, with information about sharks and rays.  All the drawings of the various species that are produced by visitors during the week, will be mounted on the wall to form a huge mural. 

Make friends with a shark at Shark Week!

You can also come to several presentations delivered by our very enthusiastic aquarium staff at the Treasure House Theatre. These will focus on the status of sharks in the wild with lots of interesting shark and ray facts and plenty of interaction with the audience!  The dates for these presentations are: Sunday 11, Tuesday 13, Friday 16, Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October.
 
The purpose of Shark Week is to raise awareness about the tens of millions of sharks and rays that are slaughtered each year. This is due to unsustainable fishing practices and a desire for shark fin soup, which is an extremely cruel and wasteful practice. Sharks which have just had there fins cut off are then thrown overboard still alive and left to die slowly. 

In Europe alone, thousands of tonnes of sharks are landed each year accounting for 27 percent of the slaughter world wide.  This is an appalling example set by the EU, which other nations may look to for guidance and influence.  They are also fished commercially for their meat and liver oil used in lamps, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and vitamin supplements.  Harvesting these animals is unsustainable as sharks and rays grow slowly and have few offspring, making it impossible for them to recover from such exploitation.  As sharks in particular usually receive negative media coverage, due to rare attacks on humans, it is very hard to lobby support for this group of animals than it is for other groups of endangered animals. 

This is why Shark Week is so important in raising awareness and bringing these issues to the forefront of public imagination. These animals have been around for 400 million years - that's 200 million years before the dinosaurs - and they deserve better than this.

We hope to see you there so you can find out more about these incredible animals!

Alas, unlike the beat itself, this exhibition doesn't go on and on. We're into the final weeks of World Museum's The Beat Goes On exhibition and what a tune-tastic time we've had.

Paul McCartney's trousers made a visit as did half a million members of the public. Local bands had their tunes profiled in our on-gallery and online jukeboxes (check out the MySpace page and have a listen). Willing volunteers cut their museum teeth on the gallery, and we launched an online resource charting Liverpool's musical heritage.

But fret not! (fret...music...geddit?) You've still until 1 November to get down to the museum and to get down!  Take your kids during half term and show them what real music sounds like. And if you still need persuading the Guardian's video on Liverpool's music scene should do the trick.

And if you still don't manage to catch the exhibition you're going to have to wait until the Museum of Liverpool opens in 2011. The Creative City gallery will become home to items like the Woolton church stage where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met in 1957, the vibrant 'All You Need is Love' bedcover from John and Yoko’s Bed-in-for-Peace in Montreal in 1969, and four Beatles stage suits.

And as it's the final month The Beat Goes On exhibition guide has been reduced to half price so now costs just £1.50. Get your copy in our groundfloor shop.

Millais' 'The Black Brunswicker' from the Lady Lever Art Gallery collection.

Post a comment to tell us what you think the caption should be for this image. It's 'The Black Brunswicker' by Millais (more on it and a larger image on our main site). The caption we think is funniest/quirkiest/most inventive wins this month's prize which is a rather nice hardback book, 'Women Artists In The 20th and 21st Century'. The book features Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Georgia O'Keeffe, Barbara Hepworth, Frieda Kahlo, Bridget Riley, Kara Walker and many, many more, and ties in nicely with the forthcoming exhibition, 'The Rise of Women Artists' which starts at the Walker on 23 October.

You've a couple of weeks to enter. If you're looking for inspiration September's entries are here.

The not-very-small-print: This is competition isn't open to NML staff or their families. The judge's decision is final. There's no alternative prize. Please keep your suggestions tasteful.

Update 27/10/09: October's caption competition has now closed although you can obviously still add your suggestions. The winner was 'The conversation waned somewhat while they waited for the butler to appear with the superglue remover'.

Founder of MOBO awards, Kanya King reclines on a white sofa © John Ferguson

Tonight thousands of people will be tuned in to watch the MOBO awards. Every year since 1996 singers, rappers and groups have been collecting awards to celebrate the contribution they have made to music. The awards were the first to celebrate and acknowledge the contribution that urban music and its Black origins have made.

This celebration of Black culture music will also continue into October with the start of Black History Month. One of the many activities during the month of activities will be an art workshop tracing the roots of Black music.

Artist Tony Phillips will be hosting some special art workshops tracing and celebrating the history of music of Black origin. Connecting Threads is a two-day workshop, taking place at Merseyside Maritime Museum from 6 – 8pm on 5/6 or 7/8 October, 2009.

Taking inspiration from photographs, illustrations, portraits, musical texts, speeches and newspapers, participants will be encouraged to explore how to interpret events, ideas and music into a visual narrative using collage techniques.

The culmination of these two-day workshops will be a collection of artwork that will form a ‘scrapbook’. The artworks will be used as a decorative backdrop for the Jiving Lindy Hoppers Dance Event at the Maritime Dining Rooms on 30 October 2009.

Suitable for those aged over 16, the Connecting Threads workshop is the perfect opportunity to celebrate black music and culture and get involved with Black History Month, while working with a professional artist to gain some top tips. 

To book your tickets for this free event please e-mail bookingsmmm@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk or call 0151 478 4441

The impact of the slave trade on Africa was profound as it blighted progress in all aspects of life on the continent for many generations.

The transatlantic slave trade operated for almost 400 years, fuelled by Europe’s almost insatiable desire for sugar, cotton, tobacco and other products of the New World which were then regarded as luxuries.

Liverpool ships were a key part of the trade and the town became Europe’s leading slaving port in the second half of the 18th century.

At least 12 million Africans were forcibly transported by Britain and other countries but many millions more were profoundly affected. The transatlantic slave trade destroyed African societies, robbing them of young people.

A staggering two-thirds of enslaved people were young men aged between 15 and 25. They were in huge demand to work the booming plantations producing ever-growing quantities of crops.

Arms and ammunition brought to Africa by European traders helped perpetrate conflict and political instability.

Displays at the International Slavery Museum, in the Merseyside Maritime Museum building, focus on the consequences of the trade on Africa.

Successful trade routes that existed before European intervention were disrupted. The development of African communities and cultures was severely stunted. Agriculture suffered as communities abandoned fertile land as they fled the long reach of the European slavers.

The labour and inventiveness of enslaved peoples shaped the Americas and enriched Western European, rather than their African homelands.

Ships on the Niger expedition. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

On display is a lithograph featuring ships on the 1841 Niger Expedition (pictured). Thomas Fowell Buxton was leader of the British anti-slavery movement in the post-slave trade era.

He urged the British government to make treaties with African leaders to abolish the slave trade. The expedition went to the Niger River delta to set up a headquarters and began negotiations. The party suffered so many deaths from disease that they had to return home.

There is a half model of the Balmore, bought by John Holt & Co in 1908. The Holt family was involved in the West Africa trade from the 1860s.

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).

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the On the Waterfront events over the weekend, which involved free films shown on a gigantic screen in the Museum of Liverpool's window. Any sort of open air event in this country is very much at the mercy of the weather, especially on a late September evening at an exposed spot like the Pier Head. I hadn't seen the classic Marlon Brando film 'On the Waterfront' before though, so armed with a flask of hot chocolate and some warm clothing I braved the elements.

I needn't have worried as it was a great evening. The Liverpool skyline with the docks and cranes made a very fitting backdrop to the film. The landscaping around the Pier Head also did a great job of protecting the audience from the worst of the wind.

You can see some photos from the weekend in our Museum of Liverpool Flickr group already. If you took some photos of the event or have any other recent pictures of the museum during construction then we'd love to see them so please do add them to the group.

Bridget Riley

I was lucky enough to get to photograph Bridget Riley this week, while she was here for the opening of a major exhibition of her work at the Walker. She was pretty in demand so I didn't get to talk to her, but Press Officer Laura Johnson got chatting with Bridget who told her how pleased she was with the look of the exhibition. (You can see the final adjustments made to the displays by the handling team on our Moving Stories Flickr set.)

Bridget also talked a little about how she creates her work, describing how she doesn't always know what her work will end up looking like and that letting accidents happen often takes her in new directions.

You can get more of an insight into the inspiration behind her work in a short video clip on our exhibition page. In the clip Bridget describes how even brief moments when she sees light in a certain way, can be a form of inspiration:

'I remember one very hot summer, it was in the South of France and I was climbing a hillside of broken shale and the light was so strong that it dazzled. It seemed to come at me from all directions, it was beating down from above and beating back into my eyes at the same time. One lost all sense of focus. Everything seemed to disintegrate in light, the landscape dissolved - it was like standing in a field of pure energy.'

Her paintings are certainly dazzling as a result. Looking at 'Ecclesia', it is almost a dizzying experience, but definitely a pleasant one all the same. You can also see some of Bridget's early sketches that have many annotations around them and show the development of some of her paintings.

See more photos from the exhibition in our 'Bridget Riley Flashback' Flickr set and experience these stunning paintings and drawings for yourself, until 13 December 2009.

Stephen with the photo of Lizzie Christian

We would drive around Liverpool in a mini chasing news – two six footers crammed in the tiny car.

Stephen Shakeshaft was already an established staff photographer at the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo in Victoria Street when I joined as a news reporter in April 1970.

Even as a young man he was very distinguished-looking, tall with an aristocratic nose and an excellent head of hair (which he still has). Stephen was also very funny ha-ha, veering between droll comments and biting sarcasm. We got on well and often traded insults.

It was obvious that he was a rising star among some other very talented people in the office including John Sergeant, Tony Wilson and Roger Alton.

This is not to mention others making their mark such as Phil Key and a youthful, pipe-smoking Joe Riley. I worked with them all until September 1973 when I joined the Press Association in Fleet Street.

Stephen sometimes gave the impression of being rather cautious and methodical. This was deceptive as I could see he was always looking out for a good picture.

I have never seen him at a loss or flustered in any way. I think he may have sometimes regarded his day-to-day work as unchallenging – such things as head-the-ball shots at soccer matches, people scurrying out of the criminal courts or competition winners.

Stephen always poked behind the scenes for gold and about 70 of these largely hidden treasures are on view in his new exhibition Stephen Shakeshaft: Liverpool People at the National Conservation Centre until 24 January 2010.

I find this show totally and utterly fascinating. These brilliant studies capture a Liverpool going through great change from the 1960s onwards.

This is the third of Stephen’s exhibitions I have helped to publicise. I think it is the best because it demonstrates his great ability to capture the personalities of ordinary people.

He has also recorded some of the city streets as they were before pedestrianisation, CCTV, pelican crossings and hideous steel shutters.

This is a world before superstores sucked the life out of our corner shops and closed local pubs, where most people got around on shanks’s pony or took public transport.

To me the pictures evoke a time when people enjoyed mucking in together and laughing at the experience.

I also remember some of the people in the pictures. One of my favourites is this famous shot of greengrocer Lizzie Christian at her city centre barrow (shown). Mrs Christian always had a ready smile for everyone, lighting up the street around her.

Other pictures I like include a crowded wash house which was a great place for exchanging news, Prime Minister Harold Wilson at a packed public meeting and two dockers with a traditional wooden handcart.