National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, December 03, 2009

Getting into the festive spirit at Sudley House

It may only be the first week of December but St. Silas School, Toxteth were in a festive mood this morning at Sudley House. The children were delighted with a tour of the house by an actress playing the part of the housekeeper, learning as they went about the Holt family and their collection of stunning Victorian art.

Inspired by this and the Christmas decorations around the house they also unleashed their arty-side and made their own traditional decorations and trinkets.

This Saturday Sudley House is hosting a free Victorian Christmas day for all the family. There’ll be carols round the tree, festive story telling and Christmas-themed arts and crafts.

It's time to open your online advent calendar!

The shops and streets may have been full of Christmas decorations for weeks, but I never feel right mentioning it until December. Now that the last month of the year has arrived though there'll be no stopping me.

This year there's so much going on in our venues that we've created a whole new section just about Christmas at National Museums Liverpool. This includes all of the free things to do in our venues, including Go Penguins! and other Christmas events and activities.

There's also lots of online fun, including the online advent calendar, which includes lots of new treats for 2009 (have you opened today's page yet?), as well as new free Christmas e-cards and festive wallpaper.

If you're stuck for gift ideas then check out our gift membership and Christmas shopping - and don't forget to order some Christmas cards while you're at it.

Then after all that excitement if you want to treat yourself then you might be tempted by the special Christmas menus at the Maritime Dining Rooms and Lady Lever Art Gallery.

Yesterday's edition of Flog It! came from Liverpool and included some behind the scenes peeks at the Museum of Liverpool.  Host, Paul Martin, took a tour of the building with building operations manager, Martin Hemmings (who took most of the shots on the museum's Flickr set), and chatted with transport curator, Sharon Brown, in the Liverpool Overhead Railway carriage.

The episode is available on the BBC iplayer until the evening of Monday 7 December.

Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

I am particularly moved by this story which graphically demonstrates the caring nature of people placed in extreme danger. We cannot comprehend what the victims of this disaster went through - many died but the surviving children were tenderly cared for as they awaited rescue.

The sinking of the passenger liner City of Benares with the loss of 81 of 100 children on board brought home the ruthlessness of German U-boat submarines to newspaper readers and radio listeners all over the world.

The 11,081-ton Ellerman Line ship left Liverpool on 13 September 1940 as leading vessel on the19-strong convoy OB213. Ninety of the child passengers were part of a government scheme to evacuate them from heavily-bombed British cities to the safety of North America.

On 17 September the convoy’s naval escort ships had left to accompany another convoy. Some hours later the City of Benares was spotted and torpedoed by the German U48 submarine.
 
There were more than 400 people on board and 250, including the children, were lost. As a result, the evacuation of children by sea was scrapped.

The attack came during a period of the Second World War known to the U-boat commanders as the Happy Time. This came after the fall of France in June 1940 when the Germans were able to use the French Atlantic ports as bases.

This allowed U-boats to reach far out into the Atlantic and the Mediterranean for the first time. Germany soon began to wage unrestrained U-boat warfare around Britain’s coast.
 
Despite the continuing shortage of submarines and air support, the U-boat fleet commanded by Rear Admiral Karl Dönitz became increasingly successful. For the first time, small U-boat pack attacks were used with devastating effect against still largely unprotected British convoys.

On display at Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Battle of the Atlantic gallery is a contemporary newspaper report of the City of Benares disaster under the headline “Hitler’s Worst Crime”.

A photograph (pictured) shows five of six boy survivors who were rescued after spending eight days in a crowded open lifeboat. They are pictured being given piggy-back rides by rescuing sailors.

Another shows a heroine of the disaster, accomplished classical pianist and music teacher Mary Cornish who had volunteered as a children’s escort. She was awarded the MBE for looking after the six small boys during their horrific lifeboat journey.

Miss Cornish, from London, calmed the terrified children by telling them: “It’s all right, it’s only a torpedo.”

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).

Our runners-up certificate

You might remember that we asked you to vote for our Engaging Refugees and Asylum Seekers programme in the DSC Social Change Awards. Unfortunately we didn't win, but were runners-up which out of 380 proposals and a longlist of 90 is still pretty good. We were also given a certificate featuring a rather fine cartoon from The Spectator and Private Eye cartoonist, Grizelda. Well done to the Papworth Trust who did win the category and 'thank you' to everyone who voted.

Copyright Lee Doherty

Emma Walmsley from the Maritime Museum's Education team has just introduced a new character to her repertoire of historical figures. Here she describes how she researched and prepared the performance in order to make it as true to life as possible:

I play a fictional Wren, May Hatton, based in the secret underground HQ at Derby House which was responsible for co-ordinating the convoys bringing our supplies into the port and for training escort commanders in tactics for contending with the U-Boat threat.

I began researching the subject and the character in the spring, including asking on the blog for contact details of anyone who actually was in the Wrens at this time. After this request went out, I received a response from a lovely lady who was a Wren in the Isle of Man who came into the museum and gave me some wonderful stories and advice. Then came the script writing and finally the piece was finished off and rehearsed with a freelance director.

The next performances now are scheduled for 3, 17 and 24 January - with British Sign Language interpretation at the 2.30pm performance on 17 January - so feel free to pop along and have a look! You can see full details on the Maritime Museum's events and activities page."

Curator Ashley Cooke gives a tour of the Ancient Egypt gallery with BSL interpretation.

Here's Treasure House Theatre Co-Ordinator Jo Connor, to tell us about last week's DaDaFest events at the World Museum!

Last Saturday, the World Museum held a number of inclusive events as part of DaDaFest 2009. Led by Treasure House Theatre demonstrator Paul Netterfield, visitors enjoyed an afternoon of events based on the World Cultures gallery.

The aim was to provide accessible events for visitors from the local deaf and disabled communities and their families. It included a new show from our adult drama group volunteers. The show followed Dr Huw (Dr Who, get it?) as he visited the World Museum to discover more about Earth's various cultures both past and present. He explored the Egyptian and Ethnographical collections and their collectors. Actors from the group also played the parts of the various collectors who had contributed their objects to the museum in its 150 year history.

Our curators also got involved, with Oceania collections curator Lynne Heidi Stumpe, helping out with research and leading one of the tours. Curator of Ancient Egyptian collections Ashley Cooke, also led a fascinating tour around the Ancient Egypt gallery. We were also lucky to have a number of volunteers who helped out on the day, handing out programmes and creating the background for the show amongst many other things.

All of the tours, shows and events on the day included British Sign Launguage (BSL) interpretation to make them more accessible to all. The day was a great success with over 300 hundred people visiting and participating in our DaDaFest events. We hope to see you all again for next year's festival!

Copyright Stephen Shakeshaft

A big thank you to everyone who entered our latest caption competition. Our judge, Stephen Shakeshaft, was so impressed that he couldn't pick one winner and has very generously awarded a prize of a signed copy of his book 'No Illusions' each to three joint winners:

• Robbie for his entry: 'Hey kids I'm Liverpools new central defender they call me the sweeper';
• Jonathan for 'I swept your grandmother off her feet and now i see your smiles' and
• Stu for 'Mind your brush for a shilling Mister..?'

You can see all of the entries on the original post for November's caption competition.

And don't forget that you can see this photo and more in the exhibition Liverpool People by Stephen Shakeshaft, which is at the National Conservation Centre until 24 January 2010. Stephen will be giving a talk in the exhibition on Wednesday 9 December at 2pm.

Do you have a passion for museums and galleries?  Are you interested in helping us improve access to our venues for Disabled and Deaf people? 

If you are and you do have the time to commit to it, then National Museums Liverpool would love to hear from you.  We are looking for people who consider themselves to be disabled people to join our Museums Advisory Group.

You will be expected to attend up to 6 meetings in a year.  Members are reimbursed for access costs when attending meetings and receive an attendance allowance. A BSL interpreter is present at all meetings.

If you are interested please contact Mo Smith at World Museum.  Mo is the National Museums Liverpool contact for the group.

• You can phone on 0151 478 4302
• Write to: Mo Smith, World Museum, William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8EN
• Email using this contact form.

There's more on accessibility at our venues on our main site.

The Wanderer. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

I like this story because I have kept diaries and holiday logs like the boy who wrote about the Wanderer.

Personal accounts are of great importance as they help future generations understand earlier eras. I believe not many personal narratives will survive from today because few people record their experiences in any depth.

The 19th century left a rich legacy because so much was recorded in minute detail, from records of meetings and speeches to long business and private letters on every subject. Newspapers and magazines were crammed with articles skilfully crafted to answer every query.

A 14-year-old apprentice left a remarkable account of the maiden voyage of the Wanderer, one of the last sailing ships built in Liverpool – a beautiful vessel that brought bad luck in her wake.

The captain died in a raging storm on that first voyage in 1891 and just 16 years later – following numerous unsettling incidents - the Wanderer sank after being rammed by a German liner.

The boy’s name was H Watson and a section of his detailed log is on display alongside a fine 1: 100 scale model of the Wanderer in Merseyside Maritime Museum.

Watson gives details of the death of Captain George Currie and several other incidents which blighted the initial voyage.

Captain Currie died less than two days out of Liverpool heading for San Francisco:

“It was near midnight and the captain was on the poop (the raised stern deck) firing rockets as signals of distress. While thus engaged he was struck by the skysail yard (a wooden spar used to suspend a sail) and knocked down on deck insensible.

“The second mate was first to see him and he, along with the third mate and steward, got him into his room. He lay insensible until 4 o’clock on Monday morning and then expired.”

The Wanderer was a four-masted barque built by W H Potter & Sons at Queens Dock, Liverpool, At 309 ft long and displacing nearly 3,000 tons, Wanderer was said at that time to be the biggest sailing ship ever built.

John Masefield, a former seafarer who trained on HMS Conway in Liverpool, was fascinated by the ship. His first book after being appointed Poet Laureate in 1930 was called The Wanderer of Liverpool. Wanderer’s end came in1907 while she was at anchor in the River Elbe. She was sunk by the Gertrud Woermann in 24 ft of water but thankfully this time no-one died.

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).