National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, December 21, 2009

It's those final few work days before Christmas. Mariah Carey has set up camp in your head, your teeth ache from too many Quality Street, and there's only so much YouTube one brain can take.

Fear not, for glad tidings of great portraits we bring to you and all office kind. Check out our new Talking Heads interactive and see what the people behind the pictures were really like. Hear what Garrick really thought of his director, find out why Napoleon's on a donkey and meet that purty lady in the red coat. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wish it was Christmas every day! 

I enjoy cooking and this weekend helped prepare a traditional Christmas meal for six at Lowlands, the Victorian mansion in Liverpool where I am a trustee.

You do not need a great deal of space to cook a good meal – I once went on a French submarine for breakfast and was amazed at the tiny galley. They dished up their own Gallic version of black puddings.

Good food is very important at sea both to seafarers and passengers and this is even more so over Christmas for those who find themselves away from traditional family gatherings.

In the past, sailing ship crews were unlikely to get much change from their everyday diet of water, bread, ship’s biscuits, salted meat, dried peas, rice, tea, coffee and sugar. The best they might expect at Christmas was a double ration of salt pork followed by plum duff (thick flour pudding).

It was not possible to have fresh food on board ocean-going ships before the advent of steam and refrigeration.

However, some innovative cooks might use the bounty of the sea or land they were passing at Christmas. There are reports of crews being dished up such delights as penguins, turtles and even porpoises.

Robert Louis Stevenson captured the atmosphere in his poem Christmas at Sea:

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.

The advent of large liners transformed catering at sea for passengers. British companies manufactured top-of-the-range equipment so that ships’ kitchens could produce top class meals.

On display at Merseyside Maritime Museum is eerie film footage taken on the wreck of the Empress of Ireland which sank off Quebec, Canada, in 1914 with the loss of more than 1,000 lives.

A huge cooking range looms out of the gloom, clearly embossed with the words Henry Wilson Co Ltd, Cornhill Works, Liverpool. This company supplied and fitted most of the kitchen, pantry and bakery equipment for such ships as the Titanic, Lusitania and Empress of Ireland and many other passenger liners. Its cooking ranges for Titanic and her sister Olympic were at the time possibly the largest ever made.

This contemporary advertisement from the summer 1911 issue of Shipbuilder shows one of the huge ranges.

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 it has been another great year for the museum in so many ways, not least the fact we have now had over 850,000 visitors, but it has also been challenging, thought provoking and indeed humbling.

There have been many highlights and some not so highlights of 2009. We were extremely proud that we achieved an Honourable Mention as part of the 2009 UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence which rewards significant activities in the scientific, artistic, cultural or communication fields aimed at the promotion of a spirit of tolerance and non-violence.  It showed the museum was seen as a human rights campaigner by its peers. We also made the final of the National Lottery Good Causes awards and the European Museum of the Year awards in Bursa, Turkey.  We did not win but it was still a significant achievement for a museum which is only 2 years old.  

We have hosted several very successful exhibitions including Black Britiannia and Trafficked and been visited by a host of important, interesting and often well known people such as the civil rights activist Diane Nash, who give the annual Slavery Remembrance Day memorial lecture, and the Liverpool boxing legend John Conteh. In February Richard LeBaron, Chargé d'Affaires at the United States Embassy and Simon Woolley, national co-ordinator of Operation Black Vote, unveiled a plaque of President Barack Obama. Added to all this we continue to offer a vibrant learning programme which is both original and often groundbreaking.  

There have unfortunately been some less celebratory events. In particular the loss of John Hope Franklin, one of the most important American historians of the 20th century and a great advocate of the International Slavery Museum. He will be fondly remembered by myself and all those fortunate to have met him. The year shockingly also saw the British National Party gain a degree of political kudos by winning seats at the European elections. Rather than sit idly by I hope that like the museum you support the Hope Not Hate campaign and make a stand against such organisations.

Looking ahead I am convinced that International Slavery Museum will have an exciting, challenging and successful 2010. We are planning many events, for instance on 18 January (Martin Luther King Day in the US) we will be showing the film 'Boycott' about the 1955 Montgomery Bus boycott as a mark of respect. The inaugural Federation of Human Rights Museums (FIHRM) conference will also be held at the International Slavery Museum, which will bring together some of the leading human rights museums and institutions across the globe to see how we can work together to challenge issues such as racism and discrimination and the rise of the far right. The museum will continue to support Black History Month in October and there will be the annual Slavery Remembrance Day events. In March we will be launching a new exhibition called Beyond the Boundary which explores the relationship between cricket, culture, class and politics. There will be much much more so watch this space.

By for now and I hope that many of you have a visit to the museum as one of your New Year resolutions!

 

This Saturday our Youth Theatre will present a Christmas tale unlike any you've seen before. Youth Arts Officer Sean Murray, who has been working with the group to prepare the show, says:

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"The National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre met in early October to start work on their Christmas production! Inspired by TV shows like X-Factor, the group of 14 young people decided that they wanted to create a TV talent show of their own and began to have fun watching old X-Factor, American idol and Popstars clips and then creating scenes of their own. One of the group's first tasks was to write their own Christmas Number 1 and then perform it. It was not long until the group had decided that the show was going to about a boy band and girl group racing against each other to be the winner of a new TV talent show Dead Talented. However, there was a twist; through the groups devising process they decided that the young people playing the role of judges would have a hidden agenda and actually be scientists who were intending to steal talent from the boy and girl band.

The rehearsal process was very fun and lasted for 12 weeks, the group met weekly to develop their show, work on their songs and play lots of drama and theatre games. The entire group grew as performers during this process and were all brave to try out new artistic mediums such as singing and art! 

See what you think at the free performances at 12.30pm and 2.30pm this Saturday, 19 December at World Museum. Full details of this and other this do do over the holidays are in the Christmas at National Museums Liverpool event listings."

As a vegetarian I always think it's strange that some people assume that I don't eat Christmas dinner. As long as the potatoes aren't cooked in animal fat and the stuffing doesn't include meat there's no reason why veggies wouldn't have spuds, stuffing and all of the other veg along with something meat-free. It might be a stereotype but really like nut roast.

Whatever your dietary persuasion I'm sure you'll find something useful in the Christmas dinner tips page I've just put live on our main site. Our Executive chef, Nigel Smith, spills the beans on how a professional cooks for his family on Christmas day. Actually, a lot of the preparations are the day before leaving you time to enjoy the big day rather than doing battle in the kitchen. There's also a handy pdf for you to print off and consult at home. Simples!

The more I learn about travel in the past, the more I am convinced that our ancestors were a much tougher lot than us. They may have had to put up with more disease and hunger but they certainly had great reserves of strength and stamina – just look how they spread across the globe.

Emigrating in the 19th century was a hard and demanding process with lots of hurdles to jump before you even went to sea.

People seeking new lives had to raise the money for the fares, plan the journey, pack up all their worldly possessions then set off into the unknown.

Once they arrived in Liverpool – probably the greatest emigrant port in world history with nine million people passing through between 1830 and 1930 – they were beset with a number of hazards.

Just arriving in the port could be a bewildering as well as exciting experience for emigrants, who came from all over northern Europe as well as Britain and Ireland. Many had never left their homes before and found the place both frightening and dangerous.

Tired and hungry from long journeys, many of the emigrants were accosted by rogues known as runners who worked for dishonest ticket sellers and lodging house owners.

Not everyone was bad and Liverpool’s economy benefitted hugely from the emigration trade. It generated business for many including shipowners, brokers’ agents, shopkeepers and lodging houses.

Emigrants could spend up to 10 days waiting to set off on a sailing ship because journeys were at the mercy of the weather. Most of them spent the time in squalid, overcrowded lodging houses. Even respectable establishments offered only boards to sleep on – and no blankets.

Insanitary accommodation was an ideal breeding ground for diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Conditions eventually improved in line with improvements to ships fuelled by competition between shipowners. By the late 19th century emigrants could stay in lodging houses owned or supervised by shipping companies.

Displays in the new emigrant gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum include this print depicting a government inspector’s office in 1850. Here passengers were checked for diseases prior to departure.

However, these were hardly rigorous examinations - as many as 3,000 people could be seen daily by just three doctors.

In the exhibition’s life-size Waterloo Road display there is a sign saying “Maurice Dalton. Emigrant Lodging House. Good Beds. 4d per night”. A weary emigrant enters the lodging house, confronted by a fierce-looking dog.

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).

 

This is a bit last minute, but a reminder to watch the skies tonight for the annual Geminids shower. You should be able to see the meteors between around 8 and 10pm in the UK. It should be a good view - just had a look outside and the sky is clear, plus being close to the new moon there's not much moonlight. There'll be about 100 meteors every hour which should be visible with the naked eye. It's pretty chilly out there so if you're venturing out wrap up warm.

More on the Royal Astronomical Society website.

Our new Equality and Diversity policy is available to read or download from our main site.

A few weeks ago I blogged about the installation of a new display of enamelled art by Ruth Ball. She had already donated a beautiful enamelled portrait of the Walker Art Gallery with two more portraits still to be finished.

Now these two additions have taken pride of place in the collection. The two pieces are of John Mayer and William Roscoe both collectors of art or antiquities whose collections have been donated to National Museums Liverpool (NML).

Ruth took inspiration from portraits of both men but her enamel portraits are her interpretation of them, unsurprisingly they are both beautiful and intricate. What I like about them is that in themselves they are pieces worthy of appreciation but at the same time they made me appreciate NML’s collections as these men and their donations are deep in the roots of NML’s history and collections. 

This month's image is of two gulls sitting atop the Museum of Liverpool. All you have to do is come up with a suitably amusing caption and post your suggestion as a comment on this blog post. You can see a larger version of the photo in our Museum of Liverpool Flickr set.

The photo was taken by builds operations manager, Martin Hemmings, and was originally labelled 'What's a nice gull like you doing in a place like this?', so avoid anything similar if you want a chance of winning the prize which is a signed copy of Alan Scarth's rather excellent new book, 'Titanic and Liverpool'. More on the book on the Daily Post blog.

The deadline for entries is noon on Wednesday 23 December, and please keep them clean!

It is unlikely that we will ever see the likes of this ship again because she was very much a product of the age which inspired her.

I find it difficult to imagine what it would have been like travelling on such a vessel. The reactions of the passengers and crew can only be guessed when they first saw her amazing interiors.

The beautiful Cunard liner Lucania offered the most luxurious First Class facilities  available to Victorian travellers.

She and her sister Campania were the embodiments of late 19th century opulence. The high quality and attention to detail were sea-going reflections of the confident and prosperous late Victorian era and would never really be matched on any other ships.

Although the predominant style was Art Nouveau, the top-paying passengers could relax in surroundings reflecting other golden ages of the past. For example, the forward First Class entrance hall was in the French Renaissance style.

The Lucania’s top public rooms and en-suite upper deck staterooms were mostly heavily panelled in the finest woods with thick carpets and velvet curtains muffling intrusive sounds. The finest room was probably the Italian-style First Class dining saloon with a coffered ceiling rising three decks to a skylight.

There was a novelty in the Elizabethan First Class smoking room – the first open fireplace ever fitted on a passenger liner. This was truly a home-from-home on the ocean wave.

In Merseyside Maritime Museum there is brief and tantalising film footage from 1901 showing Lucania at Liverpool’s landing stage. Crowds in Victorian finery wave enthusiastically to friends and loved ones.

There is no foreboding of the sad end that would befall this popular vessel just eight years later in a nearby dock.

Both the Lucania and Campania had the largest triple-expansion engines fitted on Cunard ships.The two ships were partially financed by the British Admiralty, no doubt because of justifiable fears of impending war. Cunard also had to agree that the ships go on the naval reserve list to serve as armed merchant cruisers if necessary.

Lucania thankfully never went to war. Following the arrival of the super liners Lusitania and Mauretania, Cunard decided she was no longer needed. Laid up in Huskisson Dock, she partially sank after being badly damaged by fire on 14 August 1909.

Lucania was sold for scrap and the beautiful interiors that had escaped the flames were sold to the highest bidder.

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).