National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, December 28, 2009

I recently appeared on the Liverpool KVFM community radio station hosted by local children and was asked why Liverpool suffered so many German air raids.

The answer was that the city was the main port for the convoys of merchant ships that brought vital supplies to Britain. Liverpool played a key part in the Battle of the Atlantic by serving as a base for escort ships defending the Second World War convoys.

Until mid-1941 only a small force of naval escort ships was based in Liverpool. A fleet of Fleetwood trawlers was established at Wallasey Dock, Birkenhead, for minesweeping and convoy escort work.

A group of destroyers was based in Gladstone Dock, Bootle. A few auxiliary merchant cruisers – fast, well-armed former liners taken over by the Navy – also sailed out of Liverpool on North Atlantic patrol duties.

From the summer of 1941, however, as more escort ships became available, the naval presence in port grew rapidly. Liverpool became one of the Royal Navy’s main escort bases for Atlantic convoys.

Eventually nearly 60 naval escort ships, excluding trawlers and other auxiliaries, sailed regularly from Liverpool. They ranged from destroyers and sloops to frigates and corvettes.

While Gladstone Dock supported by other docks provided berths for larger ships, many corvettes were based at Albert Dock. This is now the home of Merseyside Maritime Museum with its many convoy-linked displays in the Battle of the Atlantic gallery.

This 1945 photograph shows officers and men from HM Trawler Northern Wave at Wallasey Dock. Another image shows the armed merchant cruiser HMS Patroclus, formerly of the Blue Funnel Line, leaving the Mersey for escort duties in 1940.

Just five days later Patroclus was torpedoed and sunk by the notorious U99 submarine which sank 40 British and Allied merchant ships before being sunk by a British destroyer.

There is a photo of 19-year-old Nigerian seaman Douglas Memberre who was engaged as a steward’s boy on the Mattawin at Lagos in December 1941. Douglas survived after his ship was sunk by a U-boat in the North Atlantic in June 1942. He later returned to sea and eventually settled in Liverpool.

Merseyside became the main home of the Merchant Navy in wartime Britain. In 1939 Liverpool-owned and registered ships formed at least one-fifth of Britain’s entire ocean-going merchant fleet.

Many were taken over by the Government as armed merchant cruisers, troopships, hospital ships, assault vessels and other auxiliaries.

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).

Just a quick message to say "Merry Christmas, one and all" - hope you get what you deserve - and to remind you that all of our venues are open over the Christmas period (excluding Boxing Day and New Year's Day and closing at 2pm on Christmas Eve).

When the weather is filthy, the kids suffering from cabin fever, and your wallet a little on the skinny side there's always a day at your free, friendly, neighbourhood museum or gallery to get you out of the house. Check out our Christmas section to find out what's on over the holiday.

There's also a preview page describing some of the excellent exhibitions we've lined up for 2010. I'm especially looking forward to Toulouse-Lautrec at the Walker and China Through the lens of John Thomson at the Maritime.

Have a good one.

The winner of this month's caption competition, and the new owner of a signed copy of Alan Scarth's 'Titanic and Liverpool' book, is Rob Pendragon with his entry, "Going out with an albatross? Get your hearing tested! I said I was going down to Albert Dock". Well done to Rob. 

You can see all of the other entries on the original post.

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.