National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, July 02, 2010

This Sunday a Radio 4 documentary, The Sinking of the Lancastria, will highlight the 70th anniversary of Britain's worst ever maritime disaster. The anniversary was also featured in the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning with interviews with some of the survivors who had gone to lay wreaths at the site of the sinking. It's worth taking a few minutes to listen again on the BBC website if you missed that.

Curator of maritime collections Ellie Moffat explains more about the tragedy:

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"On the declaration of war in 1939, Cunard passenger liner Lancastria was requisitioned for troop carrying. On 17 June 1940 Lancastria was anchored off the coast of France, taking on board retreating British troops. She was taking part in Operation Ariel, the evacuation of British nationals and troops, two weeks after Dunkirk.

There were on board in excess of 5000 troops, as well as civilians and crew when Lancastria suffered heavy air attack. In what Winston Churchill described as "the most terrible disaster in our naval history," many thousands of lives were lost.

Merseyside Maritime Museum's 'Life at Sea' gallery on the first floor includes a display featuring Lancastria, as well as other merchant vessels usedto support military operations.

Amongst the objects on display is a wrist watch worn by Sidney H Dunmall, of the Royal Army Pay Corps, a survivor who leapt in to the sea to escape the sinking ship. It was donated to the museum by the HMT Lancastria Association.

Other items include a lunch menu dated 17 June 1940, a discharge book of Gerrard Walsh who was assistant butcher on board, and two miniature trophies owned by survivors Arthur Pownall and Corporal Bray of the Royal Engineers."

I adore Paris so much that I can only allow myself to watch the film Amelie when I know I will be going there again soon. Nothing sums up the romance and beauty of the city quite like that film, so if I don’t have a trip to look forward to it can make me really quite glum!

With no jaunts to Paris in the diary I should really avoid the Walker Art Gallery this weekend as they'll be recreating the sights and sounds of 19th century Paris in a special celebration of the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. But the thought of seeing families ambling about with their hand-crafted masks, made in one of the several craft workshops we're hosting and the lovely sounds of the accordian drifting through the gallery will probably be just too tempting.

Check the website for the full list of free events this weekend.

Art in Liverpool does the most fantastic job in tirelessly supporting local artists and exhibitions across Merseyside. The Liverpool Art Prize was founded by the website in 2008 and has very quickly become one of the highlights in Liverpool’s visual arts calendar. This year one of the judges was our very own director of art galleries Reyahn King.

Last night they annouced their winner, the multimedia artist David Jacques, to an eager audience at Metal. Excitingly for us, along with the £2,000 the first prize includes the invitation to exhibit work at the Walker Art Gallery. David will be working with our curators on what will go on display over the next few months, so watch this space for more info.

Here's an update from our head of communities Claire Benjamin about this year's Refugee Week events and why they are so important:

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"Refugee Week has once again been a highlight of the year for me, with a wonderful array of events and activities to raise awareness of refugees in our city, and welcome them to our museum. Our simple acts campaign was quite simply, just that. By finding out more about a new culture, cooking a cultural dish, smiling at a refugee or signing a petition, these simple acts can truly make a big difference.

The highlight for me was 'By Reservation Only' - a wonderful performance by a group of young refugees, whose acting skills were a talent worth seeing. What was even more impressive was the fact that they had learnt the script in English, which wasn’t even their first language. Truly inspirational, with such natural talent and ability on display, the show was hopefully an avenue for these young people to be like everybody else and have some normality and escapism. You can see photos from the performance in our Refugee Week 2010 set on Flickr.

There is so much negativity in the press in relation to refugees and asylum seekers, particularly in such economic uncertainty, and these groups are potentially at an even greater risk of intolerance and racism. Recent statistics actually show that the number of applications for asylum to the UK decreased by 47% compared with the same period last year. It is vitally important to be educated about the plight of our fellow citizens, and Refugee Week at the museum is just one way of doing this."

Here's Clare Wolfarth's last report from Haiti, where she has been working on a sabbatical from her usual job at National Museums Liverpool to help with the earthquake relief operation with her former employers Oxfam.

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"It’s the end of my last weekend here in Haiti and then there’s four working days left of my deployment here. The primary reason that Oxfam asked me to do this deployment was to provide cover whilst the longer term staff took some leave and R&R and the senior HR person is now away meaning my workload has really ramped up. Working hours included one sixteen hour day and one fourteen day last week. We’re working so hard to scale the programme up, both in terms of the senior posts whom we recruit globally and in terms of our recruitment of local staff.
 
I am providing the HR support for eleven international recruitments at the moment which means longlisting CVs, developing, sending out and marking written tests, and then scheduling interviews with panel members and candidates from all over the world. In order to save money, most of the interviews are carried out over the telephone; not an easy process with intermittent network coverage and wildly varying time zones. There is a big food security emergency response in Niger at the moment (an estimated 10 million people are currently facing food insecurity), which means that experienced French speaking aid workers are in demand at the moment, and it would appear in short supply.

There are equally significant challenges in recruiting skilled local staff. I have learned that educational institutions here are not regulated which means that standards vary enormously and the qualifications that people have can be worthless in terms of accurately reflecting their level of skills or knowledge. To gain work experience in any formal sense has always been difficult and with nepotism rife, the limited opportunities that are available have rarely been offered on the basis of merit alone. To compound matters, the earthquake struck at the end of the working day at 4.45pm so many of the people who were skilled and experienced were killed when the offices they were working in collapsed. Not surprisingly, many of the survivors who had the means to do so have left the country.

In between interviews I’ve been out this week to look at a camp on a golf course where thousands of people spontaneously settled in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. ‘Terrain de golf’ as the camp is known was home to 60,000 people until 15,000 of them were moved and resettled into another camp in a bid to ease the overcrowding. It is also temporary home to the actor, Sean Penn, who has been living in a tent since January and co-ordinating the activities of the NGO he has set up there – an example of celebrity involvement in a humanitarian disaster that does not appear self serving.

The conditions in the camp are squalid and the pigs are thriving and enormous. I was told that the clean water and sanitation, education programmes, and healthcare that the NGOs and international organisations are providing in the camps are better than the access to services many of the camp residents had before the disaster. This may be the reality but it is a pretty depressing one when you see it – it’s hard to imagine more difficult circumstances. At one point, a little girl with multiple disabilities came and took my hand and wouldn’t let it go and leaving her there with no carer in sight was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do."

The Maritime Museum had two special visitors on Sunday 27 June.

Veteran Wrens Eileen O’Conner and Stella Passey were in full uniform having attended the Royal Naval Association Annual Memorial and Veterans Day service.

They had come to the Museum especially to see ‘Never at sea’ a short performance that tells the story of Liverpool’s role in winning the Battle of the Atlantic and the vital role that Wrens under the street’s of the city.

At the close of the performance, roleplayer Emma Walmsley introduced Eileen and Stella to the rest of the audience as she felt that their contributions needed to be recognised especially in light of Armed Forces Day. The audience gave them a huge round of applause which they very much appreciated.

I like the old saying ‘Tide and time wait for no man’ because it has a sense of finality and closure.

I’ve lived near the sea most of my life and the tides have always played a part in our lives. In Liverpool, if the sky clouds over or the wind rises, we say the tide has changed – even if it hasn’t.

High tides generally mark the busiest times in ports as ships come and go from their berths with deep water enabling easier access to docks and quaysides.

Today there is an increasing focus on higher and higher tides linked to global warming but since man first went to sea tides have always been of great importance to ships and seafarers.

Tides have been observed and discussed since ancient times with increasing sophistication and accuracy. People first noticed how the sea rose and fell every day. Later they connected this phenomenon with the sun and the moon.

Greek navigator Pytheas sailed from Marseille around Britain around 325 BC, possibly reaching the Shetland Isles. He was probably the first person to relate high spring tides to phases of the moon.

About 150 BC Babylonian astronomer Seleucus of Seleucia (now Iraq) correctly described tides in order to support his theory that the sun was the centre of the universe.  

He was the first to state that tides were due to the attraction of the Moon and that their height depended on the Moon’s position relative to the Sun.

Roman scientist and historian Pliny the Elder (circa 23 – 79) collated much information about tides, noting that spring tides were a few days before and after new and full moons.

William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) led the first systematic analysis of tidal records starting in 1867. He built a tide-predicting machine using a system of pulleys – similar devices were used until the 1960s.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum there is a painting called 'Waiting the tide' by Harry Taylor Hoodless (pictured).

The composition is typical of the artist’s work with dock furniture and various ropes and equipment. A Blue Funnel liner is tied up against the quay in the Alfred Dock, Birkenhead, waiting for the tide prior to departure.

The bow of the vessel (possibly the Philoctes) is seen to the left while a Rea Company tug is in starboard profile at the centre. The Liverpool waterfront, with its famous Pier Head buildings and the Mersey Tunnel ventilation tower, is in the background.

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 p&p UK).

Yes, you have read the title correctly! Here in the Ethnology department we are busily packing lots of objects ready for them to have their photographs taken, before they go on display in the Global City gallery of the Museum of Liverpool.

This isn't always as easy as it sounds. One of the more tricky objects I've had today has been a large brightly decorated enamel horse, which is almost 1 metre long. The horse has a detachable mane (which looks a little bit like a toupe) and tail that all needed packing together to ensure it looks its best in front of the cameras. It turns out there is more than one way to pack a horse, but I decided on a nice simple solution of strapping the horse into a box, making sure it can't move about while its being transported. You could say, it will be travelling in its own handmade horsebox.

The horse once belonged to Sir Douglas Crawford a well known figure in Liverpool. Famous for the Crawford biscuit business and his work with the Scout Movement, he also in his spare time collected a very specific type of Chinese enamel called cloisonne. You'll be able to see a fantastic group of objects from Douglas Crawford's collection in the new gallery.

You can get quite attached to some of the objects you care for. I couldn't help naming this horse Biscuit, which seems to suit it.

I was very impressed when curator of maritime history Ian Murphy told me that he'd been filmed for Doctor Who. Unfortunately he wasn't part of tomorrow's big series finale so can't shed any light on what's in store there. Instead his expertise was required to help with a previous episode. He explained:

"I interviewed in Birmingham on the subject of 'maritime mysteries' for a short feature that will be used as a DVD extra for Doctor Who. It's for a re-release of an old John Pertwee episode from the 1970s, but I'm under orders not to reveal the episode title. The interview was based around disappearing ships and the DVD should appear sometime next year."

Since their dramatic crash out of the World Cup, France may not have much to smile about by way of football but when it comes to art they are world-leaders and we shall be celebrating this at the Walker Art Gallery next week!

On Wednesday 30 June the High Kicks and Low Lifes: Toulouse-Lautrec prints exhibition is open until 6pm and British Museum and exhibition curator Jennifer Ramkalawon will be delivering a free lecture on Toulouse-Lautrec's evocative and unique style. 

Paris is a must destination for all art-lovers but why go all that way when the Walker Art Gallery will bring the city of light to you. On the 3 and 4 July we are inviting visitors to join the free French-themed activities including family workshops, exhibition tours and atmospheric music.

For more details on the free exhibition events programme visit the website.