National Museums Liverpool Blog - Tuesday, October 12, 2010

We are counting down to the World Museum's 150th birthday celebrations which are happening this weekend on 16 and 17 October. Each day we'll be giving you a fascinating fact from the 150 year history of the museum in our countdown to the big day!

World Museum fact for the day:

Did you know...that on 8 March 1853 the museum opened for the first time on Slater Street in Liverpool. It was then called the 'Derby Museum of the Borough of Liverpool' in honour of the Earl of Derby’s bequest of over 20,000 natural history specimens.

The museum later moved and was re-opened for the first time on William Brown Street in 1860 and this is the anniversary we are celebrating this year!

Slater Street, the location where the museum first openend.

Are you red or are you blue? This is one of the big questions we ask in our football immersive experience Kicking and Screaming in the new Museum of Liverpool. The film celebrates and explores the city’s passion for football and takes the visitor on a journey through all the key moments that have shaped it.

A scene being filmed outside the Sandon pub in Anfield, for the football immersive in the new Museum of Liverpool

For the past few weeks production company Centre Screen have been out and about in Liverpool with museum curators and Creative Director Roy Boulter, filming some of the big scenes.

Joining them have been football mad TJ, a Liverpool fan, and Charlie, an Everton fan. They appear throughout the film and help reveal some of the momentous events that took place in the city’s football history.

Last week, the boys stepped back in time to film scenes at the Sandon Hotel in Anfield, where in 1892 a meeting took place that changed football in Liverpool forever.

Museum of Liverpool curator Paul Gallagher explains:

“As many reds and blues know, in the early 1890s Everton Football Club used to play their games at Anfield. On 12 March 1892, a committee meeting took place in the upstairs room of the Sandon Hotel - owned by club president John Houlding - that changed everything. Trouble had been brewing for some time and Houlding clashed with the committee led by George Mahon over the direction the club was heading in, in particular the proposed increase in ground rental. Mahon and most of the committee left to find a new ground for Everton and Houlding set up his own club, Liverpool Football Club.

“To capture the period when the meeting took place, the filming for this historic event was shot in the style of a silent movie. The actors had to express emotion and communicate through their facial expressions and gestures, so you can imagine the animation that was required to portray the heated discussion, and they certainly rose to the challenge!”.

The experience has really caught everyone’s imagination and we have received tremendous support from both football clubs, gaining unprecedented access to the stadiums, their archives and collections. In addition, Liverpool Football Club Museum and The Everton Collection have both have kindly lent us an array of memorabilia to use during the production, in order to make history come to life for the visitors to the Museum of Liverpool, and lead them to answer the question “Are you red or are you blue?”

Keep checking back to keep updated on filming progress.

An Indefatigable cadet - image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

Now there are just three things I won’t eat – tripe, brawn or butterbeans.

These boys’ appetites were helped by working hard in the sea air – great remedies for feeling out of sorts. Even this grub – disgusting as it may now seem – was probably wolfed down with relish.

Both were former warships – one powered by sail and the other by steam – before becoming the training ship Indefatigable, a familiar sight on the Mersey for more than 75 years.

The first training ship Indefatigable, one of the last of the Royal Navy’s sailing frigates, was loaned by the Admiralty after a group of shipowners founded the school to train boys for the Merchant Navy in 1864.

The first boys started in August 1865 - most came from poor families and were supported by local public subscriptions.

In her previous life she had been HMS Indefatigable, built at Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth, in 1848.

Up to 200 “Inde” boys, as they were known, could be accommodated on the ship moored off Rock Ferry. The old ship was condemned by the Inspector of Training Ships in 1912 and broken up two years later.

The replacement was the cruiser HMS Phaeton which became the second training ship Indefatigable.

The food could best be described as slop – called buzz - which was ladled into basins for consumption. A cross between soup and stew, it was eaten with ships’ biscuits.

Three varieties were known as pea buzz, Irish buzz (presumably thinned-down scouse) and mystery buzz (because its contents were unknown). Other culinary delights were cocoa flush, made from chunks of cocoa, and boiled cod on Fridays.

Liverpool was heavily attacked in the May Blitz of 1941 and about this time the authorities decided it was too dangerous to carry on using the floating school.

The boys were transferred to a disused holiday camp in North Wales where they stayed for three years before moving to Plas Llanfair, an historic mansion on Anglesey. It closed in 1995 following the slow decline in Britain‘s merchant fleet.

On display at Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery there is a watercolour showing Indefatigable cadets at their Deganwy summer camp in 1891.

Archive photos show the training ship’s band and cadets on board SS Teutonic in 1889. A striking terracotta statue portrays an Indefatigable cadet in 1896 (pictured above).

 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).

The new work by Cornelia Parker.

A new work by Turner Prize nominated artist, Cornelia Parker, has been released today. It is the latest in the series of artworks that have been created specially for the Save the Arts campaign, which we have been following on this blog. You can see the other artworks from the campaign here.

The work shows Antony Gormley’s celebrated Angel of the North with one of its wings lopped off. The caption reads: 'Why clip the wings of an industry that is soaring? It’s a false economy to cut the arts.'

Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997, Cornelia Parker has became known for her installations and interventions, including 'Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View 1991' (Tate Modern) where she suspended the fragments of a garden shed, blown up for her by the British Army.

Our own petition against cuts here at National Museums Liverpool is now up to 17,000 supporters, including Turrner Prize winning artist Wolfgang Tillmans. You can sign it online here.

With only weeks to go until the announcement of the cuts, these petitions and campaigns are becoming even more important.  Support the Save the Arts campaign via their website and look out for the final two art works for the campaign on this blog.

Well, we've barely had time to recover from the excitement of Keith Coventry winning the John Moores Painting Prize and it's now time to get excited about another prizewinner!

Voting for the coveted 'Visitors' Choice Award' is now open, which means that you get to tell us which painting is your favourite. Pick up a voting card in the gallery once you've seen the exhibition and cast your vote in the box provided by 18 November 2010. If you vote, you will be put into our prize draw for the chance to win a dinner for two courtesy of the Radisson. The artist with the most votes will win £2010 and the winner will be announced on 25 November 2010.

In the meantime, why not have a look at our latest behind the scenes video? It includes an interview with Keith Coventry as he reveals the inspiration behind 'Spectrum Jesus' and the exciting moment when he received his prize at our opening event.

The Museum of Liverpool is due to open next summer, 2011, and curators need your help!

One of the star features of the new museum will be an immersive film, taking visitors right into the heart of the city's passion for football, exploring our unique connections to the game.

We are currently in the process of filming sequences for the film, and in order for it to be as authentic as possible, we need to borrow certain things.

If you have any of the following articles, please get in touch with Katie Brown on 0151 478 4069 or katielouise.brown@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk before Thursday 7 October, who will make arrangements to collect your item.

Your object will be worn by a young Everton and Liverpool fan in a part of the film that looks at the incredible success of our teams in the 1980s. It will be returned to you safely by the end of the week.  The film will be shown in a gallery dedicated to Liverpool's creativity and sporting culture when the Museum of Liverpool opens next summer.

We are looking for the following pieces:

1984 Everton 'Hafnia' Everton kit (in kids’ size)
1984 Liverpool 'Crown Paints' Kit (in kids’ size)
1984 Milk Cup Final Hat for Liverpool & Everton
1984 Milk Cup Final rosette / memorabilia Wembley Trophy football

You can listen to curator Paul Gallagher talking about the appeal on Tony Snell in the Morning on BBC Radio Merseyside, at 2.22.36 hours in.

Image courtesy of the Daily Post & Echo

I find some ship models remarkably appealing – they seem to carry you back to a distant era, recreating lost voyages in the mind.

M R James wrote a classic ghost story called The Haunted Dolls’ House and I am sure certain ship models also have the power to haunt.

When I look at the model mentioned below, I can almost see figures on the decks and hear cattle lowing and the throb of engines in the sweltering heat.

The Pacific Steam Navigation Company (PSNC) was set up in Liverpool by an American businessman who invested heavily in South American services.

William Wheelwright (1798 – 1873) founded the shipping line in 1838 to provide pioneering steamship facilities on the continent’s west coast.

He was born in Merrimac, Massachusetts, the son of a ship’s captain. William had similar ambitions and, with his parents’ consent, became a cabin boy on a vessel bound for the West Indies.

He proved himself very capable and rose rapidly through all the grades of seamanship to become a captain at the age of just 19.

In 1835 William sailed to England in 1837 before setting up PSNC.  By the 1870s PSNC had grown into the largest steamship company in the world. Becoming part of Royal Mail Lines in 1910, it ran passenger and cargo services until the 1960s, then tankers and container ships.

The company merged with the Furness Withy Group in the early 1980s and no longer owns or operates ships.

In Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Liverpool: World Gateway gallery, there is the superb model of the twin screw steamer Colombia, a PSNC coastal passenger and cargo liner.

Colombia and her sister Guatemala were built by Caird & Co of Greenock in 1899. They carried passengers and mail on PSNC’s weekly service between Valparaiso and Callao in Peru.

The main decks were usually open for passengers and cattle while the upper deck had cabins for both overnight and week-long journeys.

The 3,335-ton Colombia was lost off the island of Lobos de Tierra, Peru, in August 1907.

The 1:48 builder’s model shows the vessel with a single black funnel and green and black hull. Excellent detail includes decking, hand rails and chains.

There are skilfully made benches on the top deck and finely-detailed lifeboats which add perfect finishing touches. Unusually, machinery and other features can be seen below decks.

Both Colombia and Guatemala were distinctive ships with their very long mid-ships superstructure and forward bridge.

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).

Transatlantic Slavery: An Introduction

Our new publication Transatlantic Slavery: An Introduction has hit the shelves. 

The book draws on the wealth of material held by the International Slavery Museum and tells of the 400-year period in which at least 12 million Africans were taken into slavery in the largest forced migration in human history. With a foreword by Reverend Jesse Jackson it's an excellent introduction to the subject.

With Black History Month just around the corner, it’s a fitting time for the launch of the book which examines an important chapter in Black history. Don’t forget to check our special programme of free events throughout October.

Just answer this simple question to win a copy of Transatlantic Slavery: An Introduction. Which artist painted ‘The Hunted Slaves’, on display in the Legacies section of the International Slavery Museum and featured in this new book?  Send us your answer with your name and address using this contact form. The deadline for entries is noon on Friday 15 October, 2010.

If you’re not lucky enough to win a copy, you can buy your own at our online shop.

The latest artwork created in support of the Save the Arts campaign has arrived!

The artwork by Yinka Shonibare

We have been following the progress of this campaign here on the blog, as well as highlighting our own petition against potential cuts - you can sign it online here.

This striking new work by Fourth Plinth artist Yinka Shonibare was unveiled today as part of the campaign supported by over 100 leading British artists against the government’s proposed funding cuts of the arts.

The artist’s work shows a slash across a piece of brightly coloured African fabric for which the artist has become well known with the caption: 'Stop Cutting'.

Yinka Shonibare MBE has become well known for work that explores issues of race and class through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and, most recently, film. He was a Turner prize nominee in 2004 and he was awarded an MBE, a title that he has added to his professional name. His commission for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, was installed in May this year and in June his major new public art work covering the gable end of a thirteen-storey tower block, commissioned by the South London Gallery to celebrate their expansion, was unveiled in Camberwell.  

In 1987 I was enjoying a holiday in Morocco taking in the sights on a coach tour along the coast stopping at ports along the way. The sky was a dazzling blue when we approached the quayside and parked. As usual we had to politely brush aside exuberant locals wanting to coil tame snakes around our necks.

What caught my eye was both beautiful and shocking. A huge pile of shiny, brightly-coloured seashells had been trawled up from the coral reef. The shells were waiting to be stripped of their occupants, cleaned and then sold to tourists.

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

Many years ago seafarers and travellers brought home all kinds of live animals as pets along with their skins and other souvenirs of journeys to distant lands. This has been outlawed or at least strictly controlled to protect the world’s diminishing wildlife – anyone trying to smuggle them home faces tough penalties. Customs officers enforce the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) regulations. These have been controlling the trade in wild animals and plants since 1975. More than 30,000 species are involved although most are plants such as rare orchids and cacti.

Tourists often don’t realise that their holiday souvenirs, such as jewellery and clothing, could be made from endangered species. A specialist team at Heathrow Airport track the shipment of live animals and find suitable homes for those illegally imported.Exhibits in the Seized gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum include a pair of mounted Lear’s Macaws (pictured). A Yorkshire parrot trader was jailed for two-and-a-half years for smuggling these critically-endangered birds.

Illegal spermaceti candles were made from sperm whale oil – spermaceti was also once used for cosmetics. Seven out of 13 great whale species are still endangered and vulnerable despite decades of protection.A lamp made from pieces of coral and shells was a tourist souvenir. The removal of shells and stony coral from their natural habitats threatens the entire eco-system.

Nearly 3,000 coral species – including the purple fan coral on display – are listed as endangered. The mounted hawksbill turtle illustrates a critically-endangered species whose shells are considered highly attractive in some parts of the tourist trade. A queen conch shell features a painted beach scene with the words Belize 1981. The importing of conch shells is currently suspended while its rarity is examined after huge numbers were exported as souvenirs.

Another display features pelts and skins from endangered species such as tigers and other big cats seized by Customs.

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).