MERSEY MARITIME HERITAGE: FROM THE FERRY TO TITANIC AND BEYOND
Doug Devaney
01/09/2004
The Liver Building at night. Photo courtesy of English Heritage
Of all British cities, Liverpool is probably the easiest to stereotype. Not as overtly flashy as its neighbour Manchester, it’s seen as the home of two cathedrals, two football teams, a chirpy sense of humour and – of course – the mop-top hairstyle.
The following trail is far from all encompassing: it encompasses a portion of the North Docks as well as some of the city centre. However, even this brief glimpse into Liverpool’s maritime past reveals a city steeped in the triumphs and disasters of empire.
The story of Liverpool (the name literally means "pool with muddy water") is the story of a city married to the sea. Where better to meet the happy couple, then, than at the Merseyside Maritime Museum on the Albert Dock?
Along with other exhibitions, offering a trip back in time to World Cup Final day 1966 or recalling the role of merchant ships in World War II, there is also a collection devoted to the Lusitania and the Titanic. Here are two very different ships, both the prides of their respective owners – Cunard and White Star – and both the victims of extraordinary circumstances, sunk within three years of each other.
Both ships hailed from Liverpool, but while the events of the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912 have been well documented, what is not so well-known is that, although the majority of the ship’s building took place in Belfast, her bell - as well as her 900 portholes - were crafted by the firm of T.M. Utley at St.Helens, Merseyside.
Most of the crew was also made up of Liverpool natives, which explains why the long corridor on Deck E was known as "Scotland Road", after the infamous Scouse thoroughfare.
May 7 1915 saw Cunard’s Blue Riband-winning ship Lusitania holed by German torpedoes 14 miles off of the Irish coast just as she was returning to her Liverpool home. The incident was central to the US coming down on Britain’s side during the First World War.
Outside the museum and further along the Albert Dock itself, stands one of the few remaining relics of the decimated steamship – a propeller – which acts as a memorial to 1,201 passengers and crewmen who lost their lives that day.
When leaving the museum it is worthwhile taking a look at the building where the museum now resides. The former bonded warehouses were designed by Jesse Hartley, arguably the most famous and certainly the most innovative of Liverpool’s Dock Engineers. By the end of his tenure in 1860 there was not one dock that had not been built or developed by Hartley, but the Albert Dock was probably his crowning glory.
Opened in 1846, the warehouses were the first to be built completely from non-combustible materials such as iron, brick and stone. They were also the first to use hydraulic hoists for off-loading ships.
Nowadays, along with housing the Maritime Museum and Liverpool’s Granada TV Studios, the dock complex is also the largest group of Grade 1 listed buildings in Britain.
The Albert Docks also have a more sinister and evil tale to tell. Formerly housed in a single gallery of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool's commemoration of its role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade was opened in a new refitted space by National Museums Liverpool (NML) on Slavery Remembrance Day, August 23 2007.
The International Slavery Museum combines an ambitious mission to use the museum to explore the abolition of slavery and investigate wider issues around racism through history.
Now occupying the entire the top floor of the Maritime Museum the new museum is very much a statement, it's more contemporary, more challenging, something living and breathing, rather than something historically-based.
The first exhibition area takes you to Africa, to get a feel for the culture and experience that many people, men, women and children, were forcibly removed from.
A Middle Passage Gallery is where the full horror of the slavery experience can be seen, in the form of dramatisations vividly realised on giant screens, supported by powerful objects from the NML collections that reinforce the experience.
Chains, manacles and sinister contraptions that lock around the head of the enslaved human can be seen, as well as model slave ships, and contemporary paintings of Liverpool in the pomp of its heyday as one of the busiest slaving ports in the world.
Lastly there's a fascinating section of the museum where the reality of slavery and the continuing experience of modern cultures and racism are entwined and explored through music, exhibits and more interactives and films.
A second phase of the museum, a Research and Resource Centre is planned to open in 2010. Here visitors will be able to explore issues discovered in the museum, using an archive, community zone, reference library, internet access and a learning suite.
Canning Dock is the oldest on Merseyside, built in 1765 from the entrance of what was the Old Dock. Two of its three graving docks remain, making the dock a perfect centre for ship repair. After a ship had entered one of the graving docks, the water would be pumped out, leaving a dry hull for barnacles to be "graved" or scraped off.
Meanwhile, Canning Half-Tide Dock – designed to act like a lock against the Mersey’s swift currents and built in 1844 – is the only remaining dock of its kind still to be operational. Indeed, the dock played host to a number of tall ships during this year’s Mersey River Festival.
Time to give the sea legs a rest and hit terra firma: the old White Star Line Building at the corner of The Strand and St James Street was designed by Norman Shaw, the architect responsible for New Scotland Yard.
Built in 1895, it’s generally considered to be an improved version of Shaw’s police station and was a short walk from the docks so that Joseph Bruce Ismay, president of the line, could make his way quickly to the docks to observe his ships entering and leaving the port.
With its red and white stripes going all around the building, the White Star Line offices give the impression of having come straight out of a fairytale. Now renamed Albion House, today the building houses a number of business concerns but retains most of its original features, including an atlas-like mosaic of the world on the floor of the main entrance.
From here, it’s along St James Street and up Castle Street to Liverpool Town Hall. Described as being "one of the finest surviving 18th century town halls in the country", it’s a stunning building (the statue on the roof, by the way, is of Minerva the Roman goddess of wisdom and not Britannia as most people presume).
Having said that, we’re not just here for the architecture. For it was from this building, on September 25, 1928 that Liverpool was officially "married to the sea".
Based on an old Venetian custom, the ceremony saw a parade of eminent worthies of the city make their way from the Town Hall to Pier Head, where they were joined by working and retired seamen, shipping company representatives, and a choir of 300 children. After some suitable words from Sir Archibald Savidge and the Lord Mayor, a ring was thrown into the sea to mark the union of town and tide.
To this day, some believe the ring is still down there, buried amid the silt at the bottom of the Mersey. If it was ever found and retrieved, would that count as a divorce?
If you care to follow the route down to Pier Head as far as Castle Street, you can take the 48 Bus (a half-hourly service) to our next venue, the Stanley Dock. Alternatively, it’s about a mile’s walk to the north.
Part of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, and again designed by Jesse Hartley, the dock was originally designed as an interchange between the canal and rail services. It was opened on August 4, 1848 simultaneously with four other docks of his creation. While the dock is linked to Great Howard Street, the necessary railway and barge docks were never completed.
Instead, opposite the Stanley Dock Warehouse, stands The Tobacco Warehouse, which became the biggest building in the world upon its completion in 1901 and now plays home, in part, to the Stanley Dock Heritage Market. The biggest bazaar in the north-west, if not the country, the Heritage Market takes place every Sunday and plays host to some 500 independent stalls, both indoors and out.
Further towards the Mersey and past Collingwood Dock is Salisbury Dock. Another Hartley design, this has a clock tower that simply must be seen. Known locally as the Victoria Tower it is made of granite and has six sides, each of them bearing a clock face.
The famed architectural critic Sir Nickolaus Pevsner responded to the tower by claiming: "It is all ham, but it tells of the commercial pride of the decades."
If the work of Hartley represents the ambition and technical achievements of the British Empire, particularly the Victorian period, then the Princes Dock – about half a mile down Waterloo Road – tells another story.
Opened in 1821, after a delay caused in part by the Napoleonic War, this was the first dock to be surrounded by walls as a security measure and was originally designed to deal with Transatlantic vessels. Built with a sense of optimism, Princes Dock seemed to capture the spirit of the time, as related by Herman Melville in the novel Redburn, His First Voyage (1849):
"…in Liverpool I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely enclosed…In magnitude, cost and durability the docks of Liverpool surpass all others in the world."
Despite this, Melville noted how beggars would place themselves among the queues of sailors outside the dock at lunchtime, hoping to get fed:
Prince's Dock from 'Ackermann's panoramic view' of 1847. Picture courtesy of Steve Howe/B&W Picture Palace.
"The first time that I passed through this long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of misery could be furnished by any town in the world."
At the same time Melville was writing these words, the Princes Dock was losing its lucrative trade with the United States, being too small for the new design of ships. Instead it became a succesful focal point for traders specialising in the lower-bulk South American and Asian routes (e.g. coffee, spices, etc.)
Despite further improvements to the landing stage, by the early 20th century even those traders had crossed the Atlantic and Princes Dock became the focus for trade with Ireland. The dock limped on for most of the century, eventually servicing the Mersey and Isle Of Man ferries by the time of its closure in 1981.
Between Princes Dock and the Liver Building stands a memorial to the engineers who stayed at their posts during the Titanic disaster. Its design was altered mid-way through construction to include those mariners who had also been lost during World War One.
Another tribute, this time to the eight musicians who continued to play while all around them panicked, can be found at the Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street, but that’s for another trail.
Possibly the most recognisable building in Liverpool, and certainly the only one to have a situation comedy named after its clock tower decoration, the Royal Liver Building was initially designed as the central office for the friendly society of the same name. Almost certainly one of the tallest office blocks of its time when it was completed in 1916, its clock faces are even larger than those of Big Ben.
There is some confusion over the significance of the Liver Birds above the clock towers. Legend has it that should they ever fly away then the city will fall. Some claim they are based on the cormorant. When King John signed Liverpool’s charter in 1207, its believed his Royal Seal consisted of the outline of a cormorant.
Others claim the seaweed being held in the birds’ beaks is more commonly known as laver (or 'lyver'), as in laver bread. Whatever the truth, this is clearly the most famous of the trio of buildings known locals as the "Three Graces", the other two being the Cunard Building and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board Headquarters.
As with the White Star Line building, the Cunard was designed to act, on its completion in 1916, as the headquarters of the shipbuilding company that bore its name. By 1934 it also housed the managerial staff of its nearest rival as the two companies merged to become Cunard White Star, with the building on St James’ Street eventually becoming an office block - housing, amongst others, the offices of the parole board. Today the Cunard Building is also an office block with a conference centre on its sixth floor.
The third of the Graces, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board HQ (MDHB), was the first to be finished in 1907. The MDHB itself was made insolvent in 1970 and was replaced by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, now the second biggest port authority in Britain.
As for the building itself, it has since become the home for a multitude of other offices.
Plans to build a Fourth Grace, to mark Liverpool’s becoming European Capital of Culture in 2008, have recently ground to a halt although the space remains available for some form of building.
Finally to Pier Head itself and the Mersey’s much-celebrated ferry. While Gerry And The Pacemakers may have been the first to celebrate it in song in 1965, the first historical record of a ferry dates back to 1207, when Benedictine Monks from Birkenhead Priory ferried farmers and their livestock across the river for free.
The right to charge for the service came in 1330 when Edward III granted "to the priory and its successors for ever, the right to ferry there over the arm of the sea, for men, horses and goods, with leave to charge reasonable tolls", which was just as well, as the demand for the service had grown beyond the reach of simple charity.
Like New York, a circular trip on the ferry is an essential for any tourist coming to Liverpool. With the blue-green Mersey rolling on to the Irish Sea, the symbols of Liverpool’s mercantile past and hopeful present laid out among the docks and Gerry Marsden crackling from the loudspeakers, reminding you that "life goes on day after day"... altogether now…
