Relatively speaking

"We four Beatles of Liverpool are

John in a taxi

George in a car

Paul on a bicycle Licking an icicle

Following Ringo Starr”

Unknown.

Liverpool is such a fabulous city, it had been far too long since I had visited.  We decided to go stay in the city centre so we could be close to cousin Rose and cousin Herbie who were staying at Nana Pat's in Crosby.  Liverpool is well known for the Beatles and Liverpool Football Club yet, historically, the city was pretty much a non entity until 1699 when its first slave ship set sail for Africa.  As trade grew so did Liverpool and by 1800 around 40% of world trade passed through this city's port.  As the second city of England, Liverpool was bombed heavily during WWII.  Indeed, my own paternal grandparents went to work one day and came home to find their house a pile of bricks.  After the war, containers made the dockers obsolete and by the 1980's the city slid into decline.  Thats what I remember of Liverpool before I left the UK, high unemployment and crime in a grey rainy city.   In 2012 I was flabbergasted at the regeneration of the city centre and the wonderful environment that had been created  down on the docks.

"The street of this my city is the tide, 

where the world's ships,

 that bring my glory, ride" 

John Masefield

The Albert Docks were a innovation in 1846, when Prince Albert opened them, because of their radical design.  The layout made it possible to load and unload ships directly into the warehouses. These innovative buildings were made out of cast iron stone and brick making the warehouses non combustable.  The Titantic was one of the many ships registered in Liverpool.  The fated liner was owned by The White Star Line Company which was based on the docks.  It is 100 years since the epic tragedy of the Titanic occurred off the Grand Banks off Nova Scotia.  The Maritime Museum is housed in one of the old warehouses and in honor of the 1502 people who died they had put together a fantastic exhibition.  On entering the display we were issued a card with the name and details of one of the passengers.  Letters and photographs were just some of the items chronicling the events of that fateful night. At the exit, the passenger lists showed who perished, luckily the children on Jasmin's and Josh's card had survived in one of the life boats.  

"You will find things will work out all right 

and you must just keep a stiff upper lip and see it out." 

Harold Sanderson's letter of encouragement to Bruce Ismay 7 May, 1912.

Perhaps more chilling than the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean is the thought of the some 2 hours 45 mins it took for the 882 foot iron steam ship to sink.  Just enough time for all manner of human behavior to emerge, both heroic and diabolical.  Without enough lifeboats for the passengers, crew, such as the orchestra would have known their fate.  The eight member orchestra played until the ship sank to keep the passengers calm.  Their heroism has gone down in the annals of history.  Traveling as 2nd class passengers they were contracted by a firm in Liverpool, so were not actually White Star crew.  In an disgusting twist of insurance policy fate, the families of the band members were sent a bill for the lost uniforms from C.W. and F.M. Black, the Liverpool company who hired them.  Eventually a charitable fund for Titanic survivors paid the bill.  

Emotionally exhausted from the intimate details of one of the worst peacetime maritime tragedies we moved through to the other major exhibit in the musuem - slavery.  Hardly a place for us to find some light relief.

"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck" 

Frederick Douglass 1883.

Approximately 12 million Africans were taken from the African continent and put into slavery between the 16th and 19th centuries.  These souls ended up in Brazil, the Caribbean and North America.  Liverpool was a central port in the slave trade.  Ships from here transported around 50% of all the 3 million slaves carried by British Slave Ships.  The museum did an incredible job in humanising the slave triangle.  This was the three part trade route where cottons, woolens, iron, guns, alcohol and tobacco were loaded aboard ships in Liverpool.  The ships sailed to Africa where the cargo was then traded for gold, ivory and slaves.  The slaves were then subjected to inhuman conditions for the 6 to 8 weeks it took for the ships to make their way to the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean middle passage.  The slaves who survived were sold for money or colonial products such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, rice and cotton.  These goods were then taken back to Liverpool, sold for profit and the whole cycle would start again.

One particular exhibit featured a dark room filled with the sounds of human suffering in one of the hulls of these "slavers".  The misery of each man, woman and child became very real.  Standing there in the dark trying to endure this ordeal from history made me realize I have lived in all the vertices of this historical trade route.  Zanzibar masked its history with a cloak of tropical beaches and aqua marine water, Liverpool shrouded it's prosperity with an apologetic museum and the Americas alone left with a legacy of the varying social acceptance of millions of displaced people.  Perhaps the museum in Barbados springs to mind the most vividly, because it was there in a local museum I studied a blueprint of one of the Slave ships.  The bodies of each human were tightly packed and organized into the most efficient space saving abhorrent hell.  By the time we stepped outside the Maritime museum I was in desperate need of some light relief after witnessing all the suffering humankind had created and endured.  A visit with Herbie and Rose would provide the perfect afternoon tonic.  

      “Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.”

The kids were uber excited while we waited on the platform for the train to Crosby. Jasmin counted stations and I distracted them with the story of the Liverbird.  As the emblem of Liverpool the Liver bird has evolved into a mythical creature.  

Perhaps the creature morphed from King John's eagle in when he granted the city its charter in 1207.  Maybe the creature is a spoonbill pronounced "lefler" in old Dutch.  It could well be a cormorant, a bird common in the area and the sprig in its mouth a piece of "laver" seaweed.  Whatever the explanation the two birds atop of the clock towers of the Royal Liver buildings face in opposite directions.  The female looks out to sea waiting for the safe return of the seamen and the male looks over the city to check if the pubs are open.  

 

 "Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at the people who belong to us we see the past, the present, and the future"

Gail Lumet Buckley

Spending time with family was wonderful and having newborn Herbie in my arms with Rose running around made me remember Jasmin and Josh at that age.  We always have such a great time with Uncle Luke and Auntie Emma.  

“To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.” -Barbara Bush

On Crosby beach there is an art installation by Antony Gormley called "Another Place".  100 life size figures made from cast iron are from moulds of the artists body.  They are scattered along a 3 kilometers stretch of beach up to 1 kilometer out to sea.  The tide and the shifting sand will vary how many of the figures can be seen and how much of  each figure is buried in sand or submerged by water.  The piece explores man's relationship with nature.  It was the weirdest thing to see the silhouettes facing out looking over the Irish Sea.  Some locals did have a problem with the nudity element of the statues, so I guess this is why some enterprising granny must have knitted this model a woolen wetsuit.

"I want to start where language ends." Antony Gormley

The blue skies of Crosby which had been cracking the flags (very hot) faded to grey rain the next day back in the city centre.  We didn't care we just wanted to take a "Ferry Cross the Mersey".  Jerry and the Pacemakers released the song in 1964.  Rivaling the Beatles, the band was also from Liverpool and managed by Brian Epstein.  The ferry takes 50 minutes to travel from Liverpool Pier Head to Seacombe then Woodside before returning.  

A good place to wash your hair, Liverpool - good, soft water.

George Harrison

In all honesty we couldn't see much through the ferry windows because the rain was lashing down.  The brown river merged into the grey monotone sky with only the city skyline breaking the dreariness.  Once back on shore we took a miserable rotation or two on the huge ferris wheel on the docks.  Its a roving replica of the London Eye only this 'eye' couldn't see much in the windy, watery conditions.  Regardless of the turn in the weather, we had really enjoyed our stay in the "Pool".  The thing is, that when it's raining, there is still lots of life in Liverpool.  You just have to figure out which pub the party moved to.

"Liverpool is the pool of life."

Carl Jung