Tuesday,
August 20
Today
we are in Liverpool, England and we are out and about on our own today taking
in a little bit of the Beatles, the Titanic, the Blitz of WWII and a little bit
of the Angell family history.
From
the Cruise Critic website, I found a suggested walking tour posted by a
gentleman who lives in Liverpool and is very proud to share his city with us
cruisers. We start our walking tour in
front of the “Three Graces”, the magnificent buildings adorning the World
Heritage site that is the Liverpool waterfront.
On top of the Liver Building are Liver birds.
Legend
says that if they fly away then a great catastrophe will befall the city. They’re still there despite Hitler’s best
efforts.
We then
looked for a Plaque built into wall on Pier Head. It commemorates more than a million American
soldiers who passed through the port during the WWII on their way to Europe. We couldn’t find the plaque until returning
to the ship later in the day. Access was
blocked to it as there was construction going on.
This
memorial on Liverpool’s waterfront is dedicated to the 233 engineers that lost
their lives in the disaster as they remained in the ship supplying the sticken
liner with electricity and other amenities for as long as possible. The monument is notable as the first monument
in the UK to depict The Working Man.
We walked
up away from the port and found the Albion House, which was the headquarters of
the White Star Line at the time of the Titanic disaster in 1912.
The Titanic
was registered in Liverpool, the home of the White Star Line. And this is where all of the relatives of
passengers and crew waited on that very corner for news of their loved ones.
Continuing
on up the street we reach the Queen Victoria Monument. I found a photo on the internet taken from
this location after 8 nights of bombing during the Blitz in May, 1941 and then
took a photo today.
Then it
was on to Beatle Land in the Cavern Quarter.
We found the Cavern Club—not the original but a faithful reproduction of
the one the Beatles played at.
Eleanor
Rigby statue is nearby, dedicated to “All the lonely people.”
And my
friend, John Lennon still hangs out on Mathew Street.
Back
down to the pier, we bought tickets for a “return” (roundtrip) ride on the
Mersey Ferry. It cruised the Mersey
River with narration of what we were seeing and by the end of the cruise,
everyone was singing the Beatles song referencing “ferry ‘cross the Mersey”…..
 |
| The Liverpool Museum |
At the
Maritime Museum on the waterfront we explored the Titanic exhibition. It was an interesting exhibit with the
real-life stories of those who sailed on the Titanic, in their own words. The Titanic was registered in Liverpool and
carried the city’s name on her stern.
133 of Titanic’s passengers and crew were Liverpool-born or had
connections with the city. We saw many
artifacts, including the only existing first class ticket and a Spode china
saucer, which is one of only nine in existence.
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| Ticket price comparisons for the Titanic. |
Terry’s
great grandfather sailed from Liverpool in 1856 on the Yorkshire to start a new
life in the USA. We explored the museums
and found photos of what the port looked like in the mid-1800’s. The port has changed dramatically since that
time and we learned that the area where the “Three Graces” buildings stand is
actually where the docks were back in the 1850’s.
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| The Three Graces Buildings |
It’s
likely that Great-grandpa James arrived in Liverpool from the Cambridge area by
train at this train station.
Millions
of people have immigrated to the US and Canada from the Liverpool port. We have traced 3 ships carrying Terry’s
ancestors from Liverpool, and we learned from our museum visits that if your
ancestors came from Scandinavia (like mine did), there’s a very good chance
that they, too, sailed from Liverpool.
Cool, I’ll be checking into that.
It was
a great day exploring Liverpool and we felt we covered everything that we set
out to see.
Next up…..Scotland!!
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