We had visited Liverpool before – you can read about our trip there in 2010 here: Liverpool – and it was a place I was arguably familiar with since I’d studied (mostly partied) at university there back at the dawn of creation. Cities, as with their students, change over time, so there’s an argument that I wasn’t really familiar with it at all too, but still we decided to forego the option of a cruise excursion on this occasion during our Sky Princess UK 2021 cruise as the choices available just didn’t appeal; we’d seen the Cavern Club before; we weren’t particularly interested in anything Beatles-related; we didn’t fancy several hours on a bus heading to the Lake District.
A cruise port stop with no booked excursion! For some people it’s what they do most of the time, whether it’s to save some money, or because they prefer shopping to history and culture, or because they’ve done it all so many times before, or because they’re the sorts of people who just don’t find many things or experiences interesting in general. I’m not judging. Much. We do tend to do excursions because we try to visit different places instead of just returning to the same ones year after year and we want to learn some things or see some different things. I can’t update my Travel Achievements page if we never achieve anything interesting while travelling.
But no, not this time. For us on this short cruise it would be a relaxed wake-up, a leisurely breakfast, then a wander into the city. The view from our aft balcony was of the city’s Liver Building with the Albert Dock beyond that. The sky was overcast to start and the weather forecast was for a mix of sun and showers during the day.
Now, although I said we hadn’t booked any excursions we did have something booked anyway. Knowing we’d be in Liverpool and close to the Albert Dock I’d done a little bit of research into things going on in the area to see what might excite our brains. This was still in the Just Kinda Coming Out Of The Pandemic Sorta phase of life in late 2021 so you could walk into shops freely but don’t you dare think about coming to a museum or art gallery without choosing an arrival slot ahead of time! Okay, museums and art galleries maybe have a higher age demographic that is more vulnerable to airborne viruses and they want to protect their patrons more than Shelly and Grant who are popping into the newsagents for a packet of Rolos and a four-pack of local brand cider, but still an irritation that strongly discouraged casual visiting. Still, we took a chance that Sky Princess really would dock at Liverpool on the day it was supposed to and at the time it was supposed to, and I booked a visit to Tate Liverpool in Albert Dock. We’d end up seeing quite a bit of art along the Liverpool waterfront.
The exhibitions in the Tate were reasonable. I won’t say that it was fantastic because what was on at the time wasn’t quite aligned with our art interests, but it was very good to see some pieces by Picasso, Matisse, and Moore. The highlight for us, though, and the main reason we booked tickets, was to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. She’s a sculptor most famous for her spider-related works. I don’t like spiders and my wife is positively arachnophobic but we both enjoy these fabulous sculptures. Tate Liverpool hosted a number of Louise’s pieces but it was the 1995 artwork, Spider I, that stole the show for us. We’d previously seen Maman in Bilbao and her Eyes in New York City and we’d love to see more artwork from Louise Bourgeois when we travel in the future. If you’re into feminist art then she’s certainly someone you should learn more about.
It was raining lightly when we’d finished at the gallery so we decided to find a pub. Look, it’s what we do.
We made use of as much cover afforded by the walkway around the Albert Dock and found our way to the Turncoat Bar which caught our eye thanks to the board outside indicating it did craft beers, of which I’m very fond. Down the stairs we headed into a spacious cavern-like venue that we discovered also did its own gin and cooked pizzas on the premises too. The pizzas were popular as we saw several families arrive and order some while we were there, but we stuck to the liquids, having a couple of pints each and even picking up a bottle of gin to take home with us.
The rain had vanished when we emerged into daylight once more but we couldn’t really come up with anything else we wanted to see so just figured we’d take a slow walk back to the ship. “If we spot anything that looks interesting then we’ll take a look at it, but otherwise…”
Just north of Albert Dock on the Mersey is Canning Dock, and the views all around this part of Liverpool’s waterfront was a mix of iconic buildings, nods to the city’s mercantile past, and thoroughly modern structures. What instantly attracted our attention was the Pump House. It’s hard not to notice a red brick tower, and we could tell this was late Victorian in function and appearance; it was built in 1878 and used to provide steam power to the hydraulic cranes then coming into use around the docks.
We couldn’t tell that it was definitely a pub but it certainly looked like it had been turned into one from a distance so we felt it only right and proper to give it a closer look and, if it wasn’t a pub, I could always take a few photos from different angles around the building.
But it was a pub (Pump House)! So we decided to stop for a drink. Of course we did. We sat outside because it was bright and sunny, if not exactly warm, but mostly because it was rammed inside. The woman serving us told us there was football on so it was busier than normal. Drinks range was good, but we only stayed for one, admiring the views across the dock, trying arty photos with our drinks and the tower or the items we’d bought at the gallery and previous pub, and counting how many times the gulls smashed empty glasses off tables while trying to find leftover food on abandoned plates.
No more pub stops in Liverpool, I promise, but there will be public art sculptures because it would turn out that there were a fair few on our walking route back to Liverpool Cruise Port from Albert Dock.
The first bit of art we saw was Liverpool Mountain, a series of coloured rocks balanced on one another, created by Ugo Rondinone. In close proximity to that and to each other were the Billy Fury statue, the Metal and Stone sculpture, and The Crossing statue. The latter commemorates the migration from Liverpool to America by Mormon families.
Another point of interest in this spot on the Liverpool waterfront, especially for anyone carrying a padlock around with them looking to dispose of it in a manner that also creates a rusty eyesore, is the area appropriated for so-called love locks. I bet nobody ever returns to remove a lock when their relationship breaks down.
As fans of cruising it’s a dead certainty that as soon as we saw what was clearly a ship’s propeller mounted as a sculpture we’d need to head over and take a nose at it. This turned out to be the port-side propeller of the Cunard ocean liner, RMS Lusitania, sunk by the Germans in 1915 with the loss of nearly 1200 lives. The propeller and nose cone were salvaged in 1982 and weigh 22.5 tons.
Very close to the Lusitania propeller monument was Waiting, or the Working Horse monument, dedicated to the tens of thousands of horses that were used to transport goods between the dock warehouses and railway stations.
The most fun set of public art pieces was next to be seen on our walk back along the waterfront. We were immediately reminded of the time we visited Helsinki and saw brightly-decorated seal sculptures but unlike that time we couldn’t instantly work out what these were.
“What are they supposed to be?”
“They look like calves at the front, but the back is curved over like a scorpion’s tail. If I had to guess then I’d say that these were monuments to the scorpion-calves, chimeras created by Scouse farmers incensed by members of the public taking shortcuts through their fields when there were perfectly good walking trails around them. Scorpion-calves – and their adult forms, the scorpion-cows and scorpion-bulls – were effective at stopping trespassing but problems arose when the farmers tried to capitalise on their ungodly monsters. Many families lost members during slaughter season and the milk was 7% venom which affected the taste of tea. The army was called in. You don’t mess with a nation’s tea.”
“And if you didn’t have to guess?”
These were some of the Go Superlambananas! exhibition featuring 124 miniature replicas of the original Superlambanana created by Taro Chiezo in 1998 and representing the common cargoes of sheep and bananas combined with an ironic warning about genetic manipulation.
Beside the Mersey and the Navy Memorial was the statue of an interesting and heroic figure of the Second World War. Captain Frederic John “Johnnie” Walker had trained in anti-submarine warfare in Portland during the interwar years and was on the verge of early retirement when war broke out again. His unconventional approach when given command of escort groups of taking the attack to the enemy instead of merely protecting them led to numerous U-boat sinkings and was soon adopted fleetwide. In one patrol in early 1944 Walker’s group sunk 6 U-boats but had one ship hit during this. They towed the ship back home but it sank before reaching Liverpool, although all the crew were saved. They were met by cheering crowds and Walker received a promotion to captain. His final actions in World War II were protecting the vessels making the D-Day landings and ensuring not one U-boat made it past his group. After a fortnight of this he returned home where he suddenly died of a cerebral thrombosis attributed to exhaustion. His funeral was attended by 1000 people and his coffin was paraded through the streets of Liverpool to the HMS Hesperus for a burial at sea.
The three, very different buildings along the Liverpool waterfront are known as the Three Graces. From right-to-left as we passed them they were:
- Port of Liverpool Building – an Edwardian Baroque design,
- Cunard Building – an Italian Renaissance design,
- Royal Liver Building – an Anyone’s Guess design.
The lattermost is the most iconic of Liverpool’s buildings. The Liver Birds (cormorants with seaweed in their beaks) that sit atop the two towers face in different directions; Bella looks out to sea, while Bertie looks toward land.
What we noticed as we headed back towards Sky Princess was that the clocks on the Liver Building also told different times. Our supposition was that this was make everyone across the Mersey checking the time through binoculars always early for things. Those wacky Liverpudlians!
Just two more statues interrupted our waterfront walk back to the cruise ship. The first was the one we spent most time at, not because it was particularly good, and not because we had any interest in the group, but because I had to time a split-second shot where there was nobody standing in front hugging one of the group for a photo or pulling a ridiculous pose in front of it. It was the Beatles Pier Head Statue, of course.
The final monument we passed was that of a bronze on granite representation of King Edward VII on horseback. There are apparently more equestrian statues of Edward VII outside the UK than within it. The exposed location of this artwork means it needs regular attention and has in the past been given coats of paint to do so, though they’ve been sensibly removed in more recent cleaning operations.
And that brought our day ashore in Liverpool to an end. We didn’t spend an awful lot of time here but, again, we’ve been before. However, we managed to get some culture in with our art gallery visit and some statue and monument-spotting along the city’s waterfront, and we managed to try some local ale and purchase some local gin too. That was enough.
Our walk through the Cruise Liverpool port building saw us encounter one more Superlambanana. For one of our fellow passengers on Sky Princess it was all too much and she fell down the ramp leading from the dock to the quay. There was blood, but she seemed okay.
In the next post in this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the rest of the day spent aboard the cruise ship along with our departure from Liverpool. Since I’d been taking time lapse videos of the departures at the other ports on this cruise you can expect another one in that post too.