Three floors of irresistible exhibitions and galleries that tell the story of the Liverpool port and waterfront lead to the Maritime Museum archives. When I went there to consult documents on the Liverpool Sailor’s Home, the museum had two stimulating exhibitions on the Cunard ship Lusitania and its White Star Line competitor, Titanic. The archives closed before the rest of the museum, leaving me some time to take in the visual treats that contained a plethora of useful information on the lives of seamen aboard luxury liners.
The walls of the small reading room of the archives were lined with maritime magazines and an excellent collection of books on life at sea. The printed archive catalogues contained detailed descriptions of every folder and enabled me to swiftly cross-reference and request relevant materials without having to look up the online catalogue.
The major attraction of the archives was the accessible reference library that had several scarce but crucial accounts of seamen’s missions. These books were published either privately or by short-lived or niche presses, which meant they were difficult to find in most libraries. A case in point was the two books on the Mersey Mission to Seamen by chaplain Bob Evans, among which The Mersey Mission to Seafarers, 1856-2006 was a rare find. Evans was awarded an MBE in 2008, shortly after the book’s publication, in recognition of his unstinting work for seamen’s welfare since the 1960s.
The book is an authoritative history of the Mersey Mission told in a serious and self-congratulatory tone. Evans was proud of what the Mission achieved and overlooked some fundamental problems such as the discrepancy in the annual remunerations of chaplains for different racial categories of seamen. While Rev Tom Patrick joined the chaplaincy with a salary of £300 in 1878 (p. 47), the first Lascar Missionary (Charles Seal) received £52 in 1902 (p. 76). The number of Asiatic seamen under Seal’s paternal care might have been fewer than white seamen in the port, but the stark difference in fees conveys a racialised outlook towards which service counted as more important. The project will further explore the politics of identity for charity matters as it progresses.