Ship Spotters

We were not just train spotters in the 1960s. We went after ships as well, taking note of what we saw on our Sunday cycle expeditions to Birkenhead sheds. We also took our bikes to Liverpool via Seacombe Ferry on Saturday mornings and cycled the length of the dock system from Gladstone back to the Pier Head, sometimes including a selection of the now closed South Docks. We noted the names of the ships of the various merchant shipping lines, including Clan, Blue Funnel, Harrison and Brocklebank.

We were invited on board a Clan Line boat in Liverpool Docks by a group of foreign seamen and climbed a narrow and flimsy set of steps up the ship’s side to reach the deck for a quick look around. The resulting, fairly brief interaction with our hosts relied entirely on gestures and facial expression, and primarily that universal common characteristic - the smile. 

The narrow wharf side between the walls of the transit sheds and the edge of the dock was strewn with all sorts of bits and bobs; grain, pieces of timber and a range of spillages, as well as being interlaced with railway lines that were sometimes very wet and slippery. It was an accident waiting to happen. Below us lurked the cold and dirty water of the dock itself and vertical dock walls. I couldn’t swim in those days, either. Yet we were never stopped at the dock gates, nor apprehended en route by any one in officialdom.         

We bought spotting pocket books for ships, as well, which were organised in similar fashion to the Ian Allan locomotive books and we underlined the names as we saw them, just like the trains. Towards the end of the week, I would go into Earlston Library in Wallasey and look through the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, to see which ships were coming into which named docks by the following weekend.

We were properly hooked on spotting things. By the end of the decade some of us were also going to evening bird watching classes led by a local vicar at the nearby technical college. That hobby has stood the test of time as well.

Nor had obsessive collecting during this period been confined to engine numbers, ship names and bird species. Whilst still at junior school, I remember standing on street corners near home in order to list vehicle registration numbers. HF plates were registered in Wallasey, whilst CM and BG traffic was from Birkenhead.

While my younger sister took advantage of parental encouragement towards self-improvement, by learning to swim with George at Guinea Gap Baths and by embarking on piano lessons in an elderly spinster’s front room in Vyner Road, instead, I set about filling my bedroom with stuff.          

At one time or another, I obtained armies of minute plastic soldiers, piles of comics [Beano and Beezer, then Victor and Hotspur], Brooke Bond tea cards [of birds, which you could swap at a local general store], match boxes, book matches, cigarette packets, postage stamps, Airfix kits [planes and trains], bubble gum cards, fireworks [seasonal, much to my mother’s relief], autographs, pin badges from youth hostels, sew-on cloth badges from the different parts of the country I had visited, records [singles, EPs and long players] and beer mats.          

I had also subscribed to and then amassed large quantities of the various railway magazines during my teens, including, at different times, Trains Illustrated, Modern Railways, Railway Magazine and Railway World. I eventually forfeited some of my copies of Trains Illustrated in order to make a frieze out of photographs of steam engines, which I had cut out and attached to a roll of wallpaper and placed most of the way round my bedroom wall.          

The remainder blocked up wardrobe space for years, vacating my childhood family home about the same time as I did. I’m pretty sure my girlfriend and I had come to an amicable agreement by then about their future, which would have involved them starting a new life together elsewhere. 

 Point duty on 2/8/67 at the approach to Duke Street bridge, Birkenhead.

[Adapted from my book, Train Spotters]