Cunard

There were ocean liners on the Mersey when I was a lad. Amongst the most notable was the trans-Atlantic Cunard fleet. Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary were too big for Liverpool, or so we were told, but we had the Sylvania and Carinthia, from memory, and there were probably others, too.

I heard it said that the captain of the Mauretania lived in our road in the late 1950s, though I never noticed him wandering past our house in a naval uniform. Mauretania sailed mostly from Southampton, it seems, so maybe that was all a bit fanciful. The whole company ended up on the Solent, eventually, of course - boats, HQ, captains and all.

This is my latest poster acquisition. Original, double royal ship posters have their own following, just like the railway examples. Photographic illustrations like this one generally command lower sale prices than paintings. Nevertheless, this is a nice reminder of the big ships in the river, a shot taken a long time before the Liver Building received a facial scrub to remove its early twentieth century grime.

Today, it’s the cruise ships that have taken the long-gone liners’ place at the waterfront, providing extra customers for Liverpool’s thriving and largely heritage-based tourism industry.