The "Emigrants to a New World" Gallery at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool

Abstract

The Merseyside Maritime Museum, one component of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, is devoted to recording and re-creating Liverpool's role as the western gateway of Europe.' Trade in commodities and in people had been the port's business for 300 years. All that rapidly ended in the 1970s and 1980s. World depression saw the 5 miles of docks, basins, and wharves along the Mersey waterfront progressively abandoned. As one response to the precipitous decline of port and city, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government and the EEC have directed ?50 million into the restoration of the Albert Dock, a compact but impressive section of the 5-mile complex. Around the four sides of the dock the massive five-story 19th-century warehouses have had their warm orange brick repointed, their cast-iron pillars checked and painted, their stonework cleaned, and the stone blocks of cobbled yards renewed. On three sides of the warehouse quadrangle, a property company is letting the ground floor premises as shops and the upper floors as apartments. The fourth side of the Albert Dock warehousing forms the main site of the Merseyside Maritime Museum-other museum properties and two ships lie opposite, around the Canning Half-Tide Basin (see fig. 1). The main museum, representing an investment of ?10 million, has 130,000 square feet of space on six floors, 60 percent open to the public. Its collections comprise primarily artifacts and archives (including some important company archives). Its major exhibit is the