Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History British Council Films - Merseyside

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I've done a search, and couldn't find anything.

The British Council have just made a lot of old shorts available on line, and they are downloadable. One in particular stood out, called 'Merseyside'. Filmed in 1941, it has many atmospheric shots of the docks (mainly Liverpool), but some good views of the ferries, including the luggage boats are shown too. It's accompanied by the usual stirring music and clipped British commentry of the time. Runs to just over 9 minutes, and can be found here: Clicky

I haven't watched any of the others yet, but they seem to have lesser interest regarding Wirral History, with titles such as
'The Life Cycle of the Pin Mould' and 'The Life of the Rabbit', etc...

If Pin Moulds and the rest are your thing, the main site can be found at: Britsh Council Films

What a good little film this is, it is really interesting to see. An eye opener to see how much smoke going up into the atmosphere - you tend to forget little things like that. Not much attention paid to health and safety on the docks either. Thanks for sharing this with us, I followed a link to the BFI site and had a little look at a couple of clips and can see many happy hours of reminiscent viewing there.

Excellent find. The commentary is inaccurate in that (at 1m 50s) it implies that ALL the Wirral traffic was carried by Wallasey Ferries company. We know better, and so should have local man, Lionel Gamlin! True, the Birkenhead luggage boats ceased in July 1941 but the pasengers milling around are at the red-and-black funnelled boats.
In 1941 we needed a lot of morale boosting like these films but were they shown in cinemas? Others in the series seem to be aimed at visitors but there can't have been much tourism in those times.
(The film was very dim on my comp but if you go to the MP4 download using Windows Media Player and right-click toenhancements/video settings you can adjust brightness and contrast to suit.)

Enjoyed watching that. My dad became a docker during the 1950s. During the war he worked in the Harland and Woolfe shipyard. I always remember us kids watching in amazement as he did a twirl in our little parlour late one afternoon when he got home from his work on the docks. His old mack stood out like a ballerina's tutu. Just like a magician he started pulling from under his coat the very items that were making it appear like a tutu:they were bunches of bananas. Lol! Looking at most of the men working on the quaysides,they looked just like my poor dad. We had nothing but we had some fun times all the same. Thanks again!

I liked the Cinematographer's name: "S.D. Onions" - !!!

That's why the dockers went on strike so much when containerisation was introduced; they lost so much of their "wages".

Hi Folks,
Ive looked but cant see this being mentioned on here so thought I would add it.
It's a video of Merseyside during the 40's
ENJOY !!

http://film.britishcouncil.org/merseyside

..

It has been on before, but no harm in seeing it again.
I have a feeling that we ought to have a competition to see who can spot all the irritating inaccuracies.

I'll kick off then. B'head Ferries being shown whilst calling them Wallasey Ferries !

Thanks for putting this up Briszone. It IS very interesting !

Not an inaccuracy really, but the dubbing was done in a Kindergarten by the sound of it !

Six people to load small boxes onto a goods wagon, i can see that happening today. And i hope they weren't fragile the way they were being handled!

Enjoyed

Quite right, Pinz; two mentions of Wallasey Ferries and none of Birkenhead ditto.
The narrator was Lionel Gamlin; a stalwart of the BBC.
Next questionable bit, a reference to "twenty-eight miles of yards and warehouses". Seems a bit excessive; Seaforth to Dingle is about seven miles.

just goes to show how health and safety has gone mad!!!

i havent seen it and enjoyed it thanks briszone. they dont make them like that anymore.

Enjoyed but I got the impression that I was born in Wallasey and not Birkenhead, it seems Birkenhead didn't exist and all of Wirral is Wallasey, bummer :-)