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 :-)

Nice film.

There's also mention of "the Bridgewater canal, which connects the great seaport with our industrial centres". FFS where do they get their information from? The Bridgewater canal starts at Runcorn, passes near Manchester and ends up at Leigh, where it joins the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Later, a reference again to the "Wallasey luggage boats". The makers of the film must have got a better backhander from Wallasey Corporation than Birkenhead was prepared to offer.
In other words, don't trust official sounding (British Council) films.
Having said all that, it's a nice film.

Thanks for sharing that.

wow i was born in 61 but still remember the "old docks" apart from the horse and carts had been replaced with diesel vehicles, i remember the "listers" buzzing around , they used to have a couple still working in lairds when i started in 76' amazing how much has changed (for the better is debateable)

In its heyday, the Bridgewater Canal DID connect Merseyside with the centre of Manchester.

The first section of the canal was built in 1761 to transport coal into Manchester from the Duke of Bridgewater's mines in Worsley.

Fifteen years later, the canal was extended to near Runcorn, where it connected with the Mersey - giving a direct link from the river into the heart of Manchester.

The Bridgewater was later extended from Worsley to Leigh, where it linked up with the Leeds-Liverpool Canal.

After the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, commercial traffic declined on the Bridgewater and in 1966, the locks that connected the canal with the Mersey were closed.

In this British Council film, it seems likely they are talking about the Manchester Ship Canal and not the Bridgewater Canal.

Factually flawed it may be, but they might be right about the length of the docks.

Take for example, seven miles of the river bank. Build docks. Each quayside has an outer quay and an inner quay, usually of roughly the same length. And then add in the two side quays between them.. In that way 200 yards of riverbank becomes 800 yards of quayside, if the dock were square, and so on.

Here is an extract from 'Study of European Ports 1909 - The Port of Liverpool.'

"At present, the docks and basins consist of 427 acres of water area and 26 miles of lineal quayage on the Liverpool side of the Mersey River, and 165 acres of water area and 9 miles of lineal quayage on the Birkenhead side, making a total water area of 592 acres, and a total lineal quayage of 36 miles.

The area of the Dock Estate consists of 1,171 acres on the Liverpool side, and 506 on the Birkenhead side, or a total of 1,677 acres. On the Liverpool side the docs extend from the Hornby Dock on the north to the Herculaneum Dock on the south, a distance of over seven miles, with not a foot of property between these limits the Mersey Dock Estate owns large areas of foreshore property for future extensions of this great system."

Read more: The Port of Liverpool - Study of European Ports, 1909 http://www.gjenvick.com/PortsAndHar...-StudyOfEuropeanPorts.html#ixzz20W74s4wL

This seems to be an excellent site for shipping document collections.

I'm sure the people of Southampton would benefit from reading the full article so that they don't have to speculate about who is taking who's shipping trade. We can draw our own conclusions (and often do), but if you read the article, you will see such facts as approximately 6000 ocean-going vessles using the north end of Princes Landing Stage each year.

And don't think these ships were small, just because it was over 100 years ago. I've just been looking at some sailings from Liverpool made by Cunard ships in 1913. In that year, Cunard alone was running fourteen ships across the Atlantic, nearly all from Liverpool. Cunard were running a weekly service to New York, and a fortnightly service to Boston.

The 'Ivernia' and her sister 'Saxonia' were quite small by comparison, at just 1964 passengers each compared to some of the others. 'Carpathia' could carry 2550 passengers, 'Carmania' 2650, with sisters 'Franconia' and 'Laconia' each holding 2850. The 'Lusitania' and 'Mauretania' held 2165 each.

By comparison, a modern cruise ship, built about ten years ago, will typically hold a similar number of passengers.

That's certainly one way of looking at it, and perfectly valid I suppose.

@ yoller; yes, I think they meant the Manchester Ship Canal.

The problem is that, with the commentary delivered in such an authoritative voice, people are inclined to take it as gospel.