Port Of Liverpool - Great Britain: Books - History and Ships

Liverpool's Shipping Groups

The history of the great shipping groups of the nineteenth century is about family dynasties, business acumen, investment, risk taking and entrepreneurial skills. It is about everything that epitomises the Victorian age. Men of vision identified market trends and gaps in the provision of shipping services throughout the world. They were responsible for initiating routes that were that were to develop and blossom providing them with excellent returns on their original investment.

The main British shipping lines in this book, including among others Brocklebank, Cunard, Blue Funnel, Booth, Elder Dempster, Ellerman, Hall Lines, Lamport Holt and Cayzer, Irvine had their origins in Liverpool, once the premier port in the United Kingdom. Head offices were located in Merseyside as were many ancillary departments.

Over the past four decades the shape of British Shipping has changed and some of the established shipping lines that had been in business since Victorian times did not survive and many of the names in this book are now a memory of a different age. Others have been taken over by larger groups and their names have gradually vanished from the shipping records as their ships have been replaced or renamed.

It was difficult to imagine in the 1960s that the shipping scene would change so dramatically in such a relatively period. "Liverpool's Shipping Groups" is a celebration of a period that will not be forgotten by anyone with an interest in ships and the sea.

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Mersey Shipping Through Time

The Mersey has changed over the past century. Famous ships and shipping lines have changed or gone altogether, the means of shipping goods has changed and the numbers of people in the docks have drastically fallen.
Household names such as Blue Funnel Line, Elder Dempster and Pacific Steam Navigation Company have been replaced by Fred Olsen, HAPAG-Lloyd and Maersk, while Cunard ships once more call into the Mersey, no longer carrying passengers heading for America or Canada, but holidaymakers in floating hotels.

With the advent of box boats and superfast ferries, we no longer see many of the traditional vessels that once called. Ian Collard calls upon his vast archive, as well as modern images, to show us the changing face of the Mersey over the past decades.
Inside are views of the Mersey ferries, the transformation of the docklands itself, on both sides of the river, and the ships that now sail up the Mersey to discharge cargo and passengers in the dock system.

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Ships of the Mersey - A Photographic History

Overshadowing the port of Chester, Liverpool grew in size from the 1800s on sugar and slavery. Expanding over the following two centuries, the port has grown to take over part of the other side of the Mersey, with docks at Birkenhead, Ellesmere Port and Wallasey, as well as along the coast from Liverpool.

Ian Collard brings together a superb selection of images of shipping on the river from the 1860s to the present day, looking at how the ports on either side of the river have developed and the ships which have called there.
From the Mersey ferries to the greatest of ocean liners, Ships of the Mersey tells the story of the ships, the people and the buildings of the Mersey docks system.

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Liverpool Docks Through Time

Liverpool has been an important port since the seventeenth century, when the city began to import West Indian sugar and Virginian tobacco, exporting Lancashire textiles in return. As trade expanded through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so too did the Liverpool Docks.

In "Liverpool Docks Through Time", Ian Collard uses a wide collection of photographs to guide us through the process of change and growth, from the early years through the massive expansion of the nineteenth century and the reconstruction and rebuilding that followed the Second World War to the new patterns of trade that emerged later in the twentieth century and up to the present day.

Covering everything from White Star ocean liners to the tugs of the modern docks and from hard-working freighters to restored sailing ships, this is a comprehensive guide.

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The Port of Liverpool in the 1960s and 1970s

In the 1960s and 1970s, many of the traditional shipping companies trading or based in Liverpool slowly vanished because of containerisation or competition from passenger aircraft. Many of these shipping lines had been in operation since the early years of the 19th century and had provided links with the outposts of the Empire and the developing independent countries of the Commonwealth.
They had been established in the days of sailing ships and had survived the transition from sail to steam and had provided a lifeline to the country in the difficult days of the First and Second World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

With a fascinating collection of newly unearthed photographs, shipping historian Ian Collard documents this important period of transition in the history of one of the world's most famous ports.

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