I’ve needed my sea legs this week with so much maritime stuff to navigate through. Head to Liverpool this week for a real treat. In a nutshell: May 30 Cunard liner Queen Victoria arrives in Liverpool for an overnight stay. Free firework spectacular 10-30pm Friday, May 30. In another nutshell: very moving service 2-30pm, Thursday at St Nicholas Parish Church (at the Pier Head) to commemorate the sinking of a Liverpool bound liner in 1914. Cunard’s luxury floating palace, Queen Victoria arrives in Liverpool this Friday (May 30, 2014). She will be celebrating history as well as making a little bit of history herself. The Queen Vic is at the Pier Head to mark the departure, exactly 100 years earlier (May 30, 1914) of the Aquitania one of the most famous and beloved ships in Cunard history. Victoria will remain overnight, making her the first overnight call in Cunard’s ‘spiritual’ home of Liverpool by a Cunard passenger ship since Franconia in January 1968 – almost 50 years ago! The Liverpool call takes place during Queen Victoria’s 13-night Around the British Isles cruise which left Southampton on May 23. Activities planned to celebrate the unique call to Liverpool include local opera singer Danielle Thomas performing both during the afternoon on May 30 and for Queen Victoria’s May 31 departure. There will be a spectacular firework display at around 10-30pm this Friday. Princes Parade, in front of the cruise terminal will be a great viewing point. Aquitania – a Cunard legend that became known as the Ship Beautiful – is considered one of the most beautiful liners ever built and certainly the most beautiful four-funnelled liner ever constructed. She became one of the longest-serving Cunarders in history (36 years service), sailed more miles than any other (three million) and was the only major liner to serve in both World Wars. Winston Churchill credited her and the two Cunard Queens (Mary and Elizabeth) with shortening the Second World War by a year. Meanwhile, at 2-30 on May 29, a service will be held at the ‘Sailor’s Church’ at the Pier Head to remember an ocean liner known as the “Forgotten Empress,” Liverpool Retired Merchant Seafarers have arranged a memorial service for “our people” who died in “our Empress” – The Empress of Ireland. The forgotten tragedy happened exactly a century ago, two years after the Titanic went down. More crew and passengers perished on the Empress than on the Titanic, but the tragedy seems to have been virtually airbrushed out of the history books. The service is at St Nicholas’ Parish Church (the church opposite the Royal Liver Building), taking place simultaneously with a service being held in Quebec, the scene of the 1914 tragedy in the St Lawrence River. World War 1 broke out shortly after Empress of Ireland sank and a much greater tragedy overshadowed her loss. Maybe this is why she is the Forgotten Empress Musical accompaniment at St Nic’s will be by the Salvation Army Band and the Liverpool Harmonic Gospel Choir. Six children, aged seven to 11, will take a major part in the service, each of them blood relatives of the crew of Empress of Ireland. The Chief Mourner will be seven years old Charlotte Mulvaney, Canadian born and descended from William Mulvaney a fireman/trimmer who was lost in the ship. The family of Joseph Ventris, a cook who survived the sinking will also be attending. Joseph was washed off the ship and swam ashore towing a child. Whether the child survived the family cannot say, if it did it would be one of the four that did survive. Mr Ventris was found unconscious on the shore and was two weeks in a coma in hospital. As he was dressed in his cooks check trousers and a singlet there was no way of identifying him. His family could not be told he had survived and thought he had died.
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 00:51:57 +0000
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