Mersey Ferry
The Mersey Ferry is a ferry service operating on the River Mersey in northwest England, between Liverpool to the east and Birkenhead and Wallasey on the Wirral Peninsula to the west. Ferries have been used on this route since at least the 12th century and continue to be popular for both local people and visitors.
The current fleet consists of two vessels. A third ferry, Royal Daffodil was in service until 2012. The current ferries originally came into service in the 1960s and were named Mountwood and Woodchurch. Both ferries have been extensively refurbished and renamed Royal Iris of the Mersey and Snowdrop. The ferries share the workload of cross-river ferrying, charter cruises and the Manchester Ship Canal cruise. The service is operated by Merseytravel, under the "Mersey Ferries" brand.
History
Medieval ferries
In about 1150, the Benedictine Priory at Birkenhead was established. The monks used to charge a small fare to row passengers across the river. At this time, the Mersey was considerably wider with sand dunes and marshes to the north leading up to Ainsdale beach and sandstone cliffs and shorelines to the south near Otterspool. The only suitable landing point for the ferry was in the Pool, near the site of the present Merseyside Police headquarters. Weather often stopped crossings and passengers were delayed for days, taking shelter at the priory.In 1317, a royal licence was issued, granting permission to the Priory to build lodging houses for men crossing the river at Woodside. King Edward II visited Liverpool in 1323, and the royal accounts show that he used local ferrymen to sail up the river to Ince. In 1330, his son Edward III granted a charter to the Priory and its successors forever: "the right of ferry there... for men, horses and goods, with leave to charge reasonable tolls". At the time, there was only a small hamlet at Birkenhead, and a slightly larger village at Liverpool.
The Chester Indictments record criminal activities on the Mersey ferries in the 14th and early 15th centuries. In 1355, Richard, son of Simon de Becheton, was murdered on the ferry; the murderers escaped and took refuge at Shotwick. In 1365, it was recorded that there were four ferryboats operating without a licence, from Bromborough and Eastham. In 1414, William de Stanley, the servant of John Talbot, later Earl of Shrewsbury, was on the ferry between Birkenhead and Liverpool when about 200 men assaulted him and stole his bay horse valued at £5, a bow and 14 arrows valued at 3s 4d and a barge valued at £10. The thieves were fined.
A licence was issued in 1357 to the Poole family by Edward, the Black Prince, for a ferry from Eastham. The licence then passed to the Abbey of St Werburgh, in Chester, and became known as Job's Ferry. Early ferries also existed across the Mersey further upstream, at Ince and at Runcorn.
From the 16th to the 18th century
The monks of Birkenhead Priory operated a ferry service until the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the priory's destruction by Henry VIII's troops in 1536. Ownership reverted to the Crown, and in 1544 the ferry rights as well as the Priory properties were bought by Ralph Worsley of Lancashire for £586. 11s. 6d. The rights later passed to the Molyneux family. By 1541 William Bromley had the licence for ferries at Seacombe, and in 1586, Queen Elizabeth granted John Poole of Sutton the rights at Tranmere.During this period, the private owners began to use fully rigged sailing ships. The use of sailing ships meant that bigger vessels could be employed, but in reality, these boats were even more at the bidding of the weather. The Mersey is famed for its thick fogs, and during these times during winter there was little wind and ferries could not operate. The frequency depended on demand and the weather.
By the 18th century, the commercial expansion of Liverpool and the increase in stage coach traffic from Chester spurred the growth of the transportation of passengers and goods across the river. Ferry services from Rock House on the Wirral – that is, Rock Ferry – were first recorded in 1709. By 1753 the Cheshire side of the Mersey had at least five ferry houses at Ince, Eastham, the Rock, Woodside and Seacombe. The service from New Ferry to Liverpool was first mentioned in 1774.
Steam ferries
The first steamship to operate on the Mersey was the Elizabeth, a wooden paddle steamer, which was introduced in 1815 to operate between Liverpool and Runcorn. There was considerable debate as to the best way of boarding a ferry vessel. For the steam ferry Etna, which entered service at Tranmere on 17 April 1817, the idea of extension stages was mooted. These were long piers that were mounted on wheels and, by using a steam engine, could be wheeled in and out depending on the level of the tide.At Woodside, a small slipway was built on the beach to allow the boats to berth, and in 1822 the paddle steamer Royal Mail began commercial operation between Liverpool and Woodside. The town of Birkenhead was just starting to develop at this point. In 1820, the Birkenhead Ferry began operating from a new site just to the south; this closed in 1870. The Woodside, North Birkenhead and Liverpool Steam Ferry Company was formed in 1835, and the slipway at Woodside was widened and constructed as a stone pier. In 1838, the Monks Ferry Company began operating rival ferries from a new stone slip and hotel about 400 metres south of Woodside, but this service closed in 1878.
From about 1830, steam ferries also operated from the new resort developed by James Atherton at New Brighton, and from nearby Egremont. Steam ferries also began operating from Eastham.
By the 1840s, Birkenhead was developing into a busy new town. The railway to Chester had opened, the town was growing quickly, and the docks were under construction. There were also competing ferry services and disputes over the rights granted to the monks, and there was a need to improve the facilities at Woodside. In the early 1840s, the old slipway was replaced with a new stone pier with a small lighthouse at the end. However, this soon became inadequate.
In 1847, the first floating landing stage, which rose and fell with the tide so that boats could dock at any time, was opened at Liverpool. The first portion, known as the Georges' landing stage, was designed by William Cubitt and was 500 feet long. It was rebuilt and extended in 1874.
Corporation years
Until the establishment of the Mersey Railway in 1886, the ferries were the only means of crossing the river, and so all of the routes were heavily used. All of the ferry routes were owned by private interests before coming under municipal ownership in the mid 19th century. The Woodside ferry was taken over by the Birkenhead Commissioners in 1858 and, in 1861, the Wallasey Local Board took over the ferry services at Seacombe, Egremont and New Brighton. At Woodside, land between the Woodside Hotel and the end of the old pier was reclaimed, and in 1861 the floating landing stage was opened. The pontoons were towed into position, moored by chains originally made for the SS Great Eastern, and linked to the mainland by two double bridges.The Cheshire, the first passenger ferry steamer to have a saloon, operated from Woodside in 1864. The iron pier at Eastham was built in 1874. On 26 November 1878, the ferry Gem, a paddle steamer operated from Seacombe by the Wallasey Local Board, collided with the Bowfell, a wooden sailing ship at anchor on the River Mersey; five people died as a result.
In 1886 the Mersey Railway Tunnel was opened, providing competition for the ferry services. The Woodside ferry service began using twin-screw passenger steamers in 1890, which replaced paddle steamers. In 1894 trains were carrying 25,000 passengers per day and the ferries 44,000 per day. The ferry service at Tranmere, which had operated since mediaeval times, closed in 1897. The pier and landing stage at Rock Ferry was built in 1899, and Birkenhead Corporation also operated the ferry service at New Ferry.
File:The Mersey ferries HMS DAFFODIL and HMS IRIS II at Dover soon after the vessels returned from the Zeebrugge Raid. Q18888.jpg|thumb|Mersey ferries Daffodil and Iris at Dover in 1918. The vessels had been requisitioned for war service and had recently returned from participating in the Zeebrugge Raid.
In 1914 King George V and Queen Mary travelled on the ferry Daffodil from Wallasey to Liverpool. During the First World War the steamers Iris and Daffodil were taken out of service from Wallasey to be used as troop ships in the naval raid on Zeebrugge in Belgium. The ferries had a shallow draft, allowing them to skim over the mines floating beneath the surface, and were robust enough to approach the heavily defended mole curling into the North Sea. They both saw action, which was described on 24 April 1918 by Vice–Admiral Sir Roger Keyes of the Royal Navy in a message to the ferries' manager:
"I am sure it will interest you to know that your two stout vessels carried Bluejackets and Marines to Zeebrugge, and remained alongside the Mole for an hour, greatly contributing to the success of the operation... The damage caused by enemy gun fire has been repaired".
Because of their work King George V allowed the vessels to use the word "Royal" in their name. They needed extensive refitting before they could resume peacetime activities.
In the boats themselves, there was quick development. The early incarnations of today's modern vessels can be seen in some of the early propeller driven ships, mainly the 1906 pair, Royal Iris and Royal Daffodil. The Wallasey twin screw vessels all had flying bridges with port and starboard docking cabs. As built, the two ferries still had the wheel at promenade deck level, however this was subsequently moved up onto the bridge, so navigation was all on one level. They were all fitted with ahead and astern reciprocating engines and most vessels could achieve a speed of around 12 knots, which is about the same as today's trio of ferries. On early paddlers, the wheelhouse and side cabs were open largely due to the transition from sail to steam, and most ships at the time had open navigation bridges with the ferries being no different. Birkenhead did not use flying bridges, instead having a central wheelhouse and two outer navigation boxes which were raised up higher above deck level. Wallasey ferries employed a funnel livery of white and black and Birkenhead red and black. Birkenhead changed to orange and black after the second world war.
When the railway tunnels were constructed and opened, the ferry service did suffer somewhat but it always remained popular. It was really the advent of the road tunnels that caused trouble. When the Queensway road tunnel opened in 1934, the ferry service from Seacombe lost two million passengers because people started to use the tunnel rather than the ferry. The opening of the road tunnel also had an effect on the luggage boats which were introduced in 1879. Both ferry companies earned a substantial amount from luggage boats, which carried vehicles and goods across the river. When the road tunnel opened, traffic dropped by 80%. By the 1940s, luggage boat services from both Woodside and Seacombe to Liverpool had ceased. From Woodside in 1941 and from Seacombe 1947.
Due to financial losses incurred from a gradual reduction in patronage, Birkenhead Corporation gradually closed its southern terminals; New Ferry on 22 September 1927, Eastham in 1929 and Rock Ferry on 30 June 1939. The closure of Eastham marked the last use of ferry paddle steamers on the river. Wallasey were always trying to close Egremont, but faced stiff opposition from locals who got petitions to keep the ferry open. The chance came to close Egremont during the Second World War for economic reasons, after the pier was damaged in a collision. This was in similar circumstances to the demise of New Ferry twenty years earlier. As a result, the Egremont service never reopened.
In 1941, mines which had drifted into the River Mersey stopped ferry crossings. The Oxton and Bebington vessels were fitted with cranes to enable them to unload United States aircraft from mid-river and deliver them to the Liverpool landing stage. The Upton vessel was taken by the army and used as a ferry and supply vessel for the anti-aircraft forts in Liverpool Bay.
In 1950, the ferries carried almost 30 million passengers a year, including 11 million on the Woodside ferries and 15 million on Seacombe ferries, but by 1970 the total number fell to 7 million. Night boats across the river were withdrawn and replaced by buses through the tunnel in 1956.