IF YOU think life will be uncomfortable and difficult in the forthcoming year – or possibly years – in the current financial meltdown, here is a salutary reminder that your experiences could be far worse.

You could, for example, have been an ordinary seaman under sail in Nelson’s Royal Navy.

Liverpool raised the first major public monument to the great British hero, in Exchange Flags, in 1813. It features a graphic sculptural depiction, by Sir Richard Westmacott, of four chained figures, enslaved to French tyranny, awaiting promised liberation by our man.

More importantly, Liverpool was acknowledging its debt to Nelson, who rid the sea lanes of French attacks on the port’s mercantile trade.

The Lord Nelson Monument is often mistaken (especially by film-makers) as a monument to the horrors of Liverpool’s slave trade, an error perhaps not too far from the truth.

British Tars were practically little more than legalised slaves who spent years at sea and were rarely allowed ashore in case they deserted.

The dreaded press-gangs, who were only allowed to take seamen, were not over-fussed about their victims’ credentials. In Liverpool, bona fide Americans who survived the hostile Atlantic voyages aboard clippers were not safe. As former colonials, they found themselves serving His Majesty.

Merchant seamen who returned to the port after long voyages were intercepted before they reached the Mersey’s banks and bundled onto warships as crew. There were volunteers, but they, too, were treated no better than convicts.

This Napoleonic period of maritime history has been well-trawled, indeed, perhaps over-fished by academics, but the experiences of the ordinary seamen have been ignored.