Is anyone ready to save the Planet?

May 19 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

Mersey Bar Lightship Planet moored in Canning Dock _320

The last of an illustrious line

THE Mersey Bar lightvessel, Planet, is the last of an illustrious line of vital little red ships marking Liverpool’s “front-door”.

Planet carries the name of the first Mersey Bar lightvessel built at Birkenhead in the 1870s.

The current Planet, built – like the Mersey Ferries – at Phillips of Dartmouth, was stationed at the Mersey Bar from 1961 to 1972, with a seven-man crew, who worked fortnightly rotas.

With no propulsion, Planet was held on station by a four-ton, wrought iron anchor. She was replaced by an unmanned Automatic Navigation Buoy.

After leaving the Mersey, Planet’s owners, Trinity House, repositioned her in the English Channel off Guernsey and she gained a helicopter deck.

By 1983, Planet was out of work again and towed off station to the lightships’ graveyard, Harry Pound’s scrap merchants, in Portsmouth.

Bought by Keith Ganes and Mike Critchley, Planet was berthed in East Float, at Birkenhead docks, alongside the now dispersed Historic Warships Collection.

LIPA “fame school” and current owner Gary McClarnan hoped to use Planet as a students’ recording studio with the helicopter deck as a stage for open-air concerts.

Enthusiastic support came from Mersey Lightvessel Preservation Society. Now disbanded, the society donated its residual funds to the restoration of the historic tug, 103-year-old Daniel Adamson, berthed in Sandon Dock.

McClarnan first inspected Planet in 2003, later buying her for around £100,000, but she has spent the last year in limbo, alongside Liverpool Strand, awaiting the next chapter in her eventful history.

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