Mersey’s £19m cruise liner terminal tugged into place

Aug 18 2007 by Larry Neild, Liverpool Daily Post

Cruise terminal

LIVERPOOL’S new cruise liner terminal finally started to arrive at its new riverfront home last night.

River tugs were drafted in to start the process of towing the £19m berth into place in an operation likely to last until Monday.

It means the new terminal will be ready and operational in time for its official opening ceremony on September 21, when the QE2 will steam up the river as part of its 40th anniversary cruise.

The ceremony will be one of the highlights of the city’s 800th birthday year, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to the banks of the river in Liverpool and Wirral.

A week earlier, the Royal Navy’s flagship, Ark Royal, is scheduled to visit the River Mersey.

It will tie up alongside the stage if the set-up is operational.

The first of four segments of the stage were floated out of the dry dock at Cammell Laird’s Birkenhead yard on the afternoon tide yesterday. Tugs brought it across the river and it spent several hours mid-river last night waiting for the departure of the Isle of Man Super Seacat so it could be towed into place at around 9pm. The other three stages will be floated into place in an operation expected to be completed over the next few days.

Depending on weather and tidal conditions marine experts are confident the landing stage will be fully installed by Monday.

Once the landing stage is towed to the Liverpool waterfront, the sections will be linked to a series of piles that have been sunk into the hard rock river bed.

The landing stage will rise and fall with the tides.

Balfour Beatty engineers will be working throughout the weekend to complete the operation.

While the four sections of the stage are being brought to the riverfront, work teams will be busy completing a new road bridge link that will enable heavy traffic to reach the new landing stage from the riverfront.

A separate pedestrian bridge is also under construction along Princes Parade.

Once everything has been put in place, an essential series of safety trials and tests will then need to carried out.

Originally, the landing stage was due to move into place in June.

Unseasonably wet weather – that saw large areas of the country flooded – made it impossible for the new stage to be moved into place.

It was taken instead to Cammell Laird to enable checks and last- minute works to take place. The city council plan is for dozens of cruise liners and Royal Navy vessels to visit the Mersey, bringing tens of thousands of visitors to the city and potentially earning several million pounds a year for the city economy.