IT WAS 11.10am on September 3, 1939, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made a radio broadcast announcing Britain was at war with Germany.

And, within minutes of the declaration, some of the first shots of the conflict were fired on Merseyside.

At 11.25am, Army officers based at Fort Perch Rock, in New Brighton, a coastal defence battery built during the Napoleonic period to protect the Port of Liverpool, spotted a vessel entering the closed Rock Channel.

The battery commander in charge, Colonel C.J Cocks, ordered two warning shots to be fired across its bows.

The ship was later found to be an innocent fishing vessel, and the owner was ordered to pay £25 for each round fired.

Exactly 70 years later, the cannons at the fort – now a museum – were in action again to mark the anniversary of war being declared.

Seven shots were fired yesterday, each representing a decade.

Around 500 friends of the Fort and those who lived through the war braced cold and stormy conditions on New Brighton promenade to watch and remember fallen friends and relatives.

Curator of Fort Perch Rock, Doug Darroch, said: “Today was about remembering the loss of life and the sad times which lay ahead for the people of Merseyside over the six years after war was declared.

“The weather was atrocious when we fired the cannon but hundreds of people turned out to pay their respects.

“It’s hard to commemorate something like the outbreak of war, but this seemed like the right gesture for us to make.

“Colonel Cocks could have fired the first shots of the war, but I think it’s important that we don’t look on it as a competition.”

In his wartime notes, Colonel Cocks wrote: “I myself was Battery Commander on Sunday when war was declared, and within 15 minutes had to fire on a vessel entering the Rock Channel.

“I fired two rounds across the bows and probably these were the first shots of the war.”