TO PARAPHRASE Bob Dylan, “it’s been a slow stage coming”, but it’s finally here. I was the second civilian to set foot (by a couple of yards) behind my esteemed colleague Larry Neild on the new Princes Landing Stage or, as it’s officially known, the City of Liverpool Cruise Liner Terminal.
Regular readers know of my love of Merseyside’s maritime heritage, and there were a number of teasing remarks before I left the office concerning how excited one could be about a rectangular-shaped tank of concrete floating in the river.
But, dear reader, I confess there was a tingle of anticipation walking down the link-bridge on what was a glorious morning last Friday. Yes, it’s only a tank of concrete, well, four to be exact measuring just under 1,000ft in length, but what a difference they will make to this city.
Once again, after a gap of 33 years, we will have a proper front door welcoming the world’s biggest cruise liners. Passengers and crew will pour by their thousands into the city centre with every ship visit, and therefore in turn pour extra millions of pounds over the years into our shops and attractions. This in itself will lift the quality and variety of goods and services in the city centre for all of us, stimulated by an entirely new strand of international consumers.
For decades, as the worldwide cruise business has undergone astronomic expansion, Liverpool barely had more than a few crumbs of this bulging ship’s biscuit. City cruise destinations must have moorings so liners can tie up and passengers come and go as they please.
Although Mersey Ferries does a heroic job tendering these ships, such is the tidal race and rise and fall that services can be easily interrupted to the chagrin of crew and passengers. Typically, Liverpool was the only such city destination not to offer this convenience of mooring, but now 10 years since first conceived and £19m later, this has been redresssed.
For such a vastly important project, there are a surprisingly small number involved in actually getting it off the ground. These include this column’s old friend, the Queen of the Mersey herself, Pamela Brown (now general manager of the Liverpool Athenaeum), who selflessly promoted the idea to the city council on the basis that it could only do good for Liverpool. And she’s right. One unique selling point that Liverpool has over every other British city is that big liners can now moor in the city centre. Whatever Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Bristol and Glasgow do, they can’t match that great geographical gift. Pushing from within against, at times insuperable odds, have been Cllrs Flo Clucas and Eddie Clein.
“I came up against opposition inside the council from members who simply couldn’t see the point of having the terminal and now we’re bringing in the world’s largest cruise liners,” says Cllr Clucas. This is in spite of the city’s entire raison d’etre being predicated on sea-borne travel.
Cllr Clein says: “I’ve waited 30 years for this day. The new landing stage is brilliant, and if anything is really going to kick-start Liverpool’s regeneration this is it.”
We need some finishing touches, though. Commodore Ron Warwick, recently retired master of Queen Mary 2, was involved in fundraising for a bronze statue of Samuel Cunard in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Why not simply cast a replica for Liverpool, he suggested to me. Why not? How about reactivating Cunard Building’s first-class waiting rooms for premium passengers? Again, no other port has such historic facilities. It’s all there for the taking.
By the time you read this, the first cruise liner to use the landing stage, the deluxe Seven Seas Voyager, will hopefully have occurred, paving the way for the QE2 to tie up for her 40th birthday on September 21.
All this will make an immeasurable difference to Liverpool and Merseyside, putting us back on the world map in a way that no number of Capital of Cultures could ever do. All we must do is merely revitalise what the city was once all about.
