Inside looking out on Bank Holiday Monday

If the weather's not too good or you're interested in anything maritime and fishing related then Hull's maritime museum is worth a visit. If you've been before or are bored by the whole thing then you can always look out of the windows and see the world from a different angle. Did I mention that it's free?

It's only money

I've shown the Maritime Museum more than enough times but not, I think^*, this façade above the entrance. The building was originally the offices of the Hull Dock Company and clearly money was not a problem at that time as we have a goodly supply of classical gods and goddesses adorning what I take to be Queen Victoria with her rhythm stick (I might be wrong) and a fine but somewhat faded plaque with the symbols of the then four countries of the United Kingdom. At the time of building (1870's) the Hull Dock Company had a monopoly but later competition forced down prices and profits and in hindsight spending £90,000 on Italianate offices may not seem like such a good use of resources. Still it makes for a grand museum.

And while I'm here I've just come across a new-to-me blog about Hull. 150 facts about Hull has been going for four years and has reached 89 facts, if you are into things of a Hully nature this may interest you.

* As I write this blog I often get the uneasy feeling that I'm repeating myself. So if any of this seems familiar it probably is. Indeed I may have mentioned this feeling before ...

Maritime Museum

Another shot of this museum; this time I've passed it through the adaptive contrast filter on Gimp. Seems to bring out the stonework nicely.

Take up our quarrel with the foe

 

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close

      In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,

Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws

      Around my bed its lulling charities.

                                              John Keats

As cultured folk you'll be aware how for millennia the poppy has signified sleep and forgetfulness in European culture. From the poppy we get opium, morphine and all those other lovely "ines" that make us fall through a hole in the carpet when life becomes too much... 

Whoah! whoah! stop all this liberal thinking right now! For the Royal (& sycophantic) British Legion, for hosts of hoopleheads and fellow travellers, for the whole UK indeed (or so it seems) and even for level headed Canada or at least those parts that love to dwell on the horrors of the last century the poppy has become The Symbol Of Remembrance. Well ha! So much for culture. This craze started in the 1920's as a merchandising scam to sell cloth poppies to help 'rebuild war torn France' (a likely story) or perhaps it was inspired by that really bad and militaristic poem  "Flanders Field" (which at least had the idea of poppies meaning sleep). Whatever, it's too late and the genie is out of the proverbial glass container and you can't tell anyone that this is cultural illiteracy else they look at you as if you have two heads (which I suppose is two more than they have). 

So it comes about that, two years after the celebration (no better word) of the start of WW1, Hull gets a teeny portion of the crazy poppy themed thing that took over the Tower of London.  It's an unimpressive, tawdry splash of  red down the side of the Maritime Museum. Puts me in mind of a slit throat or perhaps a some overly enthusiastic menstrual flux. Certainly does not inspire any thoughts of 'remembrance' despite it being blessed by vicars and cooed over by the hoi polloi ("Oh isn't it beautiful!" 'it', by the way, is supposed to represent the deaths of thousands of men from high explosives, bullets, poison gas and general military incompetence so ... well I just give up!) and idiots in WW1 uniforms standing in front of it like dorks!

Still it attracts folks to town to take piccies (guilty as charged) and of course selfies. Oh the name of this thing? ... Weeping Window

Polar Bear

One of the most popular exhibits in the Maritime Museum is the Polar Bear. This specimen is an adult male and is nine foot long, good job he's stuffed really. These are pretty old pictures and he wasn't looking in too good a condition, fortunately they had a collection and took him away for some TLC and conservation work.

Newfangled gadget

Being a very late adopter of technology I've just got myself an iPhone and have been playing with its camera. I find it a bit of a strange beast giving hit and miss results. I'm used to peering through an eyepiece, holding the camera in both hands and pressing a shutter button and not used to having to put on my spectacles and concentrate on a screen and dabbing ever so gently at a white button ... feels all wrong but I suppose I'll get used to it. These of Princes Quay shops and the Maritime Museum were the best of a blurry bunch.

The fountains in Queen Victoria Square seem to be a magnet for odd behaviour with screaming kiddies running in and out trying not to get wet (here's a hint: don't go near and you won't get wet). Some however think it a fine sport to deliberately get as soaked as possible and then complain that they're wet ... youth of today are simply beyond help.

Figureheads

Here's a couple of naval figureheads in the Maritime Museum. The busty lady, sadly, I know nothing about. The colourful chap is the Earl of Beaconsfield, better known to the rest of the world as Benjamin Disraeli a victorian prime minister no less. This figurehead was rescued from the wreck of The Earl of Beaconsfield which had come to grief on the east Yorkshire coast, then it stood in someone's garden for a few decades then it was rescued and renovated. You can read more here.

Gee but it's great to be back home

Maritime Museum

Right, so back in the city of culture a few buildings in the town appear to be illuminated in ever changing colours. This may have been a Xmas thing I wouldn't know; I haven't been back into town since a week or so before that damnable day. I shop out of town and fancy (and expensive, no doubt) lighting, expensive son et lumière shows (no matter how spectacular) and other fripperies aren't going to get me on the bus into town.

The Hull Mermaid

 

There have been many reports of mermaids throughout the centuries and most have been hoaxes. Perhaps the most notable was that of Phineas Taylor Barnum and his "Feejee Mermaid" hoax in New York in 1842. This specimen, however, was acquired by a noted marine biologist, Sir Alistair Hardy FRS, in 1934 and so we can have no doubts as to its authenticity. It is on display in Hull's Maritime Museum.

A foreign country

I don't know what the protocol is with photoblogs regarding showing photos of photos; I did it before and no-one said anything so I'll try it again. So above we have the Princes dock as it was some time ago with trawlers parked up against Maurice Lipman's tailor shop (yes, that Lipman's dad). I have no idea who took it or when it was taken (1940s/50s early 60s even, someone will know)  and I do hope that lady crossed the road safely. The picture is on display in Zebedee's Yard as part of a memorial to lost trawler men, I'll show more tomorrow. Nowadays there's no road,  no trawlers and no tailor shop either. I think it's selling Apples (not the fruit). 

There were two other photographs on display so here they are to make the full set.

This is from what is now the Maritime Museum, that dinky little bridge in the distance is now Castle Street...

...and this is from the exit to the Albert Dock if I'm not mistaken.
(And I am mistaken; it's St Andrew's Dock!)

Sudden Elegancies

Hull has its own sudden elegancies.

Philip Larkin 

The fiddling around by the Council with Queen's Gardens does mean that there is this view of the Maritime Museum, the fountain and City Hall in the distance.

Her upset look says it is never over.

Here's an odd thing. An installation named "Truelove" (not, you note, "True Love" which should raise suspicions that there is more to this than a Mills and Boon romance) stuck in the tidal ooze of the River Hull. It's a strange story of married Eskimo couple Memiadluk and Uckaluk being brought to Hull on the whaling ship Truelove in 1847. They were then exhibited in native costume and with canoes and so on; supposedly to make people aware of the poor conditions of their homeland in towns and cities in North England. On their way home the next year Uckaluk died of measles on board ship, she was fifteen years old. The heads are copies of casts which are on display in the Maritime Museum along with posters of their "visit".

 The installation is sited at the mouth of the Hull where the old harbour was and where many whaling ships including the Truelove would have landed. The artist is Stefan Gec. 

 The title of the today's posting comes from a poem "The Esquimaux" by Caitríona O'Reilly.

Paragon Street, Hull

The domed building in the distance used to be the Dock Offices and is now a maritime museum complete with a mermaid.
I should mention that the swifts are here at last. "They’ve made it again/ Which means the globe’s still working . . ."

Domed, we're all domed ...

One of the first buildings I posted about was the Maritime Museum and over the years it has cropped up regularly (like a recurring toothache some may say). I admit it's one of my turn to subjects when the well of inspiration has run dry  and as it's been over six months since I last mentioned it here it is again... Here's the same dome from two sides (do domes have sides? ... ) in glorious monochrome and in colour, no expense spared. I'm spoiling you.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Thou shalt have a fishy on a little dishy ...

You turn your back for a moment and strange things pop up all over the place. I'd not been in town for a couple of weeks (yes it's possible to live without the delights of Hull) so it was a bit of surprise to find kitted fishes adorning the buildings and what can only be called woollen condoms for the Maritime Museum's guns. The reason for all this madness: 'Follow the Herring' celebrating the old east coast herring fishing industry. A major feature is the knitting of a 'coat for a boat' which you can see below, as I say they get up to all sorts when you're not looking ...

14th century font full of fish

Coat for a boat

Maritime Museum

Ok, I've shown this building before but I think this is a particularly fine shot. Go ahead click to enlarge.

Thursday's Crow

When that I was and a little tiny boy, back in the day, crows, by which I mean carrion crows, did not much venture into towns, least not the towns I lived in. You'd see rooks aplenty, with their bare faces and triangular beaks and noisy rookeries, but a big old black crow was a rare sight and they were shy scaredy beasts. Now it's the other way round; the rooks have become almost entirely rural (OK Cottingham village has one or two but you get my drift) while the town centre and suburbs (there's a pair nesting in next door's tree) are pretty good places to see these fine snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, hobbing and bobbing as if they owned the world which they may well do.  

Ok it's another crow, could have been worse I haven't posted the maritime museum for a while.

Later today I shall be going to vote in the EU Parliamentary elections but as the results won't be known until Sunday, lest the UK result influence the rest of the EU (fat chance!) I'll post about that later if at all ...

The weekend in black and white is fast approaching.

That place once again

I think they sell Apple computers ("More power behind every pixel" ??!!!) in this shop  but that doesn't stop there being a good reflection of the Maritime Museum.

Weekend Reflections are here.

Ambitious Plans for Civic Vandalism

A few weeks ago Hull Council announced what it called "ambitious plans" to capitalise on the city's maritime heritage, you know the kind of thing a museum here, a dry dock with an old trawler there so far so yada yada ... the plan was to put in for some cash from the National Lottery heritage funding ... and all seems pretty harmless but then for some godforsaken reason, they propose the ruination of this road by Queen's Gardens, Guildhall Road I believe is its name. Yes this delightful grass verge with its dozens of mature flowering trees and shrubs has somehow caught the eye of developers and so inflamed their ire that it must be ripped up and replaced by a brick paved desert just like the rest of the City of Dull. Quite how this goes with the maritime thing is beyond me ... but this is the one-horse-town that gave permission for the extension to Burnett House so I guess the abomination will get the nod from the asses who decide these things. I can only hope the National Lottery people reject the begging bowl from these idiots.

You think I exaggerate? ... well go feast your eyes on this illustration of  civic vandalism and tell me I'm wrong.

Maritime Musuem from Princes Quay

A different view of the museum I mentioned a few days ago. This is Princes Quay, an old dock that is now a shopping mall. The dock used to lead  past the Dock Offices to another, larger, dock that has now been filled in. Where the lamppost is in the middle there used to be large monument to William Wilberforce. 

Princes Quay and the Dock offices were painted in the 19th century by John Atkinson Grimshaw.