This month we are delighted to have a guest writer for our blog! The below was written by Vivien Minton (pictured right), an enthusiastic storyteller and photographer based in Liverpool. She tells her story of her experiences exploring the Mersey throughout her life. Vivien has also captured the wonderful photos featured below during her explorations of the Mersey.
A huge thank you to Vivien for sharing her story! We are fascinated to learn more of and share peoples memories, experiences, and interactions with the Mersey.
‘My earliest memory of the Mersey dates back to the 1970s, not long after the river lent its name to the Merseybeat. I was seven or eight, crossing to Birkenhead on a ferry with my mum, dad, and grandma. It was, I’m fairly certain, my first time on a boat, and I still remember the thrill of being on the water—along with the heady aroma of cigarette smoke mingling with vinegar-soaked chips. Ah, the ’70s. Good thing it was a smooth crossing.
Five decades later, in one of life’s full-circle moments, I find myself back in Liverpool—and back on a boat. This time, it’s a live-aboard canal boat moored in Coburg Wharf, just a stone’s throw from the Mersey. The river is now part of my daily life. Some days, I take in its vast tidal range on a sunlit stroll to Pier Head. Other days, I brace against the frigid winds whipping across its surface, head down, a scarf and beanie pulled tight, hurrying to escape the chill.
The Mersey is a river of extremes for more than its weather though, as I’ve been learning in a history class I’m taking at Liverpool University. The starting point for the enormous Cunard and White Star Line ocean liners carrying the hopes and dreams of trans-Atlantic passengers to New York, the Mersey has also been the ending point for countless mariners and dock workers who have succumbed to its murky depths.
The river is, of course, central to Liverpool’s identity—its very existence as a world-class port. It’s the lifeblood that shapes the city’s character, and one of the things I love most about being here. Having lived for much of the past two decades in Los Angeles—a city where the river is little more than a concrete-sided, graffiti-covered afterthought—I feel as excited as my seven-year-old self to be back on a boat on the Mersey. Only this time, without the perfume of cigarettes and vinegar.’
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If you would like to write a blog or a few lines about your experience of the Mersey to be included in an upcoming newsletter, please get in touch!