Liverpool

a city of England. It is situated in the county of Lancaster on the right bank of the estuary of the Mersey. It is about three miles from the open sea. In size and commercial importance it is the third city of the United Kingdom. The quays, docks, and warehouses rival those of London. Birkenhead, across the Mersey, occupies much the same geographical relation to Liverpool that Jersey City bears to New York. The twenty-two miles of wharfage of Liverpool, including docks, are supplemented by nine miles of wharfage at Birkenhead. These works are so extensive that charges of over $1,000,000 a year are collected from shipping. An equal sum is derived from immense warehouses constructed at public cost. Immediately in front of the center of the city is an immense floating platform sustained on pontoons. It is two-fifths of a mile long and eighty feet wide. It is connected with the city by seven light bridges and a floating bridge for heavy traffic 550 feet in width. It cost nearly $2,000,000. This float, or "landing stage" as it is called, rises and falls from fifteen to twenty-one feet with the tide. Ferries ply back and forth between it and a similar float on the Birkenhead shore. Small seagoing steamers, and the tenders of ocean liners take their passengers and expressage from the float.

Liverpool was established originally in the reign of Henry II, as a stronghold and a center of operations against northern Ireland. A local business, with ports on the Irish Sea, grew up. In 1709 a small artificial harbor or wet dock was constructed with floodgates to be closed at high tide, so ships might ride at the wharf within, though the tide without had gone down. This was the first dock of the kind.

The discovery of America opened up a large West Indian business, and, during the prevalence of the slave trade, Liverpool was the world center of this nefarious business. The Liverpool slaver took aboard a cargo of hatchets, knives, colored cloth, beads, mirrors, bracelets, necklaces, pinchbeck ornaments, and other gewgaws, and set sail for the coast of Africa, where these commodities were exchanged for a load of negroes. The negroes were taken to the West Indies and exchanged for a cargo of rum, molasses, and sugar. The profits of a single trip were enormous. It is said that five-sixths of the slave trade centered in Liverpool. As late as 1807, when the traffic was forbidden, there were 185 Liverpool ships to be put out of the trade. They had carried 43,755 slaves from Africa to America in that year.

The present trade of Liverpool is almost beyond computation. Liverpool ships are found in all quarters of the globe. The traffic with the New World centers in Liverpool. American wheat, flour, meat, and cotton land chiefly at Liverpool. Until of late Liverpool was the chief port of outlet and inlet for the manufactures and the raw materials of Manchester. Liverpool merchants were much opposed to the construction of the Manchester ship canal, which permits a part of the former business to pass on to Manchester without being transferred at their wharves.

Liverpool is a well built city. The public buildings are of more than ordinary architectural interest. St. George's Hall, a combined music hall and law court, is one of the finest modern buildings in Great Britain. A free library, museum, and gallery of arts have been established at public expense. The affairs of the city have been managed with intelligence and fidelity. The present population is about 753,203.

Liverpool is of great interest to the engineer and merchant, but its buildings, however imposing and commodious, are too modern to attract the ordinary tourist. Travelers take train, usually for Chester or London, without stopping to look about. The water of the river is indescribably dingy and dirty, giving rise to the pardonable pun, "The quality of Mersey is not strained."

See Lancaster; England; Slave Trade