3 tunnels under The Baltic Fleet Pub...

[The Teardrop Explodes]

...apparently.

Did few shifts there over last Christmas and the then manager was telling me about the tunnels going from the

basement.

One goes towards the docks- smuggling? Another goes into the city, and I can't quite remember the details of the third except to say that

given the shackles and chains which are apparently still in place they did at some point house victims of the slave-trade.

Part of one of the tunnels

is still used as part of their micro-brewery.


Who runs the place now? At the time the manager wasn't too confident of the owner's longterm

intentions.

[Kev]

interesting....i can see the tunnel story working as the pub is very old and its location to

the waterfront.

[A.D.Williams]

...apparently.

Did few shifts there over last Christmas and the then

manager was telling me about the tunnels going from the basement.

One goes towards the docks- smuggling? Another goes into the city, and I can't

quite remember the details of the third except to say that given the shackles and chains which are apparently still in place they did at some point house

victims of the slave-trade.

Part of one of the tunnels is still used as part of their micro-brewery.


Who runs the place now? At the time

the manager wasn't too confident of the owner's longterm intentions.

As no slaves came to Liverpool the third tunnel is a no-no.

[The Teardrop Explodes]

As no slaves came to Liverpool the third tunnel is a

no-no.

Aye well, that's what the bloke said was down there, I don't really know. He seemed pretty certain he'd seen these "shackles"

anyway.

As I remember the story one of the tunnels going up toward Ropeworks is/was thought to have run to another tavern, as I say in the Duke

St-Wood St. area. I believe that hostelry no longer exists though.

[SteH]

As no slaves came to Liverpool the third tunnel is a

no-no.

That could be another debate altogether. Its a few years since I've read it but i'm sure in "Liverpool Capital of the Slave Trade" by

Gail Cameron and Steven Crooke there's pictures of adverts of slave sales in the city.

[A.D.Williams]

Why would the merchants bring the slaves back to Liverpool? The slave trade was a three legged journey. Goods sent to Africa were sold in

exchange for slaves. The slaves were then transported to the West Indies to work on the plantations there. The sugar and tobacco were then transported back

to Blighty.

[SteH]

Why would the merchants bring the slaves back to Liverpool? The slave trade was a three legged journey. Goods sent to Africa were

sold in exchange for slaves. The slaves were then transported to the West Indies to work on the plantations there. The sugar and tobacco were then

transported back to Blighty.

Slave ship captains could well have brought some slaves back to be their own personal servants and for eventual

sale. Scouse Press publication "Liverpool & Slavery" refers to adverts in the Liverpool Chronicle and Liverpool Advertiser of slave auctions in coffee houses

in the 1760s in Water St and Old Churchyard

[Waterways]

Slave ship captains could well have brought some slaves back to be their own personal servants and for eventual sale. Scouse

Press publication "Liverpool & Slavery" refers to adverts in the Liverpool Chronicle and Liverpool Advertiser of slave auctions in coffee houses in the 1760s

in Water St and Old Churchyard

Of the millions of Africans involved about 60,000 passed through Liverpool, which is a very small to the

overall numbers. What is a "Scouse Press publication"?

[Howie]

What is a "Scouse Press publication"?

See www.scousepress.co.uk

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi all

These legendary tunnels

feature in numerous stories about a lot of locations throughout the British Isles. In the case of Williamson's tunnels, those were actual but I am not sure

about other tunnels in other places. The old inn at Liscard, Mother Redcap's, for instance, was said to have a tunnel used by smugglers that ran all the

way to the Red Noses west of New Brighton. Now that's a distance of several miles so it is doubtful if such tunnel ever actually existed. More likely the

idea that Mother Redcap's was a smuggler's inn and the Red Noses a place frequented by smugglers or wreckers to hide their booty somehow got fused in the

popular imagination. I have a poem, "Return to Mother Redcap's," on Mike Kemble's Wallasey

site.

Chris

[Waterways]

Slave ship captains could well have brought some slaves back to be their own personal servants and for eventual sale. Scouse

Press publication "Liverpool & Slavery" refers to adverts in the Liverpool Chronicle and Liverpool Advertiser of slave auctions in coffee houses in the 1760s

in Water St and Old Churchyard

Some ships through one reason or another ended up with holds full of slaves back in Liverpool. Many

unintentionally.

[Sloyne]

Some ships through one reason or another ended

up with holds full of slaves back in Liverpool. Many unintentionally.

Not so sure about this. Ships leaving Goree and other West African Coast ports

had lots of options for discharging thier human gargo's between the West African coast and Liverpool. Cadiz, Lisbon, Oporto, Santander, Balboa or even the

passage to the Portuguese markets on the Cape Verde Islands, not to mention Bristol, or the many English Channel ports and numerous Mediteranean ports were

all options, rather than Liverpool. Even allowing for an average 30% attrition rate (figures for the middle passage) which is not likely on the shorter

voyage to Europe, I don't where the market would be, in North West England, for between 150 and 170 Africans.

[Waterways]

Not so sure about this. Ships leaving Goree and other West African Coast ports had lots of options for discharging thier human gargo's

between the West African coast and Liverpool. Cadiz, Lisbon, Oporto, Santander, Balboa or even the passage to the Portuguese markets on the Cape Verde

Islands, not to mention Bristol, or the many English Channel ports and numerous Mediteranean ports were all options, rather than Liverpool. Even allowing for

an average 30% attrition rate (figures for the middle passage) which is not likely on the shorter voyage to Europe, I don't where the market would be, in

North West England, for between 150 and 170 Africans.

Many were already sold, they just eneded up in Liverpool, and eventually in the

Caribbean.

[Sloyne]

Many were already sold, they just eneded

up in Liverpool, and eventually in the Caribbean.

Perhaps so, I wouldn't have any knowledge of that. I do, however, know from the accessible archives

located in the Central/Picton Library in Liverpool and Liverpool University that, very few Africans, between 1619, the acknowledged year that modern European

slavery from Africa started until the abolition by Britain in 1833, very few Africans, in comparison to those carried in Liverpool ships, were sold into

bondage in Liverpool it's self.

I know some, for whatever reason, would like the history of Liverpool and it's involvement in the trade in human

misery to be more complicit than it already is. Perhaps there are other sources that I have overlooked that shed light on your claim. I would be grateful if

you could pass the information, and it's source, along, your information might fill in some gaps in my own incomplete knowledge of the subject. Thanks in

advance.

[Kev]

Tunnels obvious in these attachments. Liverpool but I don't know where, I assume very near

to the River front: