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.

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[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.

[john]

"However much Liverpool supported the trade, slaves rarely set foot on soil here. Contary to folklore The Goree

Piazzas, on the Dock Road, NEVER had slaves chained there. In fact, the Piazzas were built 11 years after courts ruled that every slave became free as soon

as his feet touched English soil".



http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/local...terfront.shtml

[PhilipG]

"However

much Liverpool supported the trade, slaves rarely set foot on soil here. Contary to folklore The Goree Piazzas, on the Dock Road,

NEVER had slaves chained there. In fact, the Piazzas were built 11 years after courts ruled that every slave became free as soon as his feet touched English

soil".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/local...terfront.shtml

"Rarely" is

the keyword here.
Which accounts for the occasional slave sale in Liverpool.

[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"?

[Waterways]

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.

Some of the sales may have been for slaves

that were elsewhere, not in the city.

[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.

[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

[Sloyne]

Contary to folklore The Goree Piazzas, on the Dock Road, NEVER had slaves chained

there.

The iron rings that were affixed to the walls of the Goree Piazza warehouse were to secure the goods/cargo's stored outside the walls,

overnight, and waiting for storage space to be freed up inside the building. Very few slaves, relative to the numbers carried in Liverpool bottoms, were

sold in Liverpool markets, but the myth persists.