SWORDS PLOUGHSHARES AND FERRIS WHEELS

Yesterday I wrote a whole lot about these docks, and some horrible gremlin loaded the photo and lost the text. So here goes again. In 1942 Signalman Denis Patrick Davies, barely eighteen years old, boarded HMS Gentian,a flower class corvette, at this dock where Atlantic convoys were assembling, Flotillas of merchant ships, shepherded by corvettes and destroyers, and hunted by wolf packs of submarines would set off on a zig zag voyage from Liverpool to Boston. In later years he scarcely mentioned the awful things he experienced, but regaled our sons with the funnier bits; how when they ran out of food the Captain would drop a depth charge, lower a boat and pick up stunned cod; how they sometimes had to put into the Azores, Portugese therefore neutral, and on entering a bar find a German crew drinking there. and they would spend the evening pretending not to notice each other. I go down to these docks whenever I visit Liverpool. Pleasure barges tie up where once corvettes moored. The dockside warehouses are now museums, art galleries and shopping arcades, There is a huge ferris wheel at one end. Trees and gardens make a pleasant walk. I think Dave would have liked it.