Mike Stammers, who died peacefully on 30 January after a long period of failing health, will of course be best known to readers of this journal as the first Keeper of Maritime History at Merseyside County Museums in the 1970s, then from 1986 Keeper of Merseyside Maritime Museum, an institution which he led for almost 20 years with grace and a fine sense of duty to the maritime history of one of the world's great port cities and its hinterland.
Born at Wymondham, Norfolk, on 30 August 1943, he was educated at Norwich Grammar School, read history at Bristol University and on graduation took up his first museum appointment at Warwickshire Museums Service. Within a short period, however, in 1966, he had moved to the then City of Liverpool Museums, to take up the newly established post of Assistant Keeper of Shipping. Thus began for Mike a long, fruitful and immensely rewarding personal and professional association with the sea history of this great sailors' town: the city, the subject and perhaps its most accomplished modern practitioner had found each other in an almost perfect unity.
Among the finest municipal collections in the country, with rich maritime holdings principally although not exclusively pertaining to the shipping trade of the port, the Liverpool Museum of the later 1960s in its splendid William Brown Street premises was a flourishing enterprise, where Mike had the good fortune almost immediately to find himself working alongside Edward Paget-Tomlinson, a hard-working, gifted and enthusiastic curator, hugely committed to Liverpool's great seafaring history and to seeing it expressed on a much larger canvas. Mike keenly imbued his senior colleague's spirit, work ethic and enthusiasms and this early association did much to shape his own professional outlook, future scholarly interests and curatorial perspectives.
His appointment, at a time when museum thinking at large was tending towards ideas of greater access and inclusiveness, coincided also with a period of expansion and significant new gallery developments in Liverpool. It was an atmosphere in which he thrived, and when Paget-Tomlinson's frustration at what he perceived to be a want of ambition in the museum leadership eventually led him to resign, Mike was promoted to the senior position, inheriting also effective leadership of the Liverpool Nautical Research Society, the beginning of his wider extra-mural commitments. His career further blossomed under the leadership of Neil Cossons, then deputy director, and he played an increasingly influential role in the museum's innovative re-development programme of that era.
But the historic international significance of the port, its regional distinctiveness and the immense strength in depth of Liverpool's maritime collections had long fostered a much greater ambition, to establish a free-standing maritime museum in the city. This was an objective which had consistently eluded preceding generations until the later 1970s when Merseyside County Museums, the successor authority, under the leadership of (Sir) Richard Foster, seized the opportunity offered by the derelict Canning Graving Docks, the Mersey Pilotage Building and related other dockside structures, to establish the first phase of a new museum dedicated to celebrating the international significance and seafaring connections of Liverpool and the Mersey. Opening in July 1980, this foothold became the springboard for the new museum to lead the regeneration of the Albert and Canning Docks on the back of government action to stem economic decline, urban decay and social unrest in parts of the city which had produced the Toxteth riots of 1981.
That Mike, by this time an experienced maritime museum professional, a leader in his field and the complete master of his own collections, was not selected to lead this ambitious project and to deliver the new museum caused him great distress at the time, it is generally known. Overall leadership of the large and complex capital development project went to Martyn Heighton in 1980, who had directed the initial phases of the new museum project since 1978. That the outcome was the creation of the outstanding Merseyside Maritime Museum speaks volumes for the character, integrity and professional expertise of both men for it was to a great extent their joint endeavour, particularly with regard to the early displays in and around the Canning quays and docks, and subsequently D block of the Albert Dock, gracefully restored and opened in 1984 to provide 11,000 square metres of outstanding gallery space in which the new museum at last could tell the story of this great seaport. The largest single maritime heritage project of the age, it drew on the respective strengths of each, got the very best out of both and produced a blisteringly successful conclusion to many years of frustrated anticipation in Liverpool.
With a gifted ability to spot talent, nurture it and blend it smoothly into a lively team with a strong sense of pride and common purpose, in the field of maritime museum curatorship at this time Mike was almost without peer, as his leadership of this museum was to prove. Stepping into this role in 1986, he led from the front with impeccable scholarship, a profound understanding of the subject and of how to present it for modern visitors with a diminishing understanding of ships and seafaring, and the new museum quickly found its audience. Its growing popularity rested securely on the creation of new permanent galleries with strong, intellectually coherent themes, solidly grounded in the selection and display of well-chosen images and objects from the museum's rich and extensive collections, backed by high-quality research, skilful interpretation and innovative design, such as in the early, inventive Emigrants to the New World gallery (1985). With its authentically recreated emigrant vessel, evocatively housed in the basement of the museum, a modern, lively and challenging treatment of its complex subject was subtly conveyed with a compassion and sensitivity to the real felt experience of the uprooted. This was the hallmark of future impressive and well-received achievements, such as the Battle of the Atlantic galleries (1993); the Builders of the Great Ships exhibition; the groundbreaking Transatlantic Slavery gallery (1994), in which under project leader Tony Tibbles, a difficult subject was tackled skilfully and humanely with finesse: an advisory committee was appointed at the outset, a wide process of consultation with the ethnic community was undertaken and outreach workers and numerous specialist guest curators were also appointed, to give additional authority. To these initiatives were added other sensitive treatments, e.g. in terms of language for the captions, in the production of educational materials, etc., before the gallery was presented with great empathy and a genuine feeling for the hurt and pain endured, albeit not without some discomfort for the museum. And an unflinching commitment to describing the role played by the transatlantic slave trade in Liverpool's eighteenth-
century prosperity was notably present. These were among Mike's more publicly visible successes.
Behind the scenes, Mike presided over a fine manuscript collection, especially strong on materials relating to local ship owning, shipbuilding and port administration, whose essential focus might have been Liverpool but whose geographical, historic and economic significance is global, and those assets were skilfully deployed in the displays, both to enhance public understanding and for the value of using primary sources in research for exhibition purposes. And under his leadership, they were also a chief means to develop strong academic links with the University of Liverpool, via the innovative Mather Fellowships for example, joint museum/university appointments designed to stimulate academic research into the museum's collections which also helped to foster a two-way traffic between the academy and the museum, ensuring that the scholarly dimension of the latter's work was constantly refreshed and the reputation of the Maritime Record Centre burnished.
Another key feature of his leadership at MMM was the committed and meticulously scholarly approach adopted in the interpretation, display and conservation of boats and ships, and no less to the preservation of the traditional maritime craft skills in wood and metalworking, essential to the long term survival of these craft. Indeed, under his leadership, MMM set a standard for the care of the outdoor preserved ship collection which was the acme of sound curatorial principles in practice and in an ideal world should have become adopted as standard procedure for the care of larger vessels in museum hands: perhaps some day it might be, if not quite yet. The commitment to good practice in the care of ships and boats and in the training of future craftspeople was imaginatively nurtured in a spirited workshop, presided over by John Kearon, shrewdly appointed by Mike in 1979 to lead the groundbreaking conservation programme of boat restoration. With the work carried on in full view of the visiting public, this sparkling initiative was an integral element and major source of appeal in the infant museum's opening season. With his great technical expertise, John Kearon (subsequently, Keeper of Ships and Head of Conservation for the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside), was enlisted by Mike to join the museum's archaeological expeditions to the Falkland Islands between 1987 and 1998, to survey principally the remains of the Liverpool-built barque Jhelum, of 1849, lying beached and derelict at Port Stanley since 1871.
Carrying out their survey over several years, in difficult conditions on a partly dismantled and deteriorating hulk, listing 20 degrees to port, his team produced impressive results, including as precise a set of lines as probably could be done and patiently gathered sufficiently detailed data to draft sheer, half-breadth and construction plans, and were able from the surviving evidence to describe with meticulous thoroughness the structure, layout and condition of the vessel, its keel, framing, planking, masts and rigging, even deck fittings, accommodation and cargo spaces. In the dark ages before laser scanning for such purposes became common, this was a masterly achievement, typical of Mike's dedication to the question of how do ships work, and what can we do to enlarge our understanding of their design, construction, behaviour, and their resilience in extreme conditions, and generated original data of high quality and long-term subject value which will continue to enable comparisons to be made with other vessels, in other times, in other contexts, and indicative of his wide academic and practical engagement with the subject.
As may also be said for his wider involvements, which were characteristically committed, energetic and extensive, beginning with the aforementioned Liverpool Society for Nautical Research; he was also an early activist in the North West Industrial Archaeology Society, a particular interest celebrated in his recent book on the architecture of docks and harbours (2007); more recently, he was deputy editor of The Falkland Islands Journal, and for many years he was a stalwart member of the editorial board of Cymru a'r Môr – Maritime Wales, a particularly agreeable engagement for Mike. Not to my reckoning especially fond of the lectern, and he rarely ventured to review others' titles, Mike did immense good work by stealth: he was a stalwart supporter in the early years of the ICMM, and with Roger Knight, was a key player in establishing the Maritime Curators' Group in 1992. Based on a Dutch model, this was one of the country's earliest subject specialist networks for those working with maritime collections, which continues to thrive in promoting expertise and a community of interest in maritime collecting, and its early success owed much to Mike's great ability to engender a sense of shared purpose among colleagues.
More recently Mike also served on the Board of Trustees of NMM Cornwall, was a member of the original National Historic Ships Committee, and served on SNR Council (1990–4) and in these and in numerous other public duties over the years quietly fulfilled, his commitment and professionalism were exemplary – although in truth, I think, just as he was not that fond of lecturing, he always seemed to be much more at home in a boiler suit, crawling around the interstices of old boats and ships, with a notebook, a tape measure and a camera, or sitting on the quayside, yarning to great purpose with old salts.
Quiet and reserved in person, Mike Stammers wore his learning lightly and with an endearing modesty, but he was a fine scholar and for a busy modern museum leader the sheer volume of his publications was extraordinary; examples of his work graced these pages frequently, most recently in the previous issue, when he was already gravely unwell. His published work was based on fine original research, close familiarity with the sources and skilful handling of the evidence and includes definitive works of international scholarship in maritime history and nautical archaeology, such as on the Jhelum: if, inevitably, with such a prodigious output, the quality is uneven in places and some has dated, it is always informative, reliable and eminently readable.
His very last title, Emigrant Clippers to Australia, upon which he was busy almost till the very end was, just, posthumously published, and could become the definitive work on the subject. He wrote not for glory, however, but about what interested him and it is deceptively easy to consider his more numerous local studies and compilations as minor works, excessively local, even parochial in tone and content: one thinks for example of Shipbuilding at Wells in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Suffolk Shipping or Victorian North Norfolk Sailing Ships. But Mike's work amounts to a formidable achievement, a sort of composite ethnographic portrait of a disappearing seafaring community in all its great diversity revealing, as it was put to me, the man's ‘sense of place’ and indicative of his continuing faith in his favoured ship and peoplebased approach to maritime history, the embodiment of a lifelong search for truth and clarity which carried him to the top of his profession.
That, and an innate decency, sense of dignity and great kindness of spirit in dealing with people is what most of us will recall when we think of Mike Stammers.