Contributed by John Robinson, UK

Michael Stammers BA FSA, who died on 30 January 2013 after a period of illness, was outstanding among his generation of maritime curators for his energy and diligence; qualities tested over the several years that it required to establish the Merseyside Maritime Museum in the long-neglected Albert Dock complex at Liverpool.

Born in Norfolk UK, Mike arrived in Liverpool in 1969 as Assistant Keeper of Shipping & Transport under Edward Paget-Tomlinson. He led the team that prepared new Land Transport Galleries, opened in 1972, and attended the inaugural Congress of ICMM at Greenwich later that year. Following the rescue of Brunel’s ss Great Britain from the Falkland Islands, Mike made several visits to Port Stanley to investigate and record other historic sailing ships abandoned there, including the Canadian Actaeon of 1838, the British-built Vicar of Bray (1841) and Jhelum (1849) and the American clipper Snow Squall of 1851. Having crawled all over these ships, he used his findings in a seminal paper on Iron knees in wooden vessels, published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology in 2001.

Perhaps it was his familiarity with how these and other vessels decayed over time that bred in Mike a healthy caution towards over-ambitious ship preservation schemes. When other museums in the UK were rashly accepting custody of vessels, which subsequently they were unable to care for, Mike avoided the temptation to fill the Albert Dock basin with the retired vessels that were regularly offered to the Maritime Museum. Thanks to the rigour of his collection policy, the Museum which he led set an example in maintaining a dedicated team of shipwrights and craftsmen to look after the outside exhibits to a high standard. He was dismayed at the change of policy that brought a depletion of those resources following his retirement in August 2003.

Mike retained the honorary title of Keeper Emeritus into retirement, which gave him time to devote to other honorary roles such as Curator of the Royal Mersey Yacht Club’s collection and editorial duties for Maritime Wales and The Falkland Islands Journal. He wrote well over 20 books on maritime and local history topics, and was generous with his support for younger researchers, for whom he always found time during a busy professional life. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and in 2003 was honoured with the Desmond Wettern Maritime Media Award, particularly in recognition of his contributions to the events in Liverpool to mark the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic, which had been directed from a wartime bunker at the Liverpool Pier Head.

His most substantial publication is perhaps The Passage Makers, a history of the Liverpool-based Black Ball line of Australian packet ships, published by Teredo Books in 1978. Towards the end of his life, Mike set about revising that work, but turned up so much new material in the Bank of England archives, the State Library of Victoria and the Australian National Maritime Museum Library that the result is virtually a new book, published right at the end of Mike’s life by Milepost Research as Emigrant Clippers to Australia.

Those privileged to know Mike will cherish memories of his good humour, patience, generosity of spirit and devotion to the cause of maritime history and responsible curatorship. In the words of Sir Neil Cossons, who worked with Mike at Liverpool from 1969-71, we have lost ‘a kind, generous, deeply knowledgeable man whose contribution to scholarship and maritime history vastly exceeds anything for which he gained credit or recognition’.

Contributed by John Robinson, UK

Between 1901 and 1905 no less than 69 three-masted fishing vessels were registered at Fécamp in Normandy, France, a natural harbour whose ancient name Fiscannum derives from the term fisk used by the Scandinavian seafarers who had been regular visitors since antiquity.

Fécamp shipyards built many fine vessels in the last century, including the French Navy's two sail training vessels L'étoile and La Belle Poule, still in service after 80 years. Can any other sail training vessel rival this length of service continuously in the same ownership? Presumably their active sail training role was interrupted by WWII.

For much of the last century, Fécamp landed most of France’s harvest from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. From 1931 power-driven trawlers began to oust the cod schooners. The life remained hard for those who fished in those hazardous North Atlantic waters, as recorded in the work of documentary photographer and oceanographer Anita Conti, who sailed with them to the Grand Banks on two occasions.

Calls to limit the catch to sustainable levels went unheeded, and from about 1980 the Grand Banks cod fishery was exhausted. The last French trawler quit Fécamp in 1987.The town has hitherto presented the story of its fishing industry in its Musée des Terres Nuevas, a compact but comprehensive museum on the seafront housing a complete fishing boat. But that institution is now closing its doors, preparatory to opening a much larger Musée des Pecheries adjacent to the former fishing harbour in an imposing industrial building dating from 1950. Work has now finished on a steel-framed ‘belvedere’ on the roof which will house an introductory gallery and provide visitors with striking views of the dock basins (now heavily used by leisure sailors)and the tall chalk cliffs that flank the harbor entrance. The new Museum of Fisheries is scheduled to open in 2013.

Much of the €13.5m budget for this impressive transformation has come from regional, national and European support funds. The new museum is a principal component in the strategy to promote Fécamp as a year-round tourist destination, and will broaden the town’s appeal beyond the Benedictine distillery and museum that is currently the main attraction. Local residents are assured that, with a doubling or tripling of annual visits compared with the existing museum, there will be no adverse impact on the town’s finances. The smaller building on the seafront will become a Médiatheque.

For further details, see: http://www.ville-fecamp.fr/Musee-des-Pecheries-le-chantier.html