Sir Alfred Floating Crane (1905) with SS Ekuro (1896)

In 1939 Liverpool (now World Museum) added at least 14 new ship models to its ever growing collection. One of them was the model of the impressive Sir Alfred floating crane and S.S. Ekuro, a passenger cargo ship. The S.S. Ekuro had been built by Swan & Hunter in 1896 and was part of the Elder Dempster's West African coastal service fleet, whose ships had sailed from Liverpool. In little over a year after the models arrived they were destroyed in the Blitz of May 1941. It is very likely that the models had been taken off display and placed in the museum’s basement for safe keeping. Douglas Allen, the museum’s Director and the man before the Shipping Gallery’s development recalled in a report he wrote (see the Records and Archive section) months after the bombings: “The irony of this loss lay in the fact that these models had been taken from the main gallery and placed in the basement for safety.”