Looks like you had a good day out. The whole 4% slaves going to USA picks up nicely with another thread recently about the American war of independance I was reading recently. It seems the real reason the British were so paniced about losing the war to the colonies and the troublesome French was that the Brits might then have lost Jamaica which at the time was worth far more than the 13 states. How times have change.

Enjoyed your jaunt to Liverpool.

Couple of notes:

- the "fifth building" at the Pier Head is a complex of flats called the Mann Island buildings. Predictably. they've been nominated for the Carbuncle Awards - though personally I find them inoffensive. FWIW, a century ago the three early 20th century buildings at the Pier Head attracted criticism for being too ostentatious.

- Lime Street Station has no pretensions to being the world's oldest anything. Trains into Liverpool terminated a mile or so NE from Lime Street until 1836, and there are a number of stations in Britain built earlier than the first Lime St station (the current building dates from the 1860s, which is practically yesterday by the standards of British stations). Liverpool's "first" claims about all this are a lot more nerdy. The world's first major railway went from Liverpool to Manchester, and the first journey left the (now defunct and practically traceless) Crown St station, passing through the (still there, with all the plaques etc you'd expect) Edge Hill station on its way to Manchester. There's a complicated something or other that Edge Hill is the oldest one of in the world. Not necessarily worth going out of your way to visit on a future trip, though.

- Work on building the Canning Graving Dock adjacent to the Albert Dock did start in 1765 (and that programme was completed in 1768), though like everything else in the area was extended and rebuilt several times over the following century. What you've photographed is how it was in 1842.

- Hard Day's Night hotel "posh"? You're joking. Those are bouncers, not doormen. The hotel's designed exclusively for riff raff: the bouncers are there to make sure they don't do too much damage.

Thanks, Flanner. I hope you'd see this and provide some needed fact checking and clarification.

Actually, now two day trips to Liverpool:

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/liverpool-rnd-2-and-speke-hall.html

. . . and we still haven't seen the Beatles Experience (there's a lot more to Liverpool). We have another day or two's worth of things we'd like to see as well.

We stopped off to visit Speke Hall on the way. I had hoped to also see "the most beautiful medieval sculpture in Britain; the St Christopher in Norton Priory" but alas, its winter hours of 12-4 didn't suite my schedule.

Liverpool has become one of our favorite cities to visit -- highly under-rated in my opinion.

flanneruk -- expected further fact checking on this one as well!

and now a third trip although this one was more the greater Liverpool area (Blue Planet Aquarium and Norton's Priory)

http://ukfrey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/blue-planet-aquarium-and-norton-priory.html

Flanneruk was right -- the statue of St. Christopher is amazing

i very much enjoyed your day out to Liverpool with the gang. your style of photo journalism is def my cup of tea. (i hummed Beatles tunes in my head) Makes me want to take a closer look

I would highly recommend going to the Mersey Maritime museum in Liverpool down on Albert Dock next to the Tate Gallery.
It is a fascinating musuem that has a floor devoted to the slavery trade between the UK,US and Africa with Liverpool being a major slave trading area.
One floor has an immigration section along with a Titanic museum and another floor devoted to ship building in regards to the Lusitania,etc. They also had an exhibit in the bottom floor that was quite interesting on border control,smuggling,etc. There is a restaurant with views over the harbor on the top floor and a tea room on the first floor. Admission is free and well worth a visit!