13
Street Art.
At the entrance to the Quayside Centre multi storey car park someone has tried to cheer up this unlovely building by painting quayside scenes from the past. It would take a lot more than this to make a difference to the place but a few marks to those that have tried!
There used to be regular services by sea from here to Glasgow and Heysham. I can still remember the days of the Glasgow boats but the Heysham service was before my time. Cattle from the Irish north west were (and still are) taken to Scotland, fattened and then sold onto the English market as prime Scotch beef, at a premium price of course.
I am not sure if the family depicted above were ordinary travellers to Scotland or England or if they were intending emigrants. The port of Londonderry was a principal embarkation point during the great days of emigration to the Americas. Many thousands of people left from here having often walked for days just to reach the port, they gave their life savings to the ship owners in return for a journey of cold hardship in dirty leaky and occasionally unsafe craft with the hope of a better life driving them onward. The earlier days of emigration are commemorated in the statues in the Waterloo Place pedestrian area. Half the family stride forward in hope whilst the other half look back in regret.
It was people like these who were the pioneers that opened up America, Canada and later Australia. People with Irish and Scots Irish names can be found all over the world. The Mellon Bank in the USA was founded by one such as these after walking from his home in Tyrone to the port and then making his fortune in America. Others are remembered in the murals on page 7.