What Are the Biggest Ships That Can Come up the Mersey

The River Mersey is one of the most famous waterways in the UK, if not the world.

Popularised by Gerry & the Pacemakers thanks to their 1960s hit Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey, it is what separates the Wirral and Liverpool. Once the reason behind Liverpool being one of the biggest and most successful ports in the country, there was a time when Liverpool’s shipping all but dried up.

Nowadays, however, it is once again a vibrant port area that is able to welcome some of the biggest ships on the sea, even going so far as to have several of them sailing on it at the same time. The question is, which are the biggest that can sail up it?

Liverpool’s History with Cruise Liners

In 1819, the first long-distance commercial passenger ships began sailing from Liverpool, with the SS Savannah being the first steamship to travel across the Atlantic Ocean. From 1840, regular crossings of that nature began, with the Cunard Line opening a new office on Water Street, close to the River Mersey.

The Prince’s Landing Stage opened in the 1870s, whilst a railway station was opened in 1895 to make things more comfortable for the departing passengers. After London, Liverpool was seen as the most important port in the British Empire, leading to Cunard having their main offices in the Cunard Building from 1916.

By the early 1960s, however, the Prince’s Dock had started to decline and even the passenger trade had begun to diminish. In 1967, Cunard stopped its cruise services out of the city, with Canadian Pacific following four years later. The landing stage was demolished in 1973 and it took until the 1990s for the area to be regenerated.

In 2007, a new Liverpool Cruise Terminal opened, allowing the biggest ships to once again sail up the River Mersey. The Cruise Terminal is capable of welcoming vessels as long as 345 metres and with a draft, the area of the ship below the water line, of up to ten metres.

The Queen Mary 2

In the October of 2009, the Queen Mary 2 sailed down the Mersey as part of its fifth birthday celebrations. The Cunard vessel was the 15th liner to call at the Cruise Terminal that year, but was also easily the biggest. Weighing in at 151,400 Gross Tonnes, she had cost £460 million to build. At the time, Liverpool as a city was only allowed to host port-of-call trips, meaning that cruises couldn’t begin or end in Liverpool.

The issue with that is that they were worth significantly less money for the city than full-turnaround services, so an appeal was made and a change of rules occurred in 2012, with the Ocean Countess being the first to start its journey in Liverpool for 40 years.

Liverpool gave Queen Mary 2 a special wave off 👋💥 pic.twitter.com/ojt57J3M2C

— ScouseScene (@scousescene) May 4, 2023

The QM2 arrived on the port-of-call visit three years before then, arriving as Cunard’s flagship vessel and giving gravitas to Liverpool’s claim that it could rival Southampton as the country’s cruise capital. Southampton was also the home port of the Queen Mary 2 at the time, so having it in Liverpool was something that obviously didn’t happen very often.

She docked in the morning and then left again that night, with bystanders watching from both the Liverpool side of the water and also over on the New Brighton side of the Mersey, enjoying the grand spectacle that was an historic occasion for both the city and the river.

It Isn’t Just Cruise Ships That Sail up the Mersey

Despite being known for them, it is worth pointing out that it isn’t just cruise ships that sail up the River Mersey. Months before the Queen Mary 2 enter the waters, the BW Bauhinia came in with a Gross Tonnage of 158,569. The supertanker was operated by BW Fleet Singapore and was carrying 82,000 tonnes of crude oil when it entered the river.

It went to Tranmere’s Shell Terminal North Stage to unload its wares, with four tugs needed to help it make its voyage. It was a helpful reminder that the River Mersey isn’t just there for the largest cruise ships, but also for commercial vessels that are equally as long, wide and heavy and therefore count as ‘big’ ships.

In 2017, another even bigger vessel was able to enter the Mersey and berth at the newly opened Liverpool2 Terminal, which had cost £400 million to build. The container ship was the biggest ever to sail down the river, with previous container ships only able to have the equivalent of 4,500 shipping containers on board.

After the widening of the Panama Canal, what became known as ‘post Panamax‘ ships began sailing, with Liverpool2 having to be altered in order to welcome them. The HS Paris, which arrived in 2017, had a capacity of 6,552 TEU, but the new-look port is able to welcome vessels up to 20,000 TEU moving forward.

The Three Queens

If you want to have a sense of how capable the River Mersey is of coping with big ships then a look back to 2015 might well provide it. As Cunard turned 175-years-old, the company decided to offer the people of Merseyside a spectacular sight. Not just one of its ships came up the waterway, nor two but three different ships of impressive size and scale.

The Queen Mary 2 arrived in the city on the 24th of May, berthing at the Cruise Terminal and staying for a firework display that night. The day after, the ship travelled up the Mersey in order to meet her two sister ships in the area of water between Crosby Beach and New Brighton.

@titanickingdom #shiphistory #titanickingdom the 3 Queens of Cunard Queen Elizabeth 3 Queen Mary 2 Queen Victoria #fyp #CUNARD ♬ original sound – Shipfan308

Later that afternoon, all three of the ship, the Queen Mary 2, the Queen Victoria and the Queen Elizabeth, sailed along the river in formation whilst the Red Arrows flew overhead. The city enjoyed an almighty party, with the Queen Elizabeth taking over from the QM2 by docking in the Cruise Terminal and the Queen Victoria dropped anchor in the middle of the sea.

After another firework display in the evening, the Queen Elizabeth left the Cruise Terminal and allowed the Queen Victoria to berth there instead, with the Queen Victoria also sailing out of the river and away on Tuesday 26th of May, showing off both Liverpool and the Mersey in style.