The Mersey Ferry was carrying people across this river before Liverpool had a charter, before the docks, and about 760 years before anyone thought of tunnelling underneath it.
Mersey Ferries dates the crossing to around 1150, when monks at Birkenhead Priory rowed travellers over on market days. That is roughly 875 years of the same basic transaction: pay on one bank, get carried to the other.
This is how it survived steam, two railway tunnels, two road tunnels and the motor car, and what is happening to it now. Fares, times and the new ferry were checked against Mersey Ferries and Merseytravel on 26 August 2026.
The short version
- c.1150: Benedictine monks at Birkenhead Priory run a ferry to Liverpool. Liverpool is not a borough until 1207.
- 1330: Edward III lets the priory charge tolls for passengers, horses and goods.
- 1918: the ferries Iris and Daffodil fight at Zeebrugge, and George V gives them the Royal prefix.
- 1961 to 1962: The Beatles play four Riverboat Shuffles on the Royal Iris.
- 1964: Gerry and the Pacemakers record Ferry Cross the Mersey.
- March 2026: the Royal Iris of the Mersey retires after more than 60 years.
- 26 September 2026: the new £26m Royal Daffodil, built at Cammell Laird, makes its first public cruise.
- It is still real transport: £3.10 single, every 20 minutes at peak, about 10 minutes across.
It started on the Wirral side
Birkenhead Priory was founded in the twelfth century, close enough to the water to be useful to anyone trying to reach Liverpool. Around 1150 the monks were carrying travellers over on market days.
Crossing was not the ten minutes it is now. The Mersey is tidal with strong currents, shifting channels and a nasty temper in a northerly, and research from the University of Liverpool notes currents reaching around five knots. So the priory offered more than a boat: it offered food and somewhere to wait when the river said no.
Royal charters in 1318 and 1330 put the arrangement on a legal footing. Edward III's 1330 charter let the monks charge tolls for carrying passengers, horses and goods, which turned a favour into a franchise.
There was more than one Mersey ferry
Calling it "the Mersey Ferry" flattens something much messier. For centuries there were many crossings, run by different owners, serving different places: Woodside, Seacombe, Tranmere, Egremont, New Brighton, Rock Ferry, New Ferry and Eastham.
As Wirral filled up, those routes carried people to work in Liverpool and Liverpool people out to the coast. Most of them are gone now, which is why the surviving service can feel like a remnant rather than what it is: the last two or three of a dozen.
Steam, and then public ownership
Rowing and sail gave way to steam early. The Princess Charlotte was working Eastham by 1816 and the Etna was at Tranmere in 1817, and by the mid-1820s steam packets were listed at Woodside, Seacombe, Birkenhead and Eastham.
The other change was who owned it. Wallasey's ratepayers voted in 1857 to bring Seacombe, Egremont and New Brighton under municipal control, and the Wallasey Local Board took over on 1 August 1861. The argument then is the argument now: a river crossing this important is not something to leave entirely to whoever fancies running it.
Thirty-two million passengers a year
Before the tunnels, if you wanted to get from central Liverpool to Birkenhead or Wallasey, the river was in the way and the ferry was the answer.
The Mersey Railway tunnel opened in 1886 and gave the ferries their first serious competition. Even so, the scale stayed extraordinary. In the year to March 1920 the Seacombe, Egremont and New Brighton services between them are reported to have carried around 32 million passengers.
That is the part that is hard to picture now. This was not a day out. It was mass transit, at rush hour, in all weathers.
When two Mersey ferries went to war
This is where the "Royal" comes from, and it is worth knowing before you next get on one.
In the First World War the Wallasey ferries Iris and Daffodil were requisitioned by the Royal Navy. On 23 April 1918 they took part in the Zeebrugge Raid, an attempt to block the German-held Bruges canal system used by U-boats.
Ferries were chosen for unglamorous reasons: shallow draught, manoeuvrable, and able to carry a lot of people. Daffodil's job was to push the converted cruiser HMS Vindictive against the Zeebrugge Mole and hold her there while troops went ashore under fire.
Both survived and came home to the Mersey on 17 May 1918. King George V ordered that they be renamed Royal Iris and Royal Daffodil. Every ferry since that has carried those names carries them because of one morning in Belgium.
Then they dug underneath it
The Queensway Tunnel opened to Birkenhead in 1934, and the Kingsway Tunnel to Wallasey in 1971. Between them they did to the ferry what the ferry had done to nothing at all.
The ferries had carried vehicles and goods as well as people, on vessels known locally as luggage boats. Once a lorry could simply drive under the river, that trade was finished. Foot passengers followed as buses, cars and rail took over, and the network shrank back from Eastham, Rock Ferry, Egremont and New Brighton to the crossings that survive.
Something that had been essential had to find another reason to exist.
The Beatles played on it
Part of that reason turned up in the early 1960s, when the Royal Iris hosted Cavern Club Riverboat Shuffle cruises.
| Date | Note |
|---|---|
| 25 August 1961 | Riverboat Shuffle, Pete Best on drums |
| 6 July 1962 | Riverboat Shuffle |
| 10 August 1962 | Riverboat Shuffle |
| 28 September 1962 | Final ferry performance, with Ringo Starr |
The last one came days before Love Me Do was released on 5 October 1962. That Royal Iris was nicknamed the Fish and Chip Boat, because it had a fish and chip saloon on board.
Worth being clear about which ship: that is not the Royal Iris of the Mersey that retired this year. Different vessel, reused name.
Gerry Marsden made it famous
Then in 1964 Gerry and the Pacemakers recorded Ferry Cross the Mersey, followed by the film in 1965, and the crossing stopped being only a commute.
For people here it stayed the way you got to work. For everyone else it became a thing you did because it was the Mersey Ferry. Both are still true on the same boat.
After Marsden died in 2021 the Pier Head terminal was renamed the Liverpool Gerry Marsden Ferry Terminal, unveiled in May 2022 after public consultation.
