Liverpool docks and the Mersey (1926)

This scene shows the ship Adriatic, whose former captain later became the Titanic's captain. The footage, part of Claude Friese‑Greene's 1925/26 film "The Open Road", was digitally restored by the BFI National Archive and showcases Britain in colour for the first time. It follows a haphazard journey from Land's End to John O'Groats, presenting moving‑picture postcards of the landscape, including a little girl in a red coat walking among peacocks and three girls with red curls posing by the sea at Torquay. The travelogue also features a Vauxhall D‑type car, a long‑distance drive that was then a novelty, a stop at a petrol station where smoking was common, and concludes with recognisable London landmarks, highlighting how much has stayed the same and how traffic has increased.