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Like its British namesake, LIVERPOOL , 140km from Halifax along Hwy 103, skirts the mouth of a Mersey River and has a strong seafaring tradition, but there the similarities end. Nova Scotia's Liverpool was founded by emigrants from Cape Cod in 1759, who established a fearsome reputation for privateering during both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, when their most famous ship, the Liverpool Packet, claimed a hundred American prizes. These piratical endeavours were cheekily celebrated in a local broadsheet of the time as upholding "the best tradition of the British Navy". Nowadays, Liverpool is a minor fish-processing and paper-making town, a desultory settlement only cheered by the fine old houses grouped around the eastern end of Main Street. One of these, the Perkins House (June to mid-Oct Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm, Sun 1-5.30pm; free), has been restored to its late eighteenth-century condition, when it was the home of Simeon Perkins, who moved here from New England in 1762. A local bigwig, Perkins was a shipowner, a merchant, a colonel in the militia and a justice of the court, but he still had time to keep a detailed diary from 1766 until his death in 1812. The diaries provide an insight into the life and times of colonial Nova Scotia and they show Perkins as a remarkably unflappable man: in 1780 Liverpool was attacked by Americans, who Perkins outwitted and drove off, describing the dangerous emergency as just a "dubious and difficult affair". Copies of the four-volume diary are on display at the house, whilst the adjacent Queens County Museum (June to mid-Oct Mon-Fri 9.30am-5.30pm, Sun 1-5.30pm; mid-Oct to May Mon-Sat 9am-5pm; free) sometimes sells excerpts ($2) - and also possesses a diverting collection of early local photographs. Liverpool has one good B&B , the Taigh Na Mara , 58 Main St (tel 354-7194; $40-60), in an attractive, creeper-clad building overlooking the bay from near the Perkins House. For simple sustaining meals, try the Liverpool Pizzeria , 155 Main St, or Lane's Privateer Inn (tel 354-3456), just across the bridge from the centre, at 27 Bristol Ave.
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