HMS Conway was a naval training school or "
school shipA training ship is a ship used to train students as sailors. The term is especially used for ships employed by navies to train future officers. Essentially there are two types: those used for training at sea and old hulks used to house classrooms....
", founded in 1859 and housed for most of its life aboard a 19th-century wooden
battleshipA battleship is a large, heavily armored warship with a main battery consisting of the largest caliber of guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers or destroyers. There are currently no battleships in service....
. The ship was originally stationed on the
MerseyMersey may refer to:* River Mersey, in northwest England* Mersey River in the Australian state* Mersey River , in Canada* Mersey , wrecked off Torres Strait, Australia, in 1805...
near
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, then moved to the
Menai StraitThe Menai Strait is a narrow stretch of shallow tidal water about long, which separates the island of Anglesey from the mainland of Wales....
during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. While being towed back to
BirkenheadBirkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...
for a refit in 1953, she ran aground and was wrecked, and later burned down. The school moved to purpose-built premises on
AngleseyThe Isle of Anglesey , is an island and county off the northwest coast of Wales, with a predominantly Welsh-speaking population. It is connected to the mainland by two bridges spanning the Menai Strait: the original Menai Suspension Bridge , designed by Thomas Telford in 1826; and the newer...
where it continued for another twenty years.
Origins
In the mid-19th century, the demand for a reliable standard of naval officers had grown to the point where ship owners decided to set up an organisation to train, and indeed educate, them properly: the Mercantile Marine Service Associations (MMSA).
One of the first sites chosen for a school ship was
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, in 1857. The ship they chose to accommodate the school, to be provided by the
AdmiraltyThe Admiralty was formerly the authority in the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy. Originally exercised by a single person, the office of Lord High Admiral was from the 18th century onward almost invariably put "in commission", and was exercised by a Board of Admiralty.In...
and moored in the Sloyne, off
Rock FerryRock Ferry is an area of Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside, England. Administratively it is a ward of the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. Before local government reorganisation on 1 April 1974, it was part of the county of Cheshire...
on the
River MerseyThe River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....
, was one named
Conway. There were to be several
ConwaysFour ships and a shore establishment of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Conway after the town of Conwy in Wales, formerly known by its English name of Conway. Two were launched as Conway, while another two were renamed:...
over the years, the name being transferred to the new ship each time it was replaced, but the one that housed the school for most of its life was lent by the Royal Navy to the Mercantile Marine Service Association in 1875. This was a small
two-deckerA two-decker is a sail warship, which carried her guns on two fully-armed decks. Usually additional guns were carried on the upper works but this was not a continuous battery so were not counted....
92-gun wooden line of battle ship 205 ft (62.5 m) long, 54 ft (16 m) deep, weighing 4,375
long tonLong ton is the name for the unit called the "ton" in the avoirdupois or Imperial system of measurements, as used in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries. It has been mostly replaced by the tonne, and in the USA by the short ton. It is equal to or of salt water with a...
s and originally equipped with ten 8 inch (200 mm) guns and eighty-two 30-pounders. Launched in 1839, she was entirely made of wood, with a copper sheathed bottom to protect the hull below the waterline. Previously known as , she had survived all sorts of adventures around the world, notably in the
Crimean WarThe Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire on one side and an alliance of the British Empire, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
and allegedly in the
American Civil WarThe American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
, before settling down to what should have been a dignified retirement. In 1876 she was renamed
Conway and moved to Liverpool.
The ship, already nearly a century old, was refitted in the
dry dockA drydock is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform...
at
BirkenheadBirkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...
between 1936 and 1938. She was fitted with a new
figureheadA figurehead is a carved wooden decoration, often female or bestial, found at the prow of ships largely made between the 16th and 19th century.-History:Although earlier ships had often had some form of bow ornamentation A figurehead is a carved wooden decoration, often female or bestial, found at...
representing
NelsonVice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a British flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars...
, which was ceremonially unveiled by the then-
Poet LaureateA Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events....
John MasefieldJohn Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
, himself an old alumnus of the school (1891–1893). (A short newsreel clip of this event can be downloaded from the
British Pathé website: search for "Conway".)
From Mersey to Menai
In 1941, with air raids on the Liverpool docks taking place,
Conway had already survived several near misses. It was decided to move the ship from the Mersey to
BangorBangor is a city in Gwynedd, Wales, and one of the smallest cities in Britain. It is a university city with a population of 13,725 at the 2001 census, not including around 10,000 students at Bangor University. Including nearby Menai Bridge on Anglesey, which does not however form part of the City...
in
North WalesNorth Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales, bordered to the south by Mid Wales and to the east by England.It comprises the island of Anglesey, the Llŷn peninsula and the Snowdonia mountain range, together with the catchments of the Rivers Conwy, Clwyd and Dee with the River Dyfi...
. This being wartime there was no official announcement of the move and local residents were startled one evening to see a picturesque Nelson-era battleship, a "wooden wall", coming up the Menai Strait. She was moored near the pier in Bangor and became something of a local tourist attraction.
At the end of the 1940s there was a surge in demand for merchant navy cadets. The ship did not have space for more cadets so the ship's Superintendent, Captain Goddard, started looking for space ashore with playing fields and a shore establishment. He picked on
Plas NewyddPlas Newydd, located in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Anglesey, Wales, is the country seat of the Marquess of Anglesey. It is not to be confused with the house of the same name at Llangollen; the family's other seat being at Beaudesert, Staffordshire....
, the stately home of the
Marquess of AngleseyMarquess of Anglesey is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1815 for Henry William Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, a hero of the Battle of Waterloo...
, a large part of which had been vacated by the US Intelligence Corps at the end of the War. This site seemed ideal, except that the seabed provided very poor anchorage so four five-ton anchors were sank there. Only one problem remained: could the ship be moved there in one piece? She would need to be towed by tugs through a stretch of water between Anglesey and the mainland, known locally as the "
SwelliesThe Swellies is a stretch of the Menai Strait in North Wales.It is notable for its difficulty in safely navigating its shoals and rocks due to the whirlpools and surges that are the result of the tides washing around the island of Anglesey at different speeds.-External links:***...
". This area, bounded by the two Menai bridges (the
Menai Suspension BridgeThe Menai Suspension Bridge, or Pont Grog y Borth in Welsh, is a suspension bridge between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales. Designed by Thomas Telford and completed in 1826, it is one of the first modern suspension bridges in the world.-Construction:Before the bridge was completed...
and the
Britannia Bridge]Britannia Bridge is a bridge across the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales, originally a tubular bridge of wrought iron rectangular box-section spans, and now a two-tier steel truss arch bridge.- The bridge design :The opening of the Menai Bridge in 1826, a mile...
), is notorious for underwater shoals and dangerous, complex tidal currents. Goddard was proud of his experience as a hydrographic surveyor, and having studied the problem, believed it was possible.
After a false start the day before, the ship was successfully moved on 14 April 1949, in spite of what seems to have been a great risk.
Conway was the largest ship ever to have passed through the Swellies. Her draft was 22 ft (6.7 m) aft and the clearances were minute, not just underwater but overhead too: just three feet under the Menai Bridge, which is 100 ft (30 m) above high water. "I was glad when it was accomplished," Goddard wrote. "It created a lot of interest amongst the North Wales seafaring fraternity, who had declared the undertaking to be a foolish one." Sadly, history would yet prove them right.
Loss of the ship
By 1953 another refit was due, involving replacing the central heating system and renewing the copper sheathing under the hull. This could not be done locally so the ship would have to be taken back to dry dock in Birkenhead, passing back through the Swellies once more.
On 14 April 1953 the operation took place. The new Captain Superintendent, Captain Hewitt RD RNR was in command, with two local pilots and one from Liverpool, as well as a number of cadets who had volunteered to help. There were two tugs (
Dongarth and
Minegarth), one to pull from the bow while the other steadied the stern. The timing of the operation was critical. Even at high tide there are still tidal flows in the Swellies that continue for some time; the crucial period of "slack water" is very brief and there was no room for error. As it happened an "unexpectedly strong" current (according to the official report
http://www.hmsconway.org/history_loss.html) was encountered as the ship passed between the two bridges, and the front tug found itself unable to make headway. It was decided to bring the rear tug up to the front to help, leaving the rear of the ship out of control. As well as leaving the ship much less controllable, this lost much valuable time, a serious problem when the "window" during which the passage was possible was already so small.
Sure enough, the stern of the ship started to swing back and forth and she ran aground on some flat rocks known as the Platters, below the Menai Bridge. All attempts to pull her off the rocks failed and when the tide went out, the
Conway "broke her back". Firmly wedged on the rocks but no longer supported by water under the stern - the heaviest part - the ship simply snapped under her own weight. At first it was hoped that she could be floated off again at the next high tide, but when inspectors were sent in to assess the damage it was clear she would never sail again.
http://www.hmsconway.org/images/loss_01_map_swellies.jpg
From some angles she looked almost sound, but from others one could clearly see the distortion of the line of the hull. The interior inspection showed that the huge main timbers had been shattered, leaving some decks crushed to only four feet high.
The contents of the ship were salvaged but she was written off as a total loss and disowned by the
AdmiraltyThe Admiralty was formerly the authority in the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy. Originally exercised by a single person, the office of Lord High Admiral was from the 18th century onward almost invariably put "in commission", and was exercised by a Board of Admiralty.In...
, who decided it was up to the local authorities to dispose of the wreck. So
Conway simply stayed where she was, slumped over the rocks, a picturesque but tragic sight.
Fire
The ship lay forlornly on the banks of the Strait for many few years but was a hazard to shipping. The
CaernarvonCaernarfon is a royal town in Gwynedd, northwest Wales....
Harbour Board eventually decided they would have to assume responsibility for her removal. A team was sent in to dismantle the ship. During this process, on 30 October 1956, she somehow caught fire and burned to the waterline. The last vestiges of
Conway are still visible at low tide.
Reasons for the loss
There was great controversy over the loss of the ship. Some claimed that the advice of local pilots had been ignored, or that a ship the size of
Conway should never have been taken through such a narrow and dangerous passage in the first place. It certainly seems true that two tugs were not enough to keep control of such a large unpowered vessel in the grip of such powerful and unpredictable tidal currents.
Last years of the school
The school was first rehoused in tents loaned by the
British ArmyThe British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland and...
. These were quickly replaced by a hutted camp in the grounds of Plas Newydd where it stayed for ten years. All traces of the huts have now gone but modern day visitors to Plas Newydd still use the school's cafeteria. Then new premises were built for it in the grounds of
Plas NewyddPlas Newydd, located in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Anglesey, Wales, is the country seat of the Marquess of Anglesey. It is not to be confused with the house of the same name at Llangollen; the family's other seat being at Beaudesert, Staffordshire....
on the south coast of Anglesey, and thus
Conway spent its last twenty years on dry land in what is known as a "
stone frigateStone frigate is a nickname for a naval establishment on land. The term has its origin in Britain's Royal Navy after its use of Diamond Rock, off Martinique, as a 'sloop of war' to harass the French...
".
The school closed in 1974 after funding from the Government through
CheshireCheshire ; also known, archaically, as the County of Chester) is a ceremonial county in North West England. The traditional county town is the city of Chester, although Cheshire's largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Widnes, Runcorn, Macclesfield,...
County Council was ceased.
Famous alumni
Cadets over the years included:
- Captain Matthew Webb
Captain Matthew Webb was the first person to swim the English Channel without the use of artificial aids. On 25 August 1875 he swam from Dover to Calais in less than 22 hours.-Early life and career:...
(at Conway 1860–1862), the first man to swim the English ChannelThe English Channel is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest, to only in the Strait of Dover...
from EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
to FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
- John Masefield
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
(1891–94), Poet LaureateA Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events....
1930–1967
- Lionel "Buster" Crabb
Lionel "Buster" Crabb OBE, GM was a British Royal Navy frogman and MI6 diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission around a Soviet cruiser in 1956.-Early life:...
(1922–1924), the Royal Navy frogmanA frogman is someone who is trained to dive or swim in a military capacity which can include combat. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver or combatant diver or combat swimmer. Strictly speaking, "combat swimming" refers to surface swimming without a breathing...
who disappeared in mysterious circumstances while on a diving mission near a Soviet warship in 1956
- Vice Admiral Sir David Brown (1927-2005) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1494460/Vice-Admiral-Sir-David-Brown.html
- Ian Fraser
Ian Edward Fraser, VC, DSC, RD and Bar, JP , was an English diving pioneer and recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Fraser was born in Ealing, London and went to school...
(1936-38), Awarded the Victoria Cross for commanding a midget submarine attack on the Japanese cruiser "Takao" in Singapore harbour.
- Iain Duncan Smith
George Iain Duncan Smith is a British politician, the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green. He was leader of the Conservative Party from 12 September 2001 to 6 November 2003...
(1968–1972), leader of the Conservative PartyThe Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, the Conservative Party, or Tory Party is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom...
2001–2003
- Sir Clive Woodward
Sir Clive Ronald Woodward is a former English rugby union international who was the coach of the national rugby union team from 1997 to 2004...
(1969–1974), rugby unionRugby union is a full contact team sport, a form of football which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. It is played with an oval-shaped ball, outdoors on a level field, usually with a grass surface, 100 m...
player and England coach
- Francis Haffey Brooke-Smith
Frances Haffey Brooke-Smith was born on 21 September 1918 in Hasketon, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He was a cadet on HMS Conway on the Mersey between 1934-36...
(1934-36), awarded the George Cross for bomb disposal.
The Conway Club for ex-alumni still thrives, numbering some 1,600 Old Conways. Several affiliated overseas clubs also exist in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA, to name just a few. The current (2007) President of the Conway Club is Archie Smith.
External links