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HMS Conway (school ship)
Encyclopedia
HMS Conway was a naval training school or "school ship
School ship
A 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 battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
. The ship was originally stationed on the Mersey
Mersey
Mersey may refer to:* River Mersey, in northwest England* Mersea Island, off the coast of Essex in England * Mersey River in the Australian state* Electoral division of Mersey in the state of Tasmania, Australian...
near Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool 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 Strait
Menai Strait
The Menai Strait is a narrow stretch of shallow tidal water about long, which separates the island of Anglesey from the mainland of Wales.The strait is bridged in two places - the main A5 road is carried over the strait by Thomas Telford's elegant iron suspension bridge, the first of its kind,...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. While being towed back to Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead 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. The school moved to purpose-built premises on Anglesey
Anglesey
Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...
where it continued for another twenty years.
Origins
In the mid-19th century, the demand for a reliable standard of merchant navy 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 Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool 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 Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
and moored in the Sloyne, off Rock Ferry
Rock Ferry
Rock Ferry is an area of Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula, 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 Mersey
River Mersey
The 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 the corvette HMS Conway
HMS Conway (1832)
HMS Conway was a sixth rate of the Royal Navy, built by Chatham Dockyard and launched on 2 February 1832. She was lent to the Mercantile Marine Association of Liverpool in February 1859 to act as a training ship for boys, and gave her name to HMS Conway, a series of ships and a shore-based school....
. There were to be three Conways over the years, the name being transferred to the new ship each time it was replaced. In 1861 HMS Winchester
HMS Winchester (1822)
HMS Winchester was a 60-gun Southampton-class sailing frigate of the Royal Navy. She was laid down in 1816 at Woolwich Dockyard, and launched on 21 June 1822. Although designed for 60 guns, she and the rest of the class carried 52 guns. From 1831 to 1861 she served in North America and South East...
took the name, 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 the small two-decker
Two-decker
A 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....
, a 92-gun second-rate line-of-battle ship. She was 205 ft (62.5 m) long on the gundeck, 54 ft (16 m) in beam, and displaced 4,375 long ton
Long ton
Long 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 United States by the short ton...
s. During her operational life she was equipped with ten 8-inch (200 mm) guns and eighty-two 30-pounders. Launched in June 1839, she was entirely built from West African hardwoods and copper fastened, with copper sheathing anti-fouling to her under parts. She had survived the Baltic Blockade during the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
, later protecting British possessions in the Caribbean and 'showing the flag' along the eastern seaboard of North America 50 years after the British surrender at Yorktown. In 1876 she was renamed Conway and moored on the Mersey.
The ship, already a century old, was refitted in the dry dock
Dry dock
A 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 Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead 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 also fitted with a new figurehead
Figurehead
A figurehead is a carved wooden decoration 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 found at the prow of ships largely made between the 16th and...
representing Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of...
, which was ceremonially unveiled by the-then Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A 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 Masefield
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...
, himself an old alumnus of the school (1891–1893).A short newsreel clip of the unveiling of the figurehead can be downloaded from the British Pathé website (search for "Conway").
By 1953 she had already outlived both her sisters, 'Rodney' and 'London', by more than 70 years.
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 Anglesey, where she remained moored for the duration of the war between the former Bishop's Palace at Glyn Garth and the Gazelle Hotel, in line with the Catalina flying boat moorings along the Anglesey shore. 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", entering the Menai Strait. Subsequently, ship to shore traffic was across the Menai Strait to the pier-head at Bangor or to the Gazelle Hotel ferry terminal and she 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 Newydd
Plas Newydd
Plas Newydd, located in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Anglesey, Wales, is the country seat of the Marquess of Anglesey. The family's former principal seat at Beaudesert, Staffordshire, was sold and demolished in the 1930s....
, the stately home of the Marquess of Anglesey
Marquess of Anglesey
Marquess of Anglesey is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1815 for Henry 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 sunk 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 as the "Swellies
Swellies
The Swellies is a stretch of the Menai Strait in North Wales. The most popular use of the name is for the stretch between the Britannia Bridge and the Menai Bridge....
". This area, bounded by the two Menai bridges (the Menai Suspension Bridge
Menai Suspension Bridge
The Menai Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales. Designed by Thomas Telford and completed in 1826, it was the first modern suspension bridge in the world.-Construction:...
and Britannia Bridge
Britannia Bridge
Britannia Bridge is a bridge across the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales. It was originally designed and built by Robert Stephenson as a tubular bridge of wrought iron rectangular box-section spans for carrying rail traffic...
), is notorious for underwater shoals and dangerous, complex tidal streams as well as a non-tidal current varied by the wind and atmospheric pressure. Captain 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 moved successfully on 13 April 1949, in spite of what was obviously a great risk. Conway remains by far the deepest ship ever to have passed through the Swellies. Her draft was 22 feet (6.71 m) aft and the underwater clearances were marginal. The overhead clearance under Menai Suspension Bridge, which is 100 feet (30.48 m) above high water, was estimated to be three feet, all depending upon the actual height of the tide at the time of passing through. "I was glad when it was accomplished," Captain Goddard wrote. "It created a great deal of interest amongst the North Wales seafaring fraternity who had declared the undertaking to be a foolish one."
Loss of the ship
By 1953 another refit was due, including replacing the central heating system and renewing the copper sheathing under the hull. This could not be done locally so the ship had to be taken back to dry dock in Birkenhead, passing back through the Swellies once more.
On 14 April 1953, the highest tide that year, the operation took place. The new captain superintendent, Captain Hewitt RD RNR was in command, with two local pilots and one from Liverpool overseeing the towage, as well as a number of cadets who had volunteered to help. There were two tugs (Dongarth and Minegarth), one to tow from the bow while the other steadied the stern. The timing of the operation was critical. It was vital for the ship to be through the Swellies before the tide turned against her, and "slack water
Slack water
Slack water, which used to be known as 'The stand of the tide', is a short period in a body of tidal water either side of high water or low water essentially when the water is completely unstressed, and therefore with no rise or fall of the tide and no movement either way in the tidal stream, and...
" is very brief on a big tide. The tides there are unique to the Menai Strait and outside the experience of the typical seagoing officer, which is the function of the pilot, yet Captain Hewitt repeatedly ignored the pilot's advice. The tidal streams are affected not by the wind in the strait, but by the wind outside in the Irish Sea, where unknown to Captain Hewitt the wind was northwesterly near-gale force
Beaufort scale
The Beaufort Scale is an empirical measure that relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land. Its full name is the Beaufort Wind Force Scale.-History:...
, gusting up to storm force, resulting in a strong contrary tide brought the ship to a standstill. The stern tug was let go and sent forward to assist, but this made no noticeable difference. The ship took a violent sheer to starboard, apparently forced by an eddy of overwhelming strength. Dragging both tugs with her, her fore part went up on the Platters rocks right at the top of high water on the highest tide of the year. With her fore part planted firmly on the Platters, as the tide fell the stern lost its support, hogging her severely. Her seams opened and in places the height between decks was reduced from 6 feet (1.8 m) to less than 4 feet (1.2 m). As the next tide rose the stern failed to lift and she filled with water.
The ship lay on the banks of the strait for three years. Liability for disposal of the wreck never was established. The Swellies is outside the jurisdiction of both Bangor and Caernarvon, the ship was not insured, the school had no money and the Admiralty disowned her. Eventually the impoverished little port of Caernarvon assumed the task since, as the wreck started to break up, it became a hazard to their passing trade. They engaged Liverpool Salvage to begin the expensive process of dismantling her. On 30 October 1956 the remains caught fire and burned to the waterline. The last vestiges of Conway are sometimes visible at low water.
Reasons for the loss
Had the ship gone through at the proper time with the tide behind her as the pilot had advised, the accident would not have happened. Captain Hewitt had seriously underestimated the depths in the Swellies, leading him to needlessly delay the ship until she was too late for the tide. She became trapped in the Swellies by a contrary ebb tide so strong that two head tugs could not make way against it.Last years of the school
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
. 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 Newydd
Plas Newydd
Plas Newydd, located in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Anglesey, Wales, is the country seat of the Marquess of Anglesey. The family's former principal seat at Beaudesert, Staffordshire, was sold and demolished in the 1930s....
on the south coast of Anglesey, and thus Conway spent its last twenty years on dry land in what is known as a "stone frigate
Stone frigate
Stone 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 Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
County Council was ceased.
Famous alumni
Cadets over the years included:- Captain Matthew WebbMatthew WebbCaptain Matthew Webb was the first recorded 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 ChannelEnglish ChannelThe English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern 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 in the Strait of Dover...
from EnglandEnglandEngland 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, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
to FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... - John MasefieldJohn MasefieldJohn 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 LaureatePoet 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" CrabbLionel CrabbLionel "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 frogmanFrogmanA frogman is someone who is trained to scuba diving or swim underwater 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....
who disappeared in mysterious circumstances while on a diving mission near a Soviet warship in 1956 - Vice Admiral Sir David BrownDavid Brown (Royal Navy officer)Vice Admiral Sir David Worthington Brown KCB was a Royal Navy officer who became Flag Officer, Plymouth.-Naval career:Educated in HMS Conway, Brown joined the Royal Navy in June 1945...
(1927–2005) - Ian FraserIan Edward FraserIan 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 SmithIain Duncan SmithGeorge Iain Duncan Smith is a British Conservative politician. He is currently the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and was previously leader of the Conservative Party from September 2001 to October 2003...
(1968–1972), leader of the Conservative PartyConservative Party (UK)The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
2001–2003 - Sir Clive WoodwardClive WoodwardSir Clive Ronald Woodward OBE is an English former rugby union player and coach. He was coach of the team from 1997 to 2004, managing them to victory in the 2003 Rugby World Cup. He is currently the British Olympic Association's Director of Elite Performance.-Early life:Woodward was born in Ely...
(1969–1974), rugby unionRugby unionRugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
player and England coach - Francis Haffey Brooke-SmithFrancis Haffey Brooke-SmithFrances Haffey Brooke-Smith was a British naval officer.Brooke-Smith was born in Hasketon, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He was a cadet on HMS Conway on the Mersey between 1934 and 1936...
(1934–36), awarded the George Cross for bomb disposal. - Harold Kyrle Money BellewKyrle BellewHarold Kyrle Money Bellew , more commonly known as Kyrle Bellew, was a British stage and silent film actor in the late 19th and early 20th century. Bellew notably toured with Cora Brown-Potter in the 1880s and 1890s and was cast as the leading man in many stage productions alongside Brown-Potter...
(1869), 19th century stage actor
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.
Further reading
- Masefield, JohnJohn MasefieldJohn Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
(1933). The Conway: From her Foundation to the Present Day. London: William Heinemann Ltd.
External links
- hmsconway.org - A comprehensive account of the life and loss of the ship, with many pictures and personal accounts
- Diagram showing the Conways last shift
- Conway Merchant Navy Trust
- Tides in the Menai Strait and the Loss of HMS Conway
