HMS Conway was a naval training school or "school ship", founded in 1859 and housed for most of her life aboard a 19th-century wooden ship of the line. The ship was originally stationed on the Mersey near Liverpool, then moved to the Menai Strait during World War II. While being towed back to Birkenhead for a refit in 1953, she ran aground and was wrecked, and later burned. The school moved to purpose-built premises on Anglesey 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 Association.

One of the first sites chosen for a school ship was Liverpool, in 1857. The ship they chose to accommodate the school, to be provided by the Admiralty and moored in the Sloyne, off Rock Ferry on the River Mersey, was the corvette HMS Conway. 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 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 two-decker , 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 tons. 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, 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 at Birkenhead between 1936 and 1938. She was also fitted with a new figurehead representing Nelson, which was ceremonially unveiled by the then Poet Laureate John Masefield, an alumnus of the school (1891–1893).

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 ship of the line, 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, the stately home of the Marquess of Anglesey, a large part of which had been vacated by the U.S. Army 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". This area, bounded by the two Menai bridges (the Menai Suspension Bridge and Britannia Bridge), 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 aft and the underwater clearances were marginal. The overhead clearance under Menai Suspension Bridge, which is 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

thumb|HMS Conway school flag.

By 1953 another refit was due. This could not be done locally so the ship had to be taken back to Birkenhead dry dock, passing back through the Swellies once more. The operation took place on 14 April 1953. There were the same two Liverpool tugs which had shifted her several times before, Dongarth forward and Minegarth aft. Laver's Almanac quotes high water at Menai Bridge as 28 minutes before high water Liverpool. What is termed 'slack' in the Swellies is actually a brief period of uneasy equilibrium between two opposing flood streams which typically occurs 1 hour 42 minutes before local high water, or at 09:08 on the morning of the move. Owing to the strength of the southwest-going ebb, which runs at 8 knots during a spring tide, there is a confused complex tidal flow among the numerous rocks and islets generating many powerful eddies. On a big tide in particular it is vital for an outbound vessel to be through the Swellies before the tide turns against her. It is therefore the local practice to start an outward transit with the last of the northeast-going flood 20 minutes before the 'slack', or at 08:48 on the morning of the move. Captain Hewitt had worked with the Caernarfon harbour master, Captain Rees Thomas, in preparing his plan, and had several times made a passage of the Swellies in the Conways motor boat, checking his timings at . He also consulted Conways old log book for the timings of the previous transit, and had planned to arrive at the bridge at 09:20.

The streams in the Menai Strait are affected by winds outside in the Irish Sea. With a strong north or north-westerly wind both the rate and duration of the southwest-going ebb are increased, and the southwest-going ebb may begin quarter of an hour earlier. The 0600 synoptic chart showed a stationary deep depression west of Norway with a secondary low in the North Sea, and a high steadily closing the west coast of Ireland, which could be expected to result in an increasingly strong northwesterly wind in the Irish Sea. But in the shelter of the Plas Newydd mooring, there was no indication of this. At 0800 as the wind was being recorded in Conway's logbook as northerly force 1–2 (2 to 5 knots), only 13 miles away on station off Point Lynas it was being recorded by the Liverpool pilot boat as northwesterly force 6 (22–27 knots)

The Investigating Subcommittee was later to express its surprise that Captain Hewitt had left the Plas Newydd mooring without a weather forecast, and "had no knowledge of the stormy conditions prevailing at sea at the time Conway was to make the passage" since it was local knowledge that in such weather "abnormal conditions might be encountered." The north-westerly mean wind speed of 16 meters per second at sea that day would enhance the Residual by 15 cm per second, increasing the strength of the southwest-going ebb at Plas Newydd by as much as 3 knots.

Conway's logbook shows she left the mooring at 0822 and arrived at Britannia Bridge at 0850, With the ship far too late and sensitive to the adverse conditions the pilot advised going back. Captain Hewitt passed the ship under Britannia Bridge at 0923

Ranks

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="4" | Ranks of HMS Conway

|-

! Rowspan = "2" | Ranks

! colspan="2" | Cuff Insignia

! Rowspan = "2" | Equivalent

|-

! Left

! Right

|-

| Chief Cadet Captain

|30px

|30px

|Head of School

|-

| Senior Cadet Captain

|30px

| rowspan="2" |

|Head of House

|-

| Junior Cadet Captain

|30px

| School Prefect

|}

Famous alumni

Cadets over the years included:

  • Captain Herbert Haddock, first Captain of
  • Captain Matthew Webb (at Conway 1860–1862), the first man to swim the English Channel from England to France
  • John Masefield (1891–94), Poet Laureate 1930–1967
  • Lionel "Buster" Crabb (1922–1924), the Royal Navy frogman who disappeared in mysterious circumstances while on a diving mission near a Soviet warship in 1956
  • Vice Admiral Sir David Brown (1927–2005)
  • Ian Fraser (1936–38), awarded the Victoria Cross for commanding a midget submarine attack on the Japanese cruiser Takao in Singapore harbour.
  • Captain Graham Wallin (1953-55) - the first, and still believed to be only, holder of a Foreign Going Master's Certificate, a Commercial Aircraft Licence and a Commercial Hovercraft Pilot's Licence (SRN4 - Hoverspeed & Hoverloyd)
  • Iain Duncan Smith (1968–1972), leader of the Conservative Party 2001–2003
  • Sir Clive Woodward (1969–1974), rugby union player and England coach
  • Francis Haffey Brooke-Smith (1934–36), awarded the George Cross for bomb disposal.
  • Harold Kyrle Money Bellew (1869), 19th century stage actor
  • James Paul Moody (1901,1902), sixth officer in
  • Archibald Day (1912–1914), Hydrographer of the Navy 1950–1955

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.

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

  • Browne, Tom (1971). The Skyline is a Promise. Liverpool: Rondo Publications Ltd.
  • Masefield, John (1933). The Conway: From her Foundation to the Present Day. London: William Heinemann Ltd.
  • Masefield, John (1944). New Chum. London: William Heinemann Ltd.
  • theconwayclub.org – The Conway Club, keeping old Conways in touch with each other, club events & club merchandise
  • hmsconway.org – A comprehensive account of the life and loss of the ship, with many pictures and personal accounts
  • Conway Merchant Navy Trust
  • Tides in the Menai Strait and the loss of HMS Conway