HMS Conway was originally HMS Nile, a 3-deck, 92-gun second-rate ship of the line, launched in 1839. After a career with the Royal Navy, she was acquired in 1876 to serve as a training ship for future officers of the British Merchant Navy. The school, also named HMS Conway, had been in operation since 1859. The ship was moved to the Menai Strait in Wales in 1941 to avoid the Blitz.
In April 1953, the ship was due for a refit in Birkenhead. On April 14, while being towed from her mooring at Plas Newydd, she ran into trouble in the treacherous waters of the Menai Strait, specifically in a section known as “the Swellies.”
The grounding was a result of a combination of factors. The local pilots had recommended using three tugs for the tow, but the management committee of the school decided to use only two. As the ship approached the Menai Suspension Bridge, an unexpectedly strong current and ebb tide caught her. The tugs were unable to make headway, and the ship was pushed onto a rocky reef known as “the Platters.”
As the tide went out, the ship’s stern was left unsupported, causing her to “break her back” and her seams to open. It was soon declared a total constructive loss. The wreck remained on the rocks until 1956, when efforts to dismantle her began. However, during this process, the hulk caught fire and was largely destroyed.
Cadet John Ellis, one of the cadets who helped recalled: “For two more days we continued salvaging what we could from the ship. We rotated our tasks from moving things from the ship to the boats, manning the boats, loading the trucks at Menai Pier and discharging the trucks at Plas Newydd.”
Another cadet recalled the huge effort that went into recovering every cadet’s sea chest: “We had salvaged the cadets sea chests from the ship and turned everything out on the dock and hosed them down. At that time Skinner became known as ‘Winkle’ from his saying, ‘You’ve gotta get all them winkles out of the corners.’”
Cadet Rob Cammack recalled the disorienting effect of working in the ship as she lay angled into the water: “Although I was not on the ship at the moment of the disaster I traveled north the following day to help with the salvage of personal effects etc. I have to admit that, as we were scrambling about on the orlop deck fishing out sea chests, I just had to sit down on one of them and cry my eyes out. I was not the only one either. A strange thing was that, after being below for some time, coming up on deck one would feel that the whole horizon was tilted over at an angle. It took quite a while for this to wear off.”
The loss of HMS Conway was a sad end for a vessel that had served as a training ground for thousands of sailors, but the school itself continued as a shore-based establishment at Plas Newydd until 1974.
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