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All Hands 2020-1 (UK Spring) P a g e 23

“In every British man or woman is born the spirit of our
sea roving and sea fighting tradition. Take this
inheritance, plant it in the right surroundings, nourish
it with sound training, and you will produce the finest
sailor in the world”. Conway prospectus, April 1931.
An institution that survives for 115 years must have something to merit such longevity. The training ship Conway,
established in 1859, was such an institution and her passing continues to be mourned by her Old Boys’ Association, the
Conway Club, now over 1,500 strong and likely to extend many years into the future until the last Cadet passes away.
The present youngest members are only in their mid-twenties.
The ship nurtured many famous men, among them the
late Poet Laureate, John Masefield, Captain Webb, the
Channel swimmer and Captains of such prestigious
vessels such as the Cunard “Queens” and major
warships. Her name and traditions live on in Conway
House at Kelly College in Devon and at the Conway
section of Liverpool Maritime Museum. Masefield
wrote her history in 1933 under the title “The
Conway” (William Heinemann Ltd). An updated
edition was published in 1953. She was based in the
River Mersey, moored off Rock Ferry near
Birkenhead, from the start in 1859 until moved to the
Menai Strait in North Wales during the Second World
War.
I count myself fortunate to have been a Cadet in her in
the mid-1930s. She was famous. People had heard of
her in the South of England as well as the North, in
Wales, Scotland and further afield.
Fellow Cadets in my time came from Cornwall, the Channel Islands, Glasgow and Stornoway in the Hebrides. Another
was from Montreal and later became an Admiral in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Joining the ship as a New Chum was a traumatic but exciting experience for a boy of 14, straight from home without
even a baptism of a boarding school in preparation. Many boarding schools were tough places at that time but life aboard
the Conway was only equalled in severity by the system at the RN College, Dartmouth, and perhaps similar nautical
schools for officer training such as the Worcester on the Thames and at Pangbourne Nautical College.
It was May 1935 when, resplendent in new uniform, I humped my suitcase into the ship’s motorboat at Rock Ferry pier
and looked round at my companions, some also newcomers judging by the shine on their cap badges, others old hands
with badges going green with the action of sea air, their caps worn at a jaunty angle. As the boat made her way across to
the ship some 200 yards out in the river, I looked with awe and delight at the attractive alternate horizontal bands of black
and white on her bulbous hull, the fashion of the wooden walls of the Royal Navy of more than a century earlier.
We went alongside the starboard gangway with the ship’s side towering above us, struggled out of the boat with our
bags and up the steps with their highly polished brass nosings to the top, where the Officer-of-the-Watch appraised us
sternly before we ducked under the low doorway on to the quarterdeck, awkwardly following the example of those
already initiated in saluting as we did so.
With other ‘New Chums’ I was taken down the principal hatch ladder – it seemed incredibly steep and could hardly be
called a staircase – to the orlop deck where the Cadets’ living and sleeping quarters were situated.
The ship’s company of Cadets was divided into ‘tops’, roughly equivalent to houses in a public school except that boys
did not stay in the same top for the whole of their time in the ship.
New Chums were allocated to the Fo’c’sle Top and I found myself being taken along the orlop deck to Starboard Fo’c’sle,
which was to be my home for my first term. After that there would be progression, to Port Fore in the second term,
following through other Main and Fore Tops to Starboard Main, where reigned the senior Cadets.
The only exceptions were the Mizzen Tops. Both Starboard and Port Mizzens were populated by small Cadets, those of
stature smaller than usual for their age. They stayed there throughout their Conway time, from their second term onward.