HMS Conway (school Ship) - From Mersey To Menai

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, the stately home of the Marquess of Anglesey, 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". 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 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."