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, 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 Nile, 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, himself an old alumnus of the school (1891–1893).
By 1953 she had already outlived both her sisters, 'Rodney' and 'London', by more than 70 years.
Read more about this topic: HMS Conway (school ship)
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