Some new memorials today, in what will be the final post in this series for a few weeks – next week, I’ll return to other matters!
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In the summer, I gave a talk on Cornwall’s place in naval history as part of the Penzance Literary Festival. We also managed to fit in a number of places of interest around the event, one of which was Mylor, where traces of the old naval victualling yard can be found adjacent to a splendid parish church. The churchyard contains this memorial to trainee sailors who died aboard HMS Ganges, which was anchored off Mylor until it moved to Shotley in 1899. I’ve included a close-up of one side of it so you can get an idea of the ages of those commemorated here.
Next, here’s the memorial in the naval cemetery at Lyness, Orkney, to the crew of the battleship HMS Vanguard, which blew up accidentally while moored in Scapa Flow, off the island of Flotta, on 9 July 1917, with the loss of 843 of the 845 men on board.
Finally, I’d better include a genuine dead admiral or two in a post with this title, otherwise a certain former student of mine will sue me under the Trades Descriptions Act…again… Here are the memorials to several naval generations of the Hyde Parker family at Long Melford church, Suffolk, including the one famously involved in Nelson’s ‘blind eye’ incident at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.
