Introduction
UK and Commonwealth Merchant Navy and fishing fleet losses in WW1 are estimated as around 15,500 people. Of these, 12,000 had no known graves and, after the war, it was decided to commemorate them on a memorial at Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hill. Work started in 1927 and the memorial was unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Mary on 12 December 1928. The land on which the memorial stands was acquired in perpetuity by an Act of Parliament for the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission.
This page is about the construction and dedication of the memorial. Click HERE to see images of the memorial and lists of those commemorated on it. Click HERE for information about the site before the construction of the WW1 Memorial.
Tower Hill in 1936
The Ordnance Survey Map for 1936 shows the WW1 memorial at the South end of Trinity Square Gardens.
Design and Construction
The memorial to Merchant Seamen was designed by Sir Edwin Lanseer Lutyens (1869-1944) who also designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval.
Dedication Panel
The memorial takes the form of a vaulted hall with panels carrying the names of members of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets whose lives were lost in the war and who have no grave but the sea. The panels are arranged in two sequences: the first is for merchant ships and the second sequence for fishing vessels. For each vessel, the names of the dead seamen are arranged alphabetically after the name of the Master or Skipper. The panels are of bronze and are attached to the piers that support the roof. No rank or rating other than Master or Skipper is indicated. Some vessels are out of sequence and it is quite difficult to locate a specific panel in some cases.
The memorial commemorates 11,919 names and bears the following Dedication at roof level facing the Tower of London:
General Views of the Memorial
These photos give an impression of the simplicity and dignity of the Lutyens design. The second was taken from the WW2 memorial on 23 November 2010 - just a week after the annual Armistice Day commemoration hence the many poppy wreaths present.
Unveiling
The memorial was begun in 1927 and on 1 December 1928 the 'Eastern Post and City Chronicle' described the completion of the memorial tablets by the Morris Art Foundary. This would have been the Morris Singer Art Foundary - a business that still casts artwork in bronze that has handled the work of Jacob Epstein for Coventry Cathedral and of Barbara Hepworth for the United Nations building.
On 12 December 1928 the memorial was dedicated by Cosmo Gordon Lang, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Many years later, Lang would play a part in the abdication of King Edward VIII and would conduct the coronation of King George VI. The memorial was then unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Mary in the pouring rain.
The proceedings were relayed to the public via radio and I was surprised to find that there were about 3 million radio receiving licences by then. The newspapers seemed more concerned with the health of the recently-ill monarch and what the nobility was wearing than the ceremony; some things never change.
