SU N DAY, 14 DECEMBER 2025 inch (200 mm) guns and eighty-two 30-pounders. Launched in 1839, she was entirely made of wood, with a copper sheathed bottom to protect the hull below the waterline. Previously run under a different name, she had survived all sorts of adventures around the world, notably in the Crimean War and allegedly in the American Civil War, before settling down to what should have been a dignified retirement. In 1876 she was renamed Conway and moved to the River Mersey off Rock Ferry. The ship, already nearly a century old, was refitted in the dry dock at Birkenhead between 1936 and 1938. She was 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). 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 Bangor in North Wales. 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", coming up the Menai Strait. She was moored near the pier in Bangor and became something of a local tourist attraction.
HMS Conway
Maggie Marriott's nom de guerre
Maggie Marriott
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