The Menai Heritage Trust is commemorating the 65th anniversary of the grounding of the HMS Conway in the Menai Strait, with a special exhibition at the Thomas Telford Centre in Menai Bridge.
This exhibition will include photos of the ship and of some of the cadets who manned her. There are also a number of artefacts from the ship, many loaned from the Friends of the HMS Conway, a registered charity set up to preserve the memory of the ship.
The HMS Conway was a training ship, used to teach thousands of cadets how to man a large ship. The ship was moored at Glyn Garth off Bangor Pier from 22nd May 1941, moving there to avoid the bombing of Merseyside in the second world war, which had come close to sinking her. She remained at Glyn Garth until 13th April 1949 when she moved to Plas Newydd.
On 14th April 1953 she was to be moved to Birkenhead for a refit. Tugs were employed to move her up the Menai Strait, under the bridges. However, the tugs lost control and she was grounded near the Menai Suspension Bridge. There she remained until 1956, when a fire burned her to water level.
The exhibition will be on display until the end of June, and can be viewed by visiting the Menai Heritage Bridges Exhibition at the Thomas Telford Centre, Menai Bridge (Opposite Waitrose) on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10am-5pm. Entrance fee £3; children under 16 free.
There will also be a special lecture about the HMS Conway on Saturday 2 June at the Thomas Telford Centre, Alfie Windsor, a former HMS Conway cadet and knowledgeable historian of the ship, will give a talk about the history of the ship.
A memorial window for the HMS Conway, created by Jayne Ford, was unveiled at the end of Bangor pier in a ceremony last year.
