Scottish Merchant Navy

• Second World War - civilians
  Total names on memorial: 0
  Served and returned: 0
  Died: 0
  Exact count: yes
  Information shown: Undefined
  Order of information: Undefined

• Obelisk
  Measurements: Undefined
  Materials: Stone - Sandstone
• Detail
  Measurements: Undefined
  Materials: Bronze

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• 

Memorial: £100,000

• warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=5965&mforum=warmemscot
• Edinburgh Evening News edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/Whalers-and-sailors-clash-over.6639351.jp Whalers and sailors clash over memorial 25 November 2010 By MARK McLAUGHLIN IT is not the sort of thing you would expect to make waves. But a storm is brewing over the unveiling of Edinburgh's new Merchant Navy memorial amid claims the city's whalers have been snubbed. The Salvesen Ex-Whalers Club has demanded an apology from the Merchant Navy Memorial Trust after its members were not invited to join the 170 seamen who met The Princess Royal at the official unveiling at the Shore last week. Chairman George Cummings said the perceived snub was galling as the memorial itself includes a depiction of a whaling ship. The club was instead forced to have its own reception in the nearby King's Wark pub, before going to pay respects after the Princess Royal had departed. Mr Cummings said: "Many of the crew members who served on whaling vessels during both world wars lost their lives in the service of our country. These men were part of the merchant service and, like all merchant seamen, were members of the National Union of Seamen. "The men who served on whaling vessels endured some of the most extreme conditions in both the Arctic and Antarctic seas. A great number of these individuals were professional seafarers and feel that they were not invited to attend this ceremony was disgraceful. "This very fine memorial column actually depicts a whaling ship, so why were these seafarers excluded from this occasion? "An apology from the persons who organised this ceremony would not go amiss as they clearly did not assess all the aspects that make up the Merchant Navy." At its height, Salvesen Whalers had 45 whale hunting ships and two factory ships. Based in the British South Atlantic territory of South Georgia, Salvesen ceased whaling in 1964 and sold its lucrative International Whaling Committee licences to the Japanese. Merchant Navy Memorial Trust chairman William Thomson said the primary focus of the unveiling was to honour the donors who had contributed towards its £100,000 price tag, and they could find no record of a donation from The Salvesen Ex-Whalers Club. He added: "Naturally we are sorry if individuals are disappointed at not being formally asked to the event but space did dictate a restriction on the numbers. "In no way does this detract from the role played by and sacrifices made by merchant seamen from every sector."
• The Unveiling Ceremony on You Tube- www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3hBQuuM3Dg
• And from Greener Leith www.greenerleith.org/greener-leith-news/2010/11/16/merchant-navy-memorial-unveiled.html A new memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of Scottish merchant sailors through the ages has been unveiled on the Shore by Princess Anne. It somehow manages to be a poignant, dignified reminder of the role Scottish seaman have played in war efforts through the years, as well as a thought provoking piece of public art. The memorial was produced in Leith, at the Powderhall Bronze on Graham Street, and designed by Jill Watson, an artist with plenty of Edinburgh connections. The Memorial was made possible thanks to a fundraising drive by the Merchant Navy Memorial Trust Scotland launched earlier this year. Having sourced £125,000 through private donations, the MNMTS appealed in April for public contributions to allow them to reach the target sum of £180,000 to fund the Memorial. They were inundated with donations from all over the world. When the Trust's website and public appeal were launched Princess Anne said: "I am delighted to support the purposes of the Trust. The Memorial will commemorate the loss of all Scottish Merchant Navy and other Scottish seafaring and mercantile personnel who gave their lives in World Wars I and II, other theatres of conflict and in peacetime service along the trading routes of the world. They gave the ultimate sacrifice in support of their Country." The Memorial takes the form of a 5.5m sandstone column featuring seafaring scenes in bronze relief. The Shore was chosen as the location for this new Memorial because Leith was Scotland's premier port for more than 300 years, and served as Edinburgh's trading port for more than 700 years. In addition, the Memorial recognises the 132 years of service dedicated to the Merchant Navy by Leith Nautical College (1855-1987) and its training ship, "Dolphin" (1944-1979). The photos in the slideshow above certainly don't do the memorial justice. It's worth making a special trip to go and take it in all the details. The memorial joins other new public works of art in Leith, like the Gormelys in the Water of Leith itself and the temporary art that's been put into the windows of empty shops in Leith Walk.
• From 'The Herald' a couple of months ago. www.heraldscotland.com/life-style/real-lives/a-fight-to-remember-1.1055692 A fight to remember Keith Bruce 17 Sep 2010 On the shore at Leith, in front of what is now the Malmaison hotel, site work is beginning for a new memorial to mark the sacrifice of a neglected number of the war dead, and also to educate people now about the shipping heritage of Scotland. In a month when the effects of the Blitz in the Second World War and the heroism of the airmen in the Battle of Britain have been remembered, this project casts light on another area of the conflict altogether. The Merchant Navy Memorial Trust was set up just last year, but, with remarkable speed, its mission “to commemorate the sacrifice of Scottish Merchant Navy personnel in the two world wars, other previous and subsequent theatres of conflict, and in peacetime service along the trading routes of the world” will be completed in November, when the memorial in Leith is unveiled by the trust’s Patron, the Princess Royal. A public appeal to fund the project was launched only in April of this year, but the flood of donations from around the world has ensured that the memorial is fully funded before the unveiling. Long before that launch, the trust had set up an open competition for sculptors to submit proposals for the monument, whittled a long list of 17 entries down to a shortlist of four, and made a final selection of Jill Watson’s work. In an era when arts projects, up to and including the reinvention of a national funding body, can be bogged down in development for aeons, it is a remarkable achievement. Just as importantly, Watson’s work looks set to be an important landmark on a well-chosen location, and one that will reward attentive, and repeated, visits. Although she may not be known by name, arts lovers will have seen her small figures that decorate The Hub, the home of the Edinburgh International Festival. That project introduced her to her husband, the architect Ben Tindall, who was responsible for the redesign of the Highland Tolbooth Church. At 5.5 metres, the Merchant Marine memorial is the largest piece of work Watson has made, but her signature will still be recognisable in all its details. The monument, which is faced in light-coloured, grained Beryl sandstone, has four distinct tiers and four sides and each of the panels bears a bronze relief – being manufactured locally at Powderhall foundry – designed by the sculptor to tell at least some of the story of Scotland’s relationship with the sea. Those distinctive figures are, therefore, present, on a shelf at somewhere a little over a metre off the ground: a child’s eye level. There it will be possible to see navigators with charts, a ship’s cook, stokers, engineers, and seamen hauling lines. Below them a life ring, floating, tiny on a vast sea, was the universally suggested symbol for the loss of life that the work commemorates. Watson has clearly been captivated by the research she undertook for the project, and interviewed retired merchant captains and shipping line marine superintendents as she formulated her ideas. “The more you know, the more you are sucked in – but eventually the sculpture has to be made,” she says. Professor Gordon Milne has been the moving force behind the trust since it began, having realised that there was no such memorial in Scotland. It is, indeed, a surprising omission. Many more British seamen were lost in the Second World War than the First – unlike soldiers – and a huge number of them were not servicemen at all. IT is also true that a disproportionate number of Scots worked at sea, so a disproportionate number of those lost (some 15%) were from Scotland. And while the Arctic convoys had a memorial, the Atlantic convoys, with much higher losses, had none. Milne feared that younger generations would not know the story of the sacrifice of Scotland’s merchant seamen. Just as surely as the famous few RAF fighter pilots bravely saw off the Luftwaffe, the unarmed merchant fleet brought supplies to the United Kingdom when, in 1942, it was just a few weeks away from facing the reality of starvation, according to Winston Churchill. Just telling that story was not enough in 2010, however, and the trust determined that the sculpture must have elements that referred to seamanship in peacetime as well, when, as in many potentially dangerous professions, lives are lost. So while one level of Watson’s work concentrates on the war years with geographical information, a fleet in convoy formation and the outlines of flying boats, the level above attempts nothing less than a history of shipping. Here, careful to respect the extensive knowledge of everyone in her commissioning body, Watson can happily date each vessel depicted by the style of its bow. From pre-Clipper sailing ships, via transatlantic steamers, the history of the Scottish merchant fleet progresses to the state-of-the-art drill ship Ben Ocean Lancer, built by Scotts of Greenock and launched in 1977. On the top of this informative column will sit a crown of bows and sails, Watson’s translation of the crest of the Merchant Navy Memorial Trust expressed in three dimensions, carefully formed so that light can filter through on to the work below. Professor Milne stresses that it will be a Scottish monument, and as concerned with the sea-faring traditions and wartime losses of Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow – and linked to Scotland’s Fisheries Museum in Anstruther. Nonetheless, he is more than happy with the location the trust settled on for the memorial, owned by and donated by Forth Ports. THE waterfront is the old inner harbour at Leith, a port for 700 years, and the Malmaison was previously the seaman’s mission and a home for generations of sailors. Now it is at the heart of the regenerated Leith, a popular leisure destination with plenty of passing pedestrian traffic. When the unveiling takes place it will be preceded by a service at South Leith Parish Church, a kirk still more famous for its links with the sea than as the baptism-place of one of Rod Stewart’s offspring. Families from all over have, however, made contributions to the cost of the memorial, and Milne, who has made presentations about the plan across the country, has become used to people pressing banknotes into his hand. At which point I should really declare an interest, because the Bruce bawbee is in there too – my grandfather was lost on the Currie Line ship SS Courland in 1941 and my late uncle was the first master of the Ben Ocean Lancer. I am certain that my family will, however, be far from the only one making a pilgrimage to Watson’s memorial when it is finally unveiled. Back to top