THE MARY ROSE

Evening Star, Issue 20428, 8 March 1930, Page 27

THE MARY ROSE

LATE MR CLEMENTS LANGFORD’S GIFT TO PORTSMOUTH

Of British seamen what fitter memorial than a ship? Nelson’s Column is a great thing for London, but it is at Portsmouth, on board the Victory, that we come close to Nelson, states the ‘ Times Weekly.’ Not every British sailor who gave his life for his country can hope for a real ship, and his own ship, as his ineraoral; but an example set at Portsmouth will doubtless find iniitators. In tfio Cathedral Church of St. Thomas the Bishop of Portsmouth dedicated, and Sir Roger Keyes, Com-mander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, put in position, a ship that commemorates “heroes innumerable” of the British Navy. This was the church selected to be the Cathedral church of the new diocese of Portsmouth, hut in times gone by it had a different importance and a special connection with the navy. Between the passing of tiro Test Act in 1673, and fts repeal in 1828,_ every naval officer, on joining his ship, had to produce a certificate that he had made his Communion in this church. Were it not, then, the Cathedral church, it would still he the most honourable place in which a memorial to dead sailors could he set up. The memorial is the gift of a native of Portsmouth,'Mr Clements Langford, of Melbourne. It is a model cf a ship, and the hull of it is carved out of a piece of wood sent by Mr Langford from Australia. Nevertheless, it may claim to be unique among models, be-, cause, though new, it is built from the very specifications from which, the ship which it represents was built. These have been supplied by Mr R. C. Anderson, F.S.A., and the model has been made by Mr Ernest Worsley, of Portsmouth, under the supervision of .WingCommander Harold Wyllie. The model is new, and lias a hull made of wood never worked before, but it shows a. ship that was •built in the Protectorate, and it contains a piece of wood from a ship of the same name which nearly dOO years ago sank with all hands off Southsea Castle going out to fight the French for King Henry VIII. Her name was the Mary Rose. She had had four successors, and each one has done something to make the name famous in the annals of tho King’s navy. The second Mary Rose, 600 tons (that is, 100 tons bigger than the first), was built in. 1556; she fought the Great Armada, and sailed with Howard, and Essex in 1596 on the glorious expedition to Cadiz, and in tho next year with Raleigh and Essex on the far less glorious expedition to the Azores. To the third Mary Rose, a thirdrater of 394 tons, built in 1623, Cadiz was a word of ill-omen; the expedition of 1625 was a notorious failure. She survived it, to be wrecked off Flanders in 1650. And then came the fourth Mary Rose, ‘ the ship which the model in Portsmouth Cathedral shows in little. Tho mode) is hung from the roof hard by the tablet to Admiral Sir John Kempthorne. Keinpthorno, in the first Dutch war, commanded the flagships of Prince Rupert and of General Monk, and fought in three great naval battles; in the second Dutch war he was rear-admiral of the blue at Solo Bay. But it was between the two wars that this famous man found room for his most glorious deed of all. Attacked off Cadiz on 29th December, 1669, by seven (some say by six) Algerian pirates, he fought and defeated them all in his single ship. That ship was the Mary Rose; and it was with a tradition like this behind her that the fifth Mary Rose, T.8.D., built in 1916, was convoying (with the Strongbow) nine Scandanaviau merchant slpps across tho North Sea on the morning of 17th October, 1917, when the convoy was attacked, ,as the Admiralty report says, by “ two very fast and heavily-armed German raiders.” The destroyers at once engaged tho far superior force, with the almost inevitable result. At 7,15 a.m. the Mary Rose went down with colours flying, and with her went down Jier lieutenant commander, Charles L. Fox, and oighty-seven officers and men.