The Merchant Navy Memorial, Second World War section

The Merchant Navy Memorial, Second World War section is a Second World War memorial built between 1952 and 1955 to the designs of Edward Maufe for the Imperial War Graves Commission. It complements the earlier First World War memorial by Lutyens, unveiled in 1928 and already listed. The sculptor was Charles Wheeler.

The memorial consists of Portland stone walls, eight feet high, set within a sunken garden. The inner faces of the walls are fitted with bronze panels bearing the names of those who died and have no grave but the sea. At intervals, the walls are adorned with seven stone sculptures depicting allegorical figures representing the seven seas. The sunken garden is largely lawned, with a central “pool” of bronze, engraved as a mariner’s compass and oriented to magnetic north. Stone paving and oak seats surround the pool and feature within the landscape. Steps lead to the adjacent First World War memorial, flanked by pylons featuring large carved figures of a merchant service officer and seaman. A stone of remembrance sits on a stepped plinth between these figures and the 1914-18 memorial. A dedicatory inscription honors “The Twenty-four Thousand of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets whose names are honoured on the Walls of this Garden, gave their lives for their Country and have no grave but the sea.”

The memorial commemorates 23,765 merchant seafarers, men and women, who served on ships registered in British Commonwealth ports or chartered to those governments and lost their lives due to enemy action, with no known grave. This includes 80 pilots, lighthousemen, and 832 fishermen. The scale of the memorial contrasts with that of the First World War monument, reflecting the vital role of the Merchant Navy during 1939-45. Maufe was commissioned to design a memorial that would relate to the earlier one and to the surrounding setting of Trinity House, which has been successfully achieved. The memorial was unveiled by Her Majesty the Queen on November 5, 1955.