Loss of the Ship

13. CONSTRUCTIVE TOTAL LOSS

At low water, 5.00 am on the following morning (Wednesday, 15th April), a further inspection of the ship's interior was made by Mr., L. D. Holt and party, plus representatives of the Liverpool & Glasgow Salvage Association team from the RANGER with the Salvage Officer Len Le Besque (an old Conway and former Conway Second Officer). They determined that conditions had deteriorated overnight following which a decision was made to call off, for the present, any further attempts at refloating.^{[4 and 5]}

The tugs "Dongarth" and. "Minegarth" therefore left Menai Bridge for Liverpool, at 9 am Wednesday,15th April, arriving Gladstone Dock at 3.30 p.m.^[5]

On Thursday evening April l6th 1953 Mr. Alfred Wilson (M.M.S.A.) Secretary of the Conway Committee, in a press statement declared H.M.S. Conway a total loss.^[5]

Cadet John Ellis, one of the cadets who helped recalls: "For two more days we continued salvaging what we could from the ship. We rotated our tasks from moving things from the ship to the boats, manning the boats, loading the trucks at Menai Pier and discharging the trucks at Plas Newydd."^[17]

Anothe cadet recalls the huge effort that went into recovering every cadet's seachest" We had salvaged the cadets sea chests from the ship and turned everything out on the dock and hosed them down. At that time Skinner became known as 'Winkle' from his saying, "You've gotta get all them winkles out of the corners"

Cadet Rob Cammack recalls the disorienting effect of working in the ship as she lay angled into the water "Although I was not on the ship at the moment of the disaster I traveled north the following day to help with the salvage of personal effects etc. I have to admit that, as we were scrambling about on the orlop deck fishing out sea chests, I just had to sit down on one of them and cry my eyes out. I was not the only one either. A strange thing was that, after being below for some time, coming up on deck one would feel that the whole horizon was tilted over at an angle. It took quite a while for this to wear off.".^[39]

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