In the mid-nineteenth century the merchant navy was a vast, unstandardised industry. Ship owners wanted officers who could navigate, do mathematics, write reports, and lead crews - which is to say, men formally educated for the job. In 1857 the Mercantile Marine Service Association established its first floating training school in Liverpool. The Admiralty lent the corvette HMS Conway, moored in the Sloyne off Rock Ferry. The name passed to a second hull in 1861, then to a third in 1875: a 92-gun second-rate line-of-battle ship launched in 1839, two-decked, 205 feet long on the gun deck, displacing 4,375 tons. Built of West African hardwoods, copper-fastened, copper-sheathed for anti-fouling. She had survived the Baltic Blockade during the Crimean War, patrolled the Caribbean, and shown the British flag along the American eastern seaboard fifty years after Yorktown. In 1876 she was renamed Conway and moored on the Mersey to begin her second life as a school.

For nearly a century she trained merchant officers and a remarkable number of remarkable men. Captain Matthew Webb (Conway 1860-62) became the first man to swim the English Channel. John Masefield (1891-94) became Poet Laureate, and decades later returned to unveil the new figurehead representing Nelson when the old ship was refitted between 1936 and 1938. Lionel "Buster" Crabb (1922-24) became a Royal Navy frogman who vanished in mysterious circumstances on a diving mission near a Soviet warship in 1956. Ian Fraser (1936-38) earned the Victoria Cross commanding a midget submarine attack on the Japanese cruiser Takao in Singapore harbour. James Paul Moody (1901-02) became the sixth officer of the Titanic and died with her. Later cadets included Iain Duncan Smith, briefly Conservative leader; Sir Clive Woodward, England's rugby World Cup-winning coach; and the only person ever to hold a master mariner's certificate, a commercial pilot's licence, and a commercial hovercraft pilot's licence.

When German bombers found the Liverpool docks in 1941, Conway had already survived several near misses. The decision was taken in secret: move the ship to Anglesey, out of the bombers' likeliest tracks. She was towed north and moored in the Menai Strait between the former Bishop's Palace at Glyn Garth and the Gazelle Hotel. There had been no official announcement, and Anglesey residents watching the strait one evening were startled to see what amounted to a Nelson-era warship - a "wooden wall" complete with figurehead and gun ports - gliding into local waters. She quickly became a local landmark. In April 1949 she was moved again, through the most dangerous stretch of the strait - the Swellies between the Menai Suspension Bridge and the Britannia Bridge - to a new anchorage off Plas Newydd. Her draft was 22 feet aft; the overhead clearance under the suspension bridge at high water was estimated at three feet. She remained the deepest ship ever to pass through the Swellies.

By 1953 another refit was due. Birkenhead dry dock was the only option, which meant returning through the Swellies. Captain Eric Hewitt had planned the timing carefully with the Caernarfon harbour master, allowing for the brief equilibrium between opposing tidal streams that Welsh seafarers call slack water. He had not, however, telephoned for a weather report. At 8:00 a.m. the Conway logbook recorded force 1 from the north; at the same hour, the Liverpool pilot boat off Point Lynas thirteen miles away was logging force 6 from the north-west. North-westerly wind makes the southwest-going ebb start fifteen minutes earlier and run several knots harder. The Liverpool tugs Dongarth and Minegarth cast off at 0822. By 0850 Conway reached the Britannia Bridge; her pilot recommended turning back. Hewitt continued. At 0923 the tide caught her, the tugs lost control, and the ship grounded on the Platters. The Investigating Subcommittee later expressed open surprise that the master had sailed without a forecast in conditions which any local knew might be dangerous. Salvage failed. The wreck later burned. The remains were broken up.

The school did not die with the ship. Captain Goddard's earlier search for a shore establishment had already settled on Plas Newydd, the stately home of the Marquess of Anglesey. The cadets moved fully onshore, and the school continued at Plas Newydd until 1974, when changing patterns of merchant navy training finally caught up with it and the institution closed for good. The Conway Club for old alumni still meets - around 1,600 "Old Conways" worldwide, with affiliated clubs in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. The accident itself - a careful captain, a careful plan, a sea condition information vacuum that the era's communications had not yet eliminated - became a casebook example in maritime education. Today the Menai Strait runs flat and dark below the bridges. The Platters wait. The wooden walls have long since gone to the breakers' yards, but for the small communities along the Anglesey shore between 1941 and 1953, the most extraordinary thing they ever saw was a Nelson-era warship moored among the Catalina flying boats.