EDINBURGH TODAY

Merchant Navy

Memorial

The Shore, Tower Place, Leith

Unveiled by HRH The Princes Royal, November 16, 2010                       Sculptor, Jill Watson

The Memorial

The Merchant Navy Memorial Trust (Scotland) was founded in 2009.   It   raised funds to create a monument which was, recently unveiled by the trust's Patron, The Princes Royal.

The memorial is at Tower Place, Leith, on the site of the old Leith Inner Harbour, in front of the former Seamen's Home, built 1883, now  Malmaison Hotel.

The memorial was created:

 "to 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."  *

The memorial was created by Jill Watson. 

"Jill was born in Edinburgh in 1957. She spent five years at the Edinburgh College of Art, then proceeded to Italy to learn to carve marble and work in bronze beside the artisans in the workshops and studios of Pietrasanta near Carrara..

The two quotations above are taken from the Merchant Navy Memorial Trust web site

The memorial follows the nautical tradition of being in the form of a column.  It is in bronze, mounted on a sandstone column.   It was cast at Powderhall Bronze Foundry, Graham Street, Bonnington, Edinburgh.

Photos

Please click on the thumbnail image below to see a few photos of the monument, taken soon after it was unveiled, on November 16, 2010, by The Princes Royal, Princes Anne, Patron of The Merchant Navy Memorial Trust (Scotland).

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