A Lovelocke Casualty |
One of the entries in the UK Find a Grave database concerns a
Memorial in St Mylor's churchyard in Cornwall, England. It is
known as 'The HMS Ganges Memorial'.
The HMS Ganges referred to had an interesting history, related in some detail by Wikipedia. She was a teak, 84-gun, second-rate ship launched in what was then the Bombay Dockyard in India in 1821. She was formally commissioned into the Royal Navy in Portsmouth sometime in 1823. |
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She was eventually converted into a training ship, receiving her
first trainees in 1865, when moored off Mylor near Falmouth, where
she remained for 33 years. The Find a Grave website states that
over 14,000 boys received training on board during that time, of
whom some 53 died. The Memorial is to those 53 boys, although
their causes of death are not recorded there. Also although the
Memorial records that it was erected by the boys of the ship in
January 1872, names were obviously added over the 33 years as
many are dated later than 1872.
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Amongst the 53 is James M Lovelocke, known to us as James Medlin Lovelock from the Wiltshire-Cornwall Tree. One minor discrepancy we might note is that the Find a Grave Web Site gives the date of death as 27 May 1866, whereas the adjacent photograph confirms that the date is actually the same as the Parish Clerk for Budock, where James is buried, advised us of some years ago which is 27 April 1866. |