Atkinson_A

The Memorial overlooks the town of Chatham and is approached by a steep path from the Town Hall Gardens. After the 1914-1918 War, an appropriate way had to be found of commemorating those members of the Royal Navy who had no known grave, the majority of deaths having occurred at sea where no permanent memorial could be provided. An Admiralty Committee recommended that the three manning ports in Great Britain - Chatham, Plymouth and Portsmouth - should each have an identical memorial of unmistakable naval form; an obelisk which would serve as a leading mark for shipping. The memorials consist of a stone tower supported by four corner buttresses, each with a lion couchant. Towards the top, the tower branches out in the form of four ships' prows. Above them are representations of the four winds, which in turn support a larger copper sphere symbolising the globe. The names of over 8,000 sailors commemorated on the memorial at Chatham are cast on bronze panels placed on the buttresses, and the sides of the tower bear the names of the principal naval engagements fought in the war and an inscription that reads:

IN HONOUR OF THE NAVY AND TO THE ABIDING MEMORY OF THOSE RANKS AND RATINGS OF THIS PORT WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES IN THE DEFENCE OF THE EMPIRE AND HAVE NO OTHER GRAVE THAN THE SEA After the Second World War it was decided that the naval memorials should be extended to provide space for commemorating the naval dead without graves of that war. For Chatham, a semi-circular wall facing the original memorial was built, and fifty bronze panels are ranged along it which bear the names of over 10,000 sailors. The wall has wrought-iron gates at its central point inscribed with the following words from Chapter 44 of the Book of Ecclesiasticus: ALL THESE WERE HONOURED IN THEIR GENERATIONS AND WERE THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES.