The Second World War section of The Merchant Navy Memorial
Merchant Navy Day each year commemorates the start of the Second World War on 3 September 1939 and eight hours and 25 minutes later, the first loss of British, Canadian and American lives.
This, amongst the passengers and crew, civilians all, of the liner SS Athenia, torpedoed and sunk off Ireland. The Battle of the Atlantic thus began, the longest continuous campaign of the War.
During its five years, eight months and four days until VE-Day, the Merchant Navy kept Britain fed, fuelled and fighting while involved too in operations such as Dunkirk, the Arctic convoys, D-Day and in the Far East. Its wartime dead whose grave is the sea are honoured on The Merchant Navy Memorial which bears more names, 36,068, than any other war memorial in the UK.
The service begins at 12.15pm. Addresses from HM The King and Prime Minister will be read together with an account of Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the battleship HMS Prince of Wales meeting an Atlantic convoy in 1941.
All are welcome.