PWSTS Forum for Old Boys, Family and Friends

The Liverpool commemoration service takes place tomorrow at Our Lady & St Nicholas seafarers church, in Chapel Street, at 12pm.

The service will be led by The Reverend Peter McGrath, with bidding prayers by Canon Bob Evans of the Mersey Mission To Seamen.

Liverpool Welsh Choral Society and the Shanty Kings will provide music for the service, which is themed on the Liverpool lifeboat service, founded in Formby 270 years ago.

The Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Merseyside Pamela Brown will be escorted by Brigadier Bill OLeary, with Lord Mayor Sharon Sullivan, Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson and fellow Merseyside mayors.

In a secondary ceremony, the Queens baton will be given to the Liverpool Battalion of the Boys Brigade.

After the service ends at 1pm, the congregation led by the band of the Sea Cadets Training Ship Convway will parade to the Merchant Navy Memorial at the Pier Head for the waterfront ceremony, flying the flags of participating nations.

Jack Brotheridge, 92, of Liverpool Retired Merchant Navy Seafarers, who survived 22 Battle of the Atlantic convoys and was present at every invasion by Allied Forces bar D-Day because he was at Anzio will lay the wreath.

Maria Cunningham, of Dingle, whose father died in the Battle of the Atlantic, said: Merchant Navy Day is such an important event.

It is crucial that people dont forget the sacrifices made for them by previous generations.

Also so many other nations came to our aid. My father Peter Pedersen was Norwegian and he died aged 21 on board the ammunition ship Brand County, which was torpedoed on its way into Liverpool. I never knew him.

Read More