Royal Hospital School Memorial Installed at National Maritime Museum

  • 9 years ago
  • Uncategorized
  • 1

Royal Hospital School National Maritime Museum InstallationYear 8 pupils from the Royal Hospital School, Suffolk, have created an poignant installation entitled “Ocean of Tears” to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. The installation consists of 503 hand-made resin teardrops, one for each Royal Hospital School pupil who is thought to have died during the war. The teardrops have inclusions which range from portraits of those lost to ammunition, barbed wire, dazzle camouflage, rust and blood. The installation can be viewed at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Art teacher and coordinator of the project, Mrs Debbie Hitchen, explains the inspiration behind the piece, “The sea must have been a painful reminder to those who lost loved ones at sea during WW1. Swallowed into its depths, were the uncounted bodies of boys and men. Through archive research we have estimated that 503 former Royal Hospital School pupils were lost during the Great War. The known names of 200 have each been inscribed on the surface of teardrops while other teardrops contain small pieces of art; designs of ships in dazzle camouflage, carefully drawn ghostly portraits of sailor boys, sections of hand-crafted barbed wire, fragments of ships rusted and burnt and embroidered barnacles cling to vintage ammunition. Other tears are bloodied and some glow but are hard to spot, representing those sailors who slipped unknown into the sea. Many tears have been hand sanded to feel like sea glass, swept across oceans and washed ashore. The aim this project was to encourage the pupils to think about the horrors of war, what happened, how the men and boys died and how their friends and family felt. The work is currently on display at the National Maritime Museum arranged in a metal frame with a hole running through the tears evocative of a bullet wound or torpedo blast. Each tear has been cast from moulds kindly made by Nick Maguire of Tomps Mouldings who is himself the son of a former Royal Hospital School pupil.”

The Royal Hospital School was originally founded in Greenwich in 1712 and from 1821 to 1933 occupied the Queen’s House and the present National Maritime Musuem buildings. It originally prepared boys for sea service, mainly in the Royal Navy. Today the School is an HMC co-educational boardng and day school for 700 pupils, located in 200 acres of Suffolk countryside.

Compare listings

Compare