This plaque is erected in honor of the men of the Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College, HMS Worcester, who lost their lives in WWII.
The memorial is located in the Undercroft area of the church, and reads as follows:
"[Seal of the the men of the Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College, HMS Worcester]
1939 1945
In Honoured and Affectionate Memory of Our Comrades Who Served at Sea, On Land, and In the Air and That Laid Down Their Lives That Men May Live In Peace And Freedom
[list of names]"
For more on the Thames Nautical Training College, see here: (
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"The Thames Nautical Training College, as it is now called, was, for over a hundred years, situated aboard ships named HMS Worcester.
London shipowners, marine insurance underwriters and merchants subscribed to its founding as an institution which would provide trained officers for a seagoing career. The British Admiralty loaned the 50-gun, 1,500-ton frigate HMS Worcester for the scheme, and in 1862 the Thames Marine Officer Training School was opened. She was to find her eventual home off Greenhithe, in the Thames, in 1871, after temporary berths at Blackwall, Erith and Southend.
Memorial to the college on the shore of Ingress Park, Greenhithe
The college expanded and the Admiralty provided the college with HMS Frederick William (originally laid down as Royal Frederick), a line-of-battle ship of 86 guns with screw propulsion. She was renamed Worcester and refitted in the Victoria Docks before being brought to Greenhithe in 1876. About this time the name of the school was changed to the Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College, HMS Worcester (ITNTC).
In 1938, the clipper Cutty Sark was acquired by the college and berthed alongside Worcester and during the Second World War some seamanship classes were held in the ship. In 1954 the Cutty Sark left Greenhithe to be docked permanently at Greenwich, where she is docked to this day.
With the onset of war in 1939, Worcester cadets moved to Foots Cray Place near Sidcup, and the ship was handed back to the Admiralty. The third Worcester (formerly HMS Exmouth) arrived at Greenhithe in January 1946. She had previously been used as an accommodation ship at Scapa Flow. The ship, built in 1905, was the Royal Navy's first specially commissioned training ship.
In 1968 the ITNTC became part of the Merchant Navy College at Greenhithe. The ship Worcester became redundant and was sold to be broken up in Belgium in 1978."