Samantha Rowlands wrote a poem about the Galeka Bell that hangs atop The Bluecoat building. Inspired by the story of the bell, she spent two years researching the history and created this wonderful piece of work:
The Galeka Bell – Samantha Rowlands, 2025
A bell looks down on Chester from atop the Bluecoat School
That people passing never seem to look at, as a rule;
It sailed upon the Galeka, a ship of some renown
Now hanging high to mark the day a U-boat took her down.
Commissioned as a cargo ship with all that it entailed,
Requisitioned as troop transport, to Gallipoli she sailed;
She then became a hospital, with soldiers in her care;
To France in 1916 and she met her ending there.
Five miles off Le Havre, on October 28
The steamship Galeka went down, a U-boat mine her fate.
At Cap Le Hogue she beached and never joined the fleet again;
The RAMC bore the loss of nineteen servicemen.
George Barnes and Daniel Barron, E. George Cairns and Henry Young,
The lads the bell remembers each and every time it’s swung,
William Bevan, Thomas Dutton, Jesse Hodkinson, Frank Lake,
The lads it took the sinking of the Galeka to break.
John McLuskie, Nathan Davies, George Philp and Howard Hughes,
They joined to serve as orderlies, they served their lives to lose;
John Rolfe and John H. Roberts, Joseph Toogood gave their all,
And William Brownrigg Wilson was the youngest lad to fall.
Glenis Alfred Lanham-Gower, Harold Wilkinson and then
Horace Saunders stand together, the most valiant of men;
The bell atop the Bluecoat School remembers to this day
The sinking of the Galeka that took those lives away.
