Introduction
Fig. 1: Marochetti, Loch
(Fig. 1) The c.1853 white marble mural monument to failed Liberal MP candidate and “one of the most fortunate officers in the British navy” (Leicestershire Mercury), Captain Granville Gower Loch RN (28 February 1813 – 4 February 1853) by cosmopolitan Royal favourite sculptor Carlo Marochetti (14 January 1805 – 28 December 1867) can be found in the east recess of the furthest east bay of the South Aisle.
There it was located, at least from 1904, to the left of William Calder Marshall’s Old Testament allegory, Righteousness and Peace have Kissed Each Other, originally located in the Wellington Chapel; and, from 1855, to the far left of Matthew Noble’s memorial to Captain Edmund Moubray Lyons (Figs 2, 3, and 4).
Figs 2 and 3: Calder Marshall, Righteousness and Peace.
Fig. 4: Noble, Lyons.
1860, meanwhile, saw the relocation to the centre of the bay of Thomas Banks’s memorial to naval officer George Blagdon Westcott (c.1802 – 1804) (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5: Banks, Westcott.
The Loch shares its white marble relief form with both Righteousness and Peace and the Lyons, as well as with the allegorical panels on the front of the drum of the Westcott. Loch climbs up and to the right of the panel, where he is met in some ways by Peace who leans in, to the left, to kiss Righteousness; their juxtaposition suggesting the supposedly righteous peace following successful British imperial struggles (Figs 6, 7, and 8).
Figs 6, 7, and 8: Marochetti, Loch; Calder Marshall, Righteousness and Peace.
Marochetti’s panel is structured by a central pyramid, whose apex is Loch, the same organizational device employed by Noble for the Lyons panel opposite, which might have been inspired by it (Figs 9 and 10).
Figs 9 and 10: Marochetti, Loch; Noble, Lyons.
There is also a pleasing, if retrospective, formal relationship between the Loch and the reliefs on the drum of Banks’s Westcott. The left background of both the Loch and the central relief on the Westcott are flanked by palm trees. Both panels also feature figures scrambling up from the bottom left-hand and right-hand corners. Banks’s crocodile, meanwhile, quotes his earlier, faux-Hindu Kamadeva statuette, the allusion to key South Asian iconography providing a further tie to the Burmese location of the Loch (Figs 11, 12, 13, and 14).
Fig. 11: Marochetti, Loch.
Fig. 12: Banks, Westcott.
Figs 13 and 14: Banks, Westcott; The Hindu Deity Camadeva with His Mistress on a Crocodile, painted plaster, c.1792 (Sir John Soane’s Museum, via ArtUK, CC BY-NC 4.0).
Palm trees also flank the right and left frames of Banks’s side panels, the right panel also featuring a pyramid, again formally echoing the pyramidal structure of Gower’s Loch (Figs 15, 16, and 17).
Figs 15, 16, and 17: Marochetti, Loch; Banks, Westcott.
The Life and Work of Granville Gower Loch
Early Life and Career
Fig. 18: Joseph Brown, after George Richmond, Granville Gower Loch, stipple engraving, after 1853, NPG D37392 (© National Portrait Gallery, London; CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
(Fig. 18) Scottish naval officer Granville Gower Loch was born on 28 February 1813. In February 1826, aged just thirteen, he entered the naval service passing his examination six years later in 1832, the year of the Great Reform Act, being promoted to lieutenant in October 1833.
After serving on the home station, at the Nore, and in the Mediterranean, Loch was promoted to commander in February 1837, shortly before Queen Victoria ascended to the throne. From 1838 to 1840 he commanded the 18–gun Fly on the South American and Pacific stations, and in 1841 the steamer Vesuvius in the Mediterranean.
Opium Wars
Fig. 19: Marochetti, Loch.
Following a promotion to captain in August 1841, Loch volunteered to go to China, during the first Opium War, serving as at an aide–de–camp to General Sir Hugh Gough at the capture of Zhenjiang Fu, the last major battle of the war, blocking Chinese logistics, and bringing about the end of the conflict, but leading to mass suicide in the city. Loch afterwards published an account of The Closing Events of the Campaign in China (1843).
The East India Company’s Opium Wars, in which the British used brute force to ensure their opium exports to mainland China, were controversial, even in the period, and later condemned by Archbishop Frederick Temple, commemorated on the Cathedral floor in a c.1905–1906 monument by F.W. Pomeroy (Figs 20 and 21).
Figs 20 and 21: Marochetti, Loch; Pomeroy, Temple.
West /Indies
From 1846 to 1849, Loch commanded the 26–gun frigate Alarm in the West Indies, in the period immediately following the indentured apprenticeship system for ‘freed’ slaves.
In February 1848, Loch was posted to the coast of Nicaragua, to obtain the release of two British subjects kidnapped in San Juan by the military commandant; the “scene of one of [Horatio] Nelson’s early exploits” as the Huddersfield Chronicle’s obituary of Loch noted (Figs 22 and 23).
Figs 22 and 23: De Rovezzano, Nelson; Flaxman, Nelson.
With the local government apparently in the hands of the army, Loch proceeded up the river with some 260 men. The enemy, strategically encamped at Serapaqui, defended by the terrain and built obstructions. A strong current ensured heavy fire on the British troops before they could land; a combative, tropical river scenario akin to the one depicted on Torrens’s memorial, as we have seen, and a “short but brilliant career”, again according to the Huddersfield Chronicle, “chiefly remarkable for his services in river warfare” (Fig. 24).
Fig 24: Marochetti, Loch.
Ultimately, the Nicaraguan fort was captured and demolished, the guns destroyed, and the ammunition thrown into the river. A treaty followed, favourable to the British, and, on the recommendation of then British Prime Minster, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerstone, Loch received a CB on 30 May 1848, making him a Commander of the Order of the Bath (Fig. 25).
Fig. 25: Marochetti, Loch.
Second Anglo-Burmese War
Fig. 26: Marochetti, Loch.
(Fig. 26) In 1852, Loch commissioned the 50–gun frigate Winchester to relieve the Hastings as flagship in China and the East Indies, at the moment of the Second Anglo–Burmese War (1852 – 1853).
Shortly after arriving at Rangoon, which the British had occupied since April, command on the Irrawaddy River devolved to Loch, who was tasked to keep it clear and to drive the Burmese inland.
In early 1853, a dacoit, or South Asian rebel chief, Nya–Myat–Toon, had successfully blockaded Donabew, stopping river traffic. In response, Loch led a joint naval and military expedition, landed, and pushed on through thick jungle, until the British reached the bank of a steep ravine, suffering heavy losses as they attempted to cross; the scene depicted on his memorial (Fig. 27).
Fig. 27: Marochetti, Loch.
Death and Burial
On 4 February 1853, Loch was shot through the body and died two days later. He was buried at Rangoon, beneath a stone erected by the Winchester’s officers and men.