HC Deb 21 July 1856 vol 143 cc1114-5
CAPTAIN ARCHDALL

said, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, it having been announced by the Secretary of State for the Home Department that the Government would take into consideration the question of erecting some permanent memorial to the gallantry and self—devotion of the officers and men who were lost in Her Majesty's ship Birkenhead in February, 1852, the Government will not at the same time consider the propriety of erecting a monument to the memory of Colonel Willoughby Moore and the non-commissioned officers and men of the Enniskillen Dragoons, who lost their lives by the burning of the Europa transport ship on their passage to the seat of war in the spring of 1854? He wished to direct the attention of the noble Lord to the melancholy circumstances attending the loss of the Europa, and the noble and heroic conduct displayed by Colonel Moore and the Enniskillen Dragoons on that occasion, Colonel Moore refusing to leave the ship, though almost forced to do so, until the last man of his regiment had been saved.

VISCOUNT PALMERSTON

said, that Her Majesty's Government were perfectly disposed to commemorate by some permanent memorial that other act to which the hon. and gallant Member had referred, in which a number of British troops had afforded a splendid example of the indomitable courage and the heroic self-possession which had always distinguished our gallant national defenders.