blue plaque · England

Captain Edward Smith RD RNR

Photograph at the Captain Edward Smith RD RNR blue plaque

The Waterloo Hotel. This iconic building was built in the 1830s and became The Waterloo Hotel c.1840. The building is situated opposite the Bridgewater Canal in an area of Runcorn known as Top Locks. Beginning at Waterloo Bridge behind you, two flights of canal locks used to operate, the 'old line' and the 'new line', the former terminating at Bottom Locks near Bridgewater House. The Waterloo Hotel, along with The Navigation Inn on Canal Street, were once favourite haunts of Captain Edward John (Ted) Smith. He captained RMS Titanic which sank on her maiden voyage in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Over 1,500 people lost their lives, including Captain Smith. His mother lived in Runcorn and died in 1893. She was buried in Runcorn Cemetery on Greenway Road. The Waterloo Hotel closed in 2012. Today the building is home to the Wat Phra Singh UK Buddhist Temple and Meditation Centre.

Inscription drawn from imported open data, awaiting original TributeLegacy editorial.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

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