Guide
The Refah Martyrs' Monument stands in Atatürk Park, which runs along the shore west of Mersin harbour in the centre of the city, on the seaward side directly opposite the Mersin Atatürk House and the Cyprus Peace Monument.
During the Second World War the ship Refah set out from Mersin for Port Said carrying 199 military personnel, who were to bring back a fleet of vessels and aircraft ordered from England. She was torpedoed and sunk off Mersin on 23 June 1941 by an unidentified submarine. A hundred and sixty-seven people were lost: fifteen naval officers, sixteen air force officers, forty-eight naval petty officers, sixty-three ratings and twenty-five of the ship's crew. Only four naval officers, five air force officers, fifteen petty officers, five ratings and three of the crew came through.
Thirty-one years after the disaster, in 1972, a monument was made and set up in Atatürk Park in memory of those who died. The inscription records that the monument was built under the lead of the commander of the naval forces, with the interest, contribution and joint work of the provincial and naval garrison authorities and the municipality of Mersin, of the official, military and private units and institutions of the region and of its people, to commemorate all the country's naval dead, and it carries a message of respect and condolence to the families of the men of the navy and the air force who died aboard the Refah while charged with bringing the means of war home for the defence of the country. It is dated 23 June 1972.
The form of the monument was designed as an exact copy of the monument to the dead of the Ertuğrul, which the commander of the naval forces of the day, Admiral Celal Eyiceoğlu, had seen during a visit to Japan. It was built as a joint monument, keeping alive also the memory of the sailors lost when the frigate Ertuğrul sank in a storm off the Japanese town of Kushimoto on her way back from a mission to Japan in the reign of Abdülhamid II. Commemorations for the dead of both the Refah and the Ertuğrul are held at this same monument today.
The monument was built at Mersin because it was from here that the Refah set out.
