to restore MacDonald's health, but he died on board the liner , which operated between Liverpool and Valparaíso, Chile, via the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, the West Indies and the Panama Canal, on 9 November 1937, aged 71. MacDonald's body was transferred to the Royal Navy at Bermuda for return to Plymouth. All of the Bermuda-based cruisers of the America and West Indies Station were away from Bermuda at that time except for HMS Orion and HMS Apollo. As Apollo was undergoing a refit at the dockyard, it would have fallen to Orion to deliver MacDonald's body, but as she had been temporary flagship since HMS York had departed on 27 October for Trinidad (due to civil unrest there) she could not leave the station and Apollo was consequently hurried through her refit instead. Orion was tasked with the memorial service for MacDonald, whose body was taken aboard the Royal Navy tug Sandboy once the Reina del Pacifico was in Bermudian waters and landed on Front Street in the City of Hamilton along with the Royal Naval Dockyard Chaplain, the Orion's Chaplain, an Honour Guard, sentries and coffin bearers. MacDonald's coffin was borne on a gun carriage to the Church of England's Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, in a procession that included the ship's company of Orion and a detachment of the Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), serving in the Bermuda Garrison and based at Prospect Camp Scotland. At the cathedral, Arthur Browne, the Bishop of Bermuda, conducted the memorial service, which was followed by a lying in state. Thousands visited to pay their respects. MacDonald's body and his daughter departed Bermuda the following day aboard Apollo, arriving at Plymouth on the 25 November. His funeral was in Westminster Abbey on 26 November, followed by a private cremation service at Golder's Green. After cremation, his ashes were taken to Lossiemouth, where a service commenced in his house, "The Hillocks" followed by a procession to Holy Trinity Church, Spynie where they were buried alongside his wife Margaret and their son David in his native Morayshire. Reputation For half a century, MacDonald was demonised by the Labour Party as a turncoat who consorted with the enemy and drove the Labour Party to its nadir. Later, however, scholarly opinion raised his status as an important founder and leader of the Labour Party, and a man who held Britain together during