On June 17, 1940, the HMT Lancastria was sunk by German bombers near the French port of Saint-Nazaire. An estimated 4,000 people died in the sinking. Fewer than 2,500 survived. It was the worst maritime disaster in British history, worse than the Titanic and the Lusitania combined. While often described as forgotten history, that is not accurate. Rather than being forgotten, the tragic sinking was largely covered up for almost 70 years.
Several weeks after the evacuation at Dunkirk, there were still more than 100,000 troops and civilians in need of evacuation from France. The Cunard passenger liner Lancastria had been requisitioned by the British government. Although the ship configured as a troopship had a capacity of 2,180 including 330 crew, the captain was ordered to take as many people aboard as possible. Estimates of passengers embarked range from 5,000 to 7,200.
The Lancastria was struck by three or four bombs dropped by German Junkers Ju 88 bomber aircraft and capsized within twenty minutes. The ship sank around 5 nautical miles south of Chémoulin Point in the Charpentier roads, around 9 nautical miles from St. Nazaire. Only 2,477 of the passengers and crew survived.
The loss of the Lancastria was a shock to the British government which immediately sought to cover it up. Churchill said, “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today, at least.” In his memoirs, Churchill stated that he had intended to release the news a few days later, but that events in France “crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot to lift the ban.”
British newspapers were not allowed to write about the disaster. Survivors were instructed not to speak a word about the Lancastria even to friends and family. The news broke in America about a week later in the New York Times. Several British papers subsequently also reported on the disaster but the news was slow to spread.
“The trouble with the story of the Lancastria is it doesn’t fit with the grand narrative of that period – the miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain,” reflects Mark Hirst, the grandson of one of the survivors. “No amount of spin can turn the story of the Lancastria into something triumphant.”
A memorial to the Lancastria was unveiled on the sea-front at St Nazaire in June 1988, “in proud memory of more than 4,000 who died and in commemoration of the people of Saint Nazaire and surrounding districts who saved many lives, tended wounded and gave a Christian burial to victims.”
The site of Lancastria‘s wreck lies in French territorial waters and is therefore ineligible for protection under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986; however, at the request of the British Government, in 2006 the French authorities gave the site legal protection as a war grave.
In October 2011, the Lancastria Association of Scotland erected a memorial to the victims on the site where the ship was built, the former Dalmuir shipyard at Clydebank.
My father wrote what many consider the definitive account of the disaster during the course of which he interviewed many of the survivors. The book was well received but I know the process affected him greatly. Sadly the incident is often not remembered with the same reverence as victories, (or miracles such as Dunkirk).
https://www.amazon.com/Lancastria-Geoffrey-Bond/dp/B000OII852
My father Maurice Patrick Roche was a survivor he dived from an open boat deck some 60 feet up, it was the last time he dived although he swam for the Kent Police he never dived they tried to make him pulling a towel out from under his feet when there was a TV programme with Edgar Lustgarden called 25 years ago today dad sat shivering when a photo of the sinking ship appeared on screen as he at the same moment crushed the glass he was holding and said with glass fragments on the floor, I have to explain. He said that was the last time he dived and that just looking at water he would see it coming up to meet him. He said there were 9000 aboard, I have read that the count was stopped at 6000. Dad was brought back to England in a destroyer the figure evacuated from France was 558.000 around 200.000 from St Nazaire, Brest, St Malo and other of the smaller ports around Brittany, Dad was take to Didcot and some time after was loading penny parcels in Liverpool he was stowing antiaircraft gun barrels into the torpedo tubes of submarines for Malta.
There were two songs being sung by men on the hull of the upturned ship the Andrews Sisters had released Roll out the Barrel – and the other was also released in 1939 There will always be an England `John West (compiler) wrote a book published in 1988 by Millgate Publishing of the actual memories of 30 men who were rescued he published it with their texts just as he collected them it makes chilling reading. Dad was with the expeditionary force a second time when he was sent to North Africa, he was at Monte Casino and in Rome.
I was a member of the Lancastria society in its last days when I met Stan Forrest a survivor who said to me that “we were near Le Harve tearing down a beach hut we were going to come home like Robinson Crusoe on a raft then we heard there were ships but the put us on trains for St Nazaire they were trying to set up a new defence line you know and when the ship was struck by four bombs at 4.30 in the afternoon of the 17 June I was manning a bren gun shooting at the planes that dropped them.”
By way of a note: Chief officer Harry Grattige had served his apprenticeship in sailing ships (S V Osborne) and went on to be a master of Queens he was one of my Cape Horners and sadly the Captain of `HMT Lancastria ‘Captain Sharp was also the master of the second worst loss of life in a British ship `Laconia’ in 1942 he did not survive that sinking.
My Father was one of the fortunate survivors from the HMT Lancastria.
Believe he was picked up by a Destroyer & taken to Wales. One of the last to board the ship, he was blown off the bow into the sea. The sea was set afire by planes straffing the personnel. It took 3 months to get the tarry oil out of his hair. It was not a subject he spoke much about, as with most Service Personnel.
He had joined up Sept. 5th 1939 & was a proud Patriotic Englishman, going back in 1944 – 1945. Transferring to UNRA & UNESCO.
Thank God we had people with that fortitude in those days.
Father :- William G. Barnard. SSM, R.A.S.C.