rms lancastria survivors list rms lancastria survivors list

Having received an emergency order to evacuate British nationals and troops in excess of its capacity of 1,300 passengers, mode. manufacturing in Britain. Other British newspapers then covered the story, including the Daily Herald (also on 26 July), which carried the story on its front page, and Sunday Express on 4 August; the latter included a photograph of the capsized ship with her upturned hull lined with men under the headline "Last Moments of the Greatest Sea Tragedy of All Time". Only about 2,500 people survived in the largest single loss of life. Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 30. However, he was told to embark as many as possible. The French Government recently placed an exclusion zone around the wreck site. Furthermore, some believe the British government have not revealed all documentary evidence of what happened. [41], The Government of the United Kingdom has not made the site a war grave under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, stating that it has no jurisdiction over French territorial waters. Raye Dancocks explains . I think Churchill was right when he said 'we don't broadcast this'. She was two and a half when the ship was attacked. When this news came to me in the quiet Cabinet Room during the afternoon, continued Churchill, I forbade its publication, saying The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least.. [59], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}471026N 21915W / 47.17389N 2.32083W / 47.17389; -2.32083 (Location of the sinking of the troopship RMS Lancastria), "Lancastria" redirects here. Returning to Glasgow, the captain requested that surplus oil in her tanks be removed, but there was insufficient time before she was ordered to Liverpool for a refit. "[30] Rudolph Sharp survived the sinking and went on to command the RMSLaconia, losing his life on 12 September 1942 in the Laconia incident off West Africa. [39][a] In the face of continued campaigning by relatives, the MoD stated in 2015 that all known documents had long since been released through the National Archives. Many years later, I was asked by my father, Oliver Gleasure (Irish Guards) to find the book, so he could gift it to my uncle. Osborne said of the sinking: "It was kept secret at the time for reasons of wartime secrecy, but I think it is appropriate today in this House of Commons to remember all those who died, those who survived, and those who mourn them. She was the sister ship of RMS Cameronia that Beardmore's had built for the same customer the previous year. RMS was a sign of distinction and quality. While there were 2,477 survivors, it is . Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Some of those left behind were women of the ATS, The story of the brave men rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk in May and June 1940 is well known, but less often told is the story of the nurses on the hospital ships that brought thousands of wounded servicemen back to the safety of England. This shrouded details of the disaster in secrecy as Churchill wanted to cover up the grisly details of the loss of life from an already severely demoralized British public. An estimated 400 Scots were amongst the 4,000 killed with the Lancastria was attacked and sunk. [17] Troops were ferried out to Lancastria and the other larger ships by destroyers, tugs, fishing boats and other small craft,[18] a round trip of three or four hours, sometimes being machine-gunned by German aircraft, although apparently without casualties. [5] Tyrrhenia was 16,243gross register tons(GRT), 578 feet (176m) long and could carry 2,200 passengers in three classes. Nevertheless, within hours of disembarking troops at Liverpool on June 14th, Lancastria was reassigned, along with the 20,341 gross tons liner Franconia, to Operation Aerial, the evacuation of British civilians, embassy staff, and support troops from France. Many lifeboats could not be launched as they had been damaged, and there were only 2,500 life jackets on board. It was not an official government order, but the British media followed Churchills lead. Their names may be lost to history, but they are not forgotten. Quite an official statement to ponder. The immense loss of life was such that the British government banned any public announcements of the disaster through the D-Notice system, but the story was broken by the New York Times and The Scotsman newspapers on 26 July. [29] Capt WG Euston recommended several of his crew for awards, including Stanley Kingett for "making repeated journeys in a lifeboat to pick up exhausted men from the water while under machine-gun fire from enemy planes", and William Perrin for "keeping up continuous machine-gun fire in an attempt to prevent enemy planes machine-gunning men in the water. The Lancastria was the largest loss of life from a single engagement for British forces in World War Two and is also the largest loss of life in British maritime history - greater than the Titanic and Lusitania combined. [56][57] The site of Lancastria 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. At midday Captain Sharp was advised to sail immediately but due to navalreports of a U-boat in the area he decided to await fora destroyer escort,a decision whichwas to seal the fate of manyevacuees. [19] By the mid-afternoon of 17 June she had embarked an unknown number (estimates range from 4,000 up to 9,000)[4] line-of-communication troops (including Pioneer and Royal Army Service Corps soldiers) and Royal Air Force personnel, together with about forty civilian refugees, including embassy staff and employees of Fairey Aviation of Belgium with their families. She was bombed at 15:48 by Junkers 88 aircraft from II. The evacuees were in several western French ports including Lorient and St. Nazaire on the Loire River. Three direct hits caused the ship to list first to starboard then to port and she rolled over and sank within twenty minutes. The 20,000-ton liner Lancastria, with five thousand men aboard, was bombed just as she was about to leave. [49] The day of the 75th anniversary of the loss of Lancastria was marked in the Westminster Parliament on 17 June 2015 at Prime Minister's Questions by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who was standing in for the Prime Minister. This web publication contains 154,528 pages of Some survivors claimed that a bomb had gone straight down a funnel, others thought bombs hit No, 4, 2, and 3 holds. Seventy five years on, and despite a special Scottish government medal for Lancastria survivors and their families, relatives want the sinking to be properly remembered. [2] Modern estimates suggest that between 4,000 and 7,000 people died during the sinking the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history. Or, you can request a quotation for a copy to be sent to you. Late that afternoon, she was packed with servicemen, air force personnel, embassy staff, and their families and some civilians with their families. She sailed scheduled routes from Liverpool to New York until 1932, and was then used as a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. The RMS Lancastria was hit by three or four bombs dropped from a Junkers JU 88 bomber; 15 to 20 minutes later, she lay a the bottom of the sea. It was bombed by German armed forces and he was left shipwrecked after surviving TV star Amanda Holden. It is the worst single loss of life in British maritime history and the bloodiest single engagement for UK Wynn does not clarify what materials he utilized from these sources and there are no footnotes, in-text citations, or endnotes. It was a few weeks after the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk, and Walter and Charlie were still in occupied Europe with an estimated 150,000 other British servicemen. The death toll accounted for roughly a third of the total losses of the British Expeditionary Force in France. This record has not been digitised and cannot be downloaded. Estimates of the loss range between 3,000 and 5,800 fatalities. 1,816 burials are recorded, over 400 of them in France. Remembrance. She was ordered to sail from Nassau to New York for refitting as she had been requisitioned as a troopship, becoming HMT Lancastria. Walter was attacked by a man who wanted his life jacket. RMS Lancastria, Death Toll: 4,000-6,500. Grace's Guide web site design is Copyright 2021 by Grace's Guide Ltd. Much of this proved heart-breaking as one family were told weeks laterthat their son, previously reported as a survivor, had instead been listed as one of the missing. Survivor Reg Brown speaks to BBC Coventry & Warwickshire, AI chatbots 'may soon be more intelligent than us', Russia troop deaths hit 20,000 in five months - US, Palestinian hunger striker dies in Israel prison, The 17 most eye-catching looks at the Met Gala, The burden of being cricket legend Tendulkar's son, 'My wife and six children joined Kenya starvation cult', On board the worlds last surviving turntable ferry. When Nazi planes dropped their bombs, Walter and Charlie were separated in the chaos. In the words of Mark, his grandfather's fight ended when the "mad man sank beneath the waves". [4] All the photographs of the sinking were taken by Frank Clements, a volunteer storeman aboard HMS Highlander, who was exempt from the regulations prohibiting the use of cameras by service personnel. British and Allied evacuation vessels took Lancastrias survivors aboard, the trawler HMT Cambridgeshire alone rescuing nearly 900 souls. We place some essential cookies on your device to make this website work. The Lancastria was tasked to bring them home. Estimates of total survivors were hard to quantify though. Lancastria 17th June 1940 & Operation Aerial", "NMC Lay a wreath at the Memorial for The Lancastria", "The 75th anniversary of the sinking of HMT Lancastria", "Lancastria: Service for Britain's worst maritime disaster", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RMS_Lancastria&oldid=1152389814, Sunk by German Bombers on 17 June 1940 off, This page was last edited on 29 April 2023, at 23:38. The sinking of the RMS Lancastria, as seen from a rescue ship. It was too much for the people to take. A third boat had its bottom stoved in by landing too fast. The government feared what the news would do the British nation in the midst of its darkest hour. Stephen Wynn, a retired police constable with 30 years service in Essex, began writing prior to his retirement. "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. people who designed and built them. She made her maiden voyage, Glasgow-Qubec-Montreal on 19 June 1922. The Lancastria, a pre-war Cunard cruise liner, was requisitioned by the Admiralty and turned in to a war-time troop ship. Read about our approach to external linking. Chapter 5 focuses on the actual sinking of the Lancastria while Chapter 11 focuses on its aftermath. Fewer than 2,500 people survived. We'd like to use additional cookies to remember your settings and understand how you use our services. This year the ceremony was considerably toned down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Those who got away were machine-gunned in the water". Frank Holden Snr was on board the luxury transatlantic cruise liner Lancastria in 1940. Though more people died on the Lancastria than on Titanic and Lusitania combined, the story is little more than a footnote in the history of WWII. Years later, he helped Mark to piece together the stories of the Lancastria. Wynn cites seven online sources (p. 181), namely the British Newspaper Archive, the Britain at War website, the British section of Ancestry.com, the Militarian Forum, the Forces War Records, the Wartime Memories Project, and the War Graves Records, which appear to have been mistakenly recorded as a .com website rather than .org. He was told that he should take as many as he possibly could "without regard to the limits of International Law". The RMS Lancastria was a British Cunard liner sunk on June 17, 1940 during World War II with the loss of an estimated 4,000 plus lives. [42] Early in the 21st century the French Government placed an exclusion zone around the wreck site. The Lancastria Association Victim registers 1,738 deaths. There were multiple air raids and, in addition, the British feared possible U-boat attacks, so Captain Sharp decided to wait for a Royal Navy and/or RAF escort. [22], A fresh air raid began at 15:50 by Junkers Ju 88 bomber aircraft from Kampfgeschwader 30. RMS Lancastria (later HMT Lancastria) was a British Cunard liner commandeered by the UK Government during World War II. She did not return to Liverpool in time to take part in the famous Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk, which evacuated 338,226 Belgian, British, and French troops between May 26 and June 4,. Lancastria was sunk on 17 June 1940 off the French port of St. Nazaire while taking part in Operation Aerial, the evacuation of British nationals and troops from France, two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation. The medal is in recognition of the endurance of survivors and ultimate sacrifice of the victims. Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? Launched on the Clyde, Scotland, in 1920 by William Beardmore and Co as the Tyrrhenia for the Anchor Line, a subsidiary of Cunard, the 16,243 ton, 578 foot long liner could carry 2,200 passengers in three classes. He believes Walter and Charlie found some life jackets on the Lancastria to use as pillows on the way home. The rest were rescued under continued air attack by the devotion of the small craft.. The first boat away was filled with women and children but it capsized on landing in the water and a second had to be lowered for them. Heres how to join! This information will help us make improvements to the website. It was used until 1993, when the name was changed to DSMA-Notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice). When sent to newspapers or other publications it prevented particular information from being made public for reasons of state security. On the morning of May 1st 1915 the Lusitania left New York behind. Retreat to Victory. useful bibliography and discussion. The Lancastria Tragedy: Sinking and Cover-Up, June 1940. She was the sister ship of RMS Cameronia which Beardmore had built for the Anchor Line the previous year. RMS Lancastria was a British ocean liner requisitioned by the UK Government during the Second World War. But despite the crammed conditions for most, earlier onthere was a certain surrealism to the operation as some army officers were quoting it was almost like a cruise with people going to the restaurant, ordering from the menu and enjoying alcoholic beverages in the lounges. (2), One steward reported that the cocktail bar was reserved for Warrant Officers and Sergeants who were all shouting for drinks andcomplaining that it difficult to find enough change.(3). casualties and survivors with related. I think the tag '' should be removed from: Subscribe now for regular news, updates and priority booking for events, All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated, AIR - Records created or inherited by the Air Ministry, the Royal Air Force, and related bodies, Division within AIR - Records of the Royal Air Force, AIR 35 - Air Ministry: British Air Forces in France: Registered Files, About our It reformed in 1981 as The HMT Lancastria Association and continues the tradition of a parade and remembrance service at the Church of St Katharine Cree in the City of London, where there is a memorial stained glass window. So there you are a sad narrative from our maritime history. She was first used to ferry men and supplies between Canada and the United Kingdom. One can understand media censorshiptoensurethat morale wasnt impacted butwhile people in Britain were unaware of the tragedy, French citizens around the coast could not escape it as bodies washedashore all summer, all along ahundred kilometres of coastline.More and more appeared along the sand dependent upon tides and summer storms.But despite German rulings the French localscontinued to give decent Christian burialsalthough,onceagain, identificationrecords weresparse. Her parents Clifford and Vera Tillyer were working in Belgium when they decided to evacuate. Enter the tag you would like to associate with this record and click 'Add tag'. Two other bombs landed in No. Not a member of the Naval Institute? privacy policy, Need more context? The RMS Lancastria was hit by three or four bombs dropped from a Junkers JU 88 bomber; 15 to 20 minutes later, she lay a the bottom of the sea. Catalogue description S.S. "LANCASTRIA" : Lists of R.A.F. Lancastria was attacked, apparently by five Junkers Ju 88 dive bombers, and the ship capsized, and sank within twenty minutes mid-afternoon on June 17 off the French port of St. Nazaire. The article said the soldiers sang popular World War Two songs "Roll Out the Barrel" and "There'll Always be an England" as the ship went down. Whatever the case, this event likely remains the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history, more than the RMS Titanic, which had an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard and suffered over 1,500 fatalities. Accompanying Lancastria was the 20,341-ton liner, Franconia. [51] The front of the medal depicts Lancastria with the text "HMT Lancastria 17th June 1940". This number far exceeded the amount of life jackets and lifeboats onboard, but this lack of safety equipment ultimately did not matter. You can order records in advance to be ready for you when you visit Kew. personnel, Have you found an error with this catalogue description? RMS Lancastria Memorial in Liverpool Furthermore, estimates are that 36% of all BEF troops killed in action between September '39 and June 1940 were lost on the Lancastria. Churchills D-Notice asked all media outlets not to publish any information on the Lancastria sinking. She sailed scheduled routes between Liverpool and New York until 1932, and was then used as a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea and Northern Europe. [20] People were crowded into whatever spaces were available including the large cargo holds. Surely, after all of these years now, it can come out. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Winston Churchill issued a D-Notice on the day of the sinking of the RMS Lancastria. View the catalogue description for. Having received an emergency order to evacuate British nationals and troops from France the ship was loaded well in excess of its capacity of 1,300 passengers. Harrois went on to say that when history looks at the retreat in 1940, the evacuation of Dunkirk is the undertaking that most remember. There were 2,477 survivors, of whom about 100 were still alive in 2011. information and 239,789 images on early companies, their products and the And it is this sparsity of records, together withChurchills newsblackout whichhas taken years for the facts to materialise, even though pressure from a post-war survivors association the HMT Lancastria Association has continued to ask questions such as: which survivors saw who on board? "I think my grandfather was haunted by that," added Mark. The following brief overview of the Lancastrias history is augmented with verified information from sources that Wynn might have consulted. There were no Royal Navy vessels available to protect her against submarine attack, so Captain Sharp decided to wait until the Oronsay could leave, along with the Royal Navy escort. 2 held about 800 RAF personnel. In fact the casualty figures, especiallyin perspective, are moreshocking and although 59 merchant seamen were lost on theLancastria(4), 126 merchant sailors perishedduring the whole of the previous fortnights Dunkirk evacuation. [24] The ship was equipped with sixteen lifeboats and 2,500 life jackets;[19] but many of the boats could not be launched because they had been damaged in the bombing or because of the angle of the hull. The U.S. The British Government has requisitioned the RMS Lancastria to assist with evacuation of troops from the European mainland. In 1924 she was refitted for two classes and renamed Lancastria after passengers complained that they could not properly pronounce Tyrrhenia; (viz: RP /tjurini/ as per the crew's nickname of the ship: the "Old Soup Tureen". Over 1,400 tons of fuel oil leaked into the sea and was set partially ablaze, possibly by strafing.