Her normal complement in troopship configuration was 2,180 including 330 crew; however, Captain Sharp had brought 2,653 men back from Norway, so he replied that he could take 3,000 "at a pinch". casualties and survivors with related. The Story of RMS Lancastria (Historic Document) | RallyPoint Captain Sharp estimated 5,500, but one Royal Engineer officer was told that there were more than 7,200 persons aboard. "I think that is probably the reason he never went to any of the company reunions. All Digitized Passenger Lists For the RMS Laconia Available at the GG Archives. The British press did then cover the story, including front pages of the Daily Herald (also on 26 July) and Sunday Express on 4 August; the latter included a photograph of the capsized ship with its upturned hull lined with men under the headline "Last Moments of the Greatest Sea Tragedy of All Time". Remembrance. 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 initial cover up at the time of the war is perhaps understandable, because it could be used as propaganda by the Germans. Walter ended up in the water and saw a dog swimming away from the wreckage. This web publication contains 147,919 pages of [20] People were crowded into whatever spaces were available including the large cargo holds. 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. Walter managed to hold on before the animal disappeared. 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. 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. [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. text of this web site is available under the Creative [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. Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and Churchill even admitted he forgot to lift the D-Notice because events crowded upon us so black and so quickly. That D-Notice is not set to expire for another twenty years. As many as 7,000 lost their lives, making it Britain's worst sea . The speed at which the vessel sank meant that there was little time for other ships to react. The RMS Lancastria was a British Cunard liner sunk by enemy action on 17 June 1940 with the loss of an estimated 4,000 plus lives. When they reached the water, Jacqueline was kept alive on a floating plank of wood. [54] Scouting Ireland's national campsite Larch Hill has an anchor memorial to Lancastria, commemorating the legacy of the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland's pilgrimage in 1932. [2] Many families of the dead knew only that they died with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF); the death toll accounted for roughly a third of the total losses of the BEF in France. 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. 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.
rms lancastria survivors list
