The biggest and most unnoticed British naval tragedy. The History of the Steamship Lancastria (7 photos)

Land warfare often requires interaction with sea communications, both for attack and retreat. During the British evacuation from France in 1940, the main events took place around Dunkirk. However, the most significant incident with large losses of British troops and civilians occurred elsewhere. It was connected with the liner "Lancastria".





"Lancastria", formerly "Tirrenia"

After the First World War, the rapid restoration of sea communications began. British shipping companies, which had lost many ships during that period, began building new ones. In 1919, the Cunard Line, the flagship passenger carrier, placed an order for two large liners for its subsidiary Anchor Line at the William Beardmore and Company shipyard.

The two liners were the Tirrenia and the Cameronia. The first was 176 m long, 21 m wide, had a draft of 9.6 m, and its full displacement reached 16,243 tons. The power plant with a capacity of 15,000 hp consisted of six Beardmore twin-gear steam turbines driving two propellers. The maximum speed was 16.5 knots.

The seven-deck liner could accommodate 2,200 passengers of three classes. The construction was carried out quickly. On June 13, 1922, Tirrenia set out on the Glasgow-Quebec-Montreal route. In 1924, Tirrenia underwent a refit, like a number of other passenger ships. The ship was rebuilt to carry the same number of passengers, but only two classes - first and former third. It also received a new name - Lancastria (RMS Lancastria). Passengers complained about the previous name - it was difficult to pronounce.

The liner continued to go to Canada, and then until the end of 1932 served the Liverpool-New York line. Due to the economic crisis, such voyages became unprofitable, and the operator transferred Lancastria to cruises in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. During another trip along the Bay of Biscay, on October 10, 1932, the liner rescued the crew from a sinking Belgian dry cargo ship. In 1934, the ship was chartered by Irish Boy Scouts to visit Rome, and in May 1936, by a group of tourists to visit war memorials in Malta, Gallipoli, Salonika and Istanbul.



The Lancastria in Madeira, 1930s

Another cruise took the Lancastria to the Bahamas, where she saw the outbreak of World War II. In September 1939, the liner was requisitioned as a troop transport and transferred to New York for refitting. There, unnecessary furniture and equipment were removed, and the hull was repainted in battleship gray. In addition, all the portholes were blackened, and one 102 mm gun was mounted on the deck. The liner's captain, Rudolf Sharp, remained in his place, as did part of the crew.

Under Sharp's command, the Lancastria carried cargo from Canada to Great Britain, and in April 1940, she took part in the evacuation of Allied troops from Narvik harbor in Norway. The Germans fired on the transport, but did not score any hits. On May 17, 1940, the Lancastria, as part of the British troops, took part in the occupation of Iceland, and then carried reinforcements and cargo there. After that, she returned to Liverpool. After finishing mooring, Sharp sent the crew ashore, since the ship was supposed to be refitted.

But within a few hours the ship received an order to urgently leave for Plymouth. The crew members who had not managed to disperse far were hastily gathered back on board and on June 15 the transport was there. In Plymouth, Sharpe was given the task of ensuring the evacuation of the remnants of the British Expeditionary Force from France, since the German offensive continued to develop at a rapid pace.





British soldiers being evacuated from Norway aboard the Lancastria, June 1940

The Dunkirk evacuation had been completed on 4 June. But by 15 June there were still some 124,000 British troops in France, mostly logistics personnel, concentrated in ports on the west coast. They were also joined by civilians with British passports who wanted to leave the country before the Germans occupied it. As a result, crowds of people were waiting to be evacuated, and transport capacity was limited.

The Lancastria and the Cunard Line liner Franconia set out for Lorient. However, it turned out that there was no need for these transports there. The Lancastria set out alone for Saint-Nazaire. The transport arrived at the mouth of the Loire on the evening of June 16 and waited for the tide 8 km southwest of the city along with almost 30 other ships for evacuation.

Early in the morning of June 17, three British officers arrived from the shore to the Lancastria to find out the maximum number of people that could be taken on board. Officially, the transport could accommodate 2,180 people (since the crew alone numbered 330 people). But it had no problem taking 2,653 people from Norway at once, so Sharp named the figure of 3,000. The officers ordered that as many as would fit on the ship at all, without regard to the rules.

Soon, the ferrying of troops to the Lancastria, which had never docked, began. People were transported on destroyers, minesweepers, fishing boats and sailboats, all the while being subjected to machine gun fire from German aircraft. However, no casualties were recorded. By mid-day, the loading was complete. According to the assessment of the officer supervising the embarkation, there were about 7,200 people on board. Sharp believed that there were 5,500. According to researchers, the number taken on board could have reached 9,000.



The military transport SS Oronsay, former passenger liner of the Orient Steam Navigation Company. This photo was taken off Gourock, Scotland, awaiting the embarkation of British troops on 20 April 1940. Damage to this transport off St Nazaire delayed the departure of the Lancastria

During another German raid at 13:50, another large transport, the SS Oronsay (20,043 GRT), was damaged by a bomb on the bridge. The Lancastria was quite capable of sailing off on its own, and the commander of the destroyer HMS Havelock advised Sharpe to do so. But he was worried that he might become a victim of U-boats on his own. Sharpe decided to wait until the SS Oronsay was repaired, and a destroyer escort would follow.

As it turned out, this decision was a fatal mistake. At 15:50, Junkers Ju-88 bombers began another raid on the ships' berth, this time concentrating on the Lancastria. The transport was hit by three or four bombs. Eyewitness accounts of the locations of the impacts vary, but the most reliable claim is that one of the bombs hit the ship directly in the ship's only funnel. Hits in other parts of the hull, which had watertight bulkheads, would not have led to such a rapid sinking.

As a result, the ship began to list to starboard. To compensate, Sharp ordered the passengers to move to port. But there were so many people that the ship began to list to port, and it was impossible to correct it.



The Last Minutes of the Lancastria

The transport had 2,500 life jackets and 16 lifeboats, some of which were damaged by bombs. In addition, the tilt of the hull made it difficult to lower. There were also difficulties with the lifeboats that were lowered. The first lifeboat with women and children capsized near the water, and they lowered a second, empty one. Another lifeboat could not withstand the load and broke during the lowering.

The lack of life-saving equipment led to many jumping overboard, breaking their necks from hitting the hull or the water. Finally, the transport capsized and disappeared under water at 16:12. The Lancastria perished quickly - it sank to the bottom within 15-20 minutes. People who found themselves on the surface died from hypothermia, fuel oil spills, or simply drowned due to the lack of life jackets.

Of course, there were many ships around the Lancastria, which, being already filled above all standards, still tried to help. But the speed of the transport's destruction simply did not allow all the necessary measures to be taken. In addition, the Germans continued to attack from the air, shooting at people in the water with machine guns. In the end, only 2,477 people were saved from the Lancastria.

This incident became the largest in British history in terms of the number of victims. According to various estimates, the number of people killed ranges from 4,000 to 7,000 people. Only 1,816 of them have been reliably identified, their bodies found, identified and then buried on land. Rudolf Sharp survived and took command of another troop transport, the Laconia, which had belonged to the pre-war Cunard Line. Sharp died with his ship after being attacked by a German submarine in the South Atlantic in September 1942.



The ship's bell of the Lancastria at St Catherine's Church in the City of London in 2018. The bell bears the ship's original name, Tirrenia

The British authorities initially tried to hide the fact of the sinking of the Lancastria. But the Germans announced the sinking of the liner that same evening on their English-language propaganda radio program Germany Calling, and on July 25, American journalists wrote about the tragedy. Despite the number of victims, the story of the Lancastria remains a little-known page of the war. Until the beginning of the 21st century, the liner's wreck was not protected in any way. Only in the 2000s did the French establish an exclusion zone around it. The British Ministry of Defense recognized the Lancastria as a military cemetery only in 2015, thanks to the efforts of activists, including survivors of this disaster.