RMS Lancastria was a British Cunard liner commandeered by the UK Government for war. She was sunk on 17 June 1940 during World War II with at least 4,000 fat.
“Quite enough disaster for today.” In an anecdote somewhat buried in his Memoirs of the Second World War, Prime MinisterWinston Churchill recounts a “frightful incident” that occurred on June 17, 1940.
“The 20,000-ton liner Lancastria, with five thousand men aboard, was bombed just as she was about to leave. Upwards of three thousand men perished. The rest were rescued under continued air attack by the devotion of the small craft.”
The British government had requisitioned the Cunard ocean liner to continue bringing British Expeditionary Force troops back to Britain following the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Rms Lancastria The Forgotten Tragedy
- RMS Lancastria was a British Cunard liner commandeered by the UK Government for war. She was sunk on 17 June 1940 during World War II with at least 4,000 fat.
- The sinking of the Lancastria during WWII remains Britain's worst maritime disaster. On 17 June 1940, over 4,000 people died after German bombers hit the ship they were being evacuated on. The previously unknown painting shows the WWII attack on the Lancastria.
The ship’s captain was instructed to take on as many passengers as possible, so estimates for the number of souls aboard on June 17 range between 5,000 and 7,000. This number far exceeded the amount of life jackets and lifeboats onboard, but this lack of safety equipment ultimately did not matter. The liner sank within 20 minutes of being bombed by the Luftwaffe. Approximately four thousand men, women, and children were buried beneath the waves. As were news reports on the sinking. “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.’”
A few eyewitnesses told of soldiers balancing on the upturned hull and singing “Roll out the Barrel” as the ship listed to port. Others told of retrieving the corpses that washed up on the beaches a few days later. Eyewitness Emile Boutin (whose stories are included in the online Lancastria archive) wrote, “Sometimes one body arrived, sometimes 16 arrived at once… other times there were four days, five days without anything.” The citizens of Moutiers buried the victims behind a sea dike, where “they stayed…until the end of the war. Moutiers people never talk, never talked about the Lancastria, but about the cemetery of the British.” It was not until 2006 that the French government afforded the site official legal protection as a war grave.
Rms Lancastria
The sinking of the RMS Lancastria, as seen from a rescue ship
The French had a front row seat to the destruction, but the British people were kept in the dark. Churchill’s D-Notice asked all media outlets not to publish any information on the Lancastria sinking. It was not an official government order, but the British media followed Churchill’s lead. American and Scottish newspapers did print the story, but not until the end of July. 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.
RMS Lancastria and Operation Chariot memorials, St Nazaire
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. German bombing raids shifted the focus away from the sea and onto the mainland, and the nation’s attention also shifted to fresh challenges and atrocities. Official commemorations of those lost during the disaster were long in coming. Almost 50 years later, a memorial was erected in St. Nazaire, reading:
“Opposite this place lies the wreck of the troopship Lancastria sunk by enemy action on 17 June 1940 whilst embarking British troops and civilians during the evacuation of France. To the glory of God, 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. We have not forgotten. HMT ‘Lancastria’ Association, 17 June 1988.”
Lancastria survivor Charles Napier with a copy of the newspaper which reported the news of the Lancastria sinking. Mr Napier is also wearing the Lancastria commemorative medal which was awarded by the Scottish Government in June 2008 in recognition of those who were aboard the vessel that day.
In 2011, a memorial was dedicated in Clydesdale, Scotland, where the ship was built. Memorials in statue, plaques, and stained glass can be found in Staffordshire, Liverpool, and London. Though buried in WWII history, the sinking of the Lancastria reminds us of the sacrifices and loss of thousands of men, women, and children during the war. Their names may be lost to history, but they are not forgotten.
Kate Murphy Schaefer is an undergraduate history instructor who studies the human impact of wars and revolutions.
The 17th June 1940 saw one of the most horrific events of World War II and the single worst maritime disaster in British history.
This was the date on which, the RMS Lancastria was sunk off the French port of Nantes, with an unknown loss of life. Estimates of the loss range between 3,000 and 5,800 fatalities.
The British Government has requisitioned the RMS Lancastria to assist with evacuation of troops from the European mainland.
On the 16th June, she anchored at the Loire River’s mouth about 5 miles south-west of St. Nazaire, in the company of around 30 other merchant vessels of every size and shape.
Early on the morning of the 17th June 1940 three Royal Navy Reserve officers came aboard and asked her captain, Rudolph Sharp, how many people the Lancastria would be able to uplift. The captain said that he would be able to take 3,000 at a pinch.
People were ferried from the mainland all day. Late that afternoon, she was packed with servicemen, air force personnel, embassy staff, and their families and some civilians with their families. Every nook and cranny, including her massive holds, was packed with people.
There is no reliable count of how many people were crammed onto the liner. Captain Sharp estimated he had loaded 5,500 people, but his officers put the count at nearer 7,200.
Around lunchtime, on the 17th, there was an air raid. Another liner, the SS Oronsay, was damaged, so Captain Sharp was advised to depart. 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.
Late in the afternoon, the Germans launched another air raid. 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.
Many lifeboats could not be launched as they had been damaged, and there were only 2,500 life jackets on board.
Many men jumped into the sea wearing life jackets and broke their necks when they hit the water, others were killed as they hit the hull of the ship. Many others died from hypothermia, inhaling fuel oil on the surface or drowning.
The speed at which the vessel sank meant that there was little time for other ships to react. Many other survivors were machine-gunned in the water by the German planes.
At the end of the day, some 2,477 survivors were picked up from the sea.
The people living in the area, found bodies washed up on the beaches for weeks after the disaster. A resident of Ile de Noirmoutier, Michel Adrien, who was six at the time, remembers the bodies spilling out from the sea, some still warm.
To this day, Adrien, aged 86, has no idea how many people perished, and it is unlikely that he ever will.
Winston Churchill issued a D-Notice on the day of the sinking of the RMS Lancastria. 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.
The D-Notice blacked-out details of the incident for 100 years, so it will not be released before 2040. The details that are known about the event have all come from witness statements.
A senior lecturer in British politics at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, Thibaud Harrois, said that the German advances in 1940 “caught almost everyone by surprise” and led to the Battle of Dunkirk.
It is famously known that the battle ended with the enormous undertaking of evacuating the British troops from French soil. At the same time, many soldiers fought a fierce rear-guard.
Harrois went on to say that when history looks at the retreat in 1940, the evacuation of Dunkirk is the undertaking that most remember.
Officials at the time chose to ignore the Lancastria disaster, as it was deemed a ‘failed’ evacuation, and it was almost overshadowed by the news of the French surrender to the Germans.
Official notice of this disaster may not be forthcoming, but the descendants of those who died still honor the victims today and you can find some interesting history here www.lancastria.org.uk
Rms Lancastria Wreck
This year the ceremony was considerably toned down due to the coronavirus pandemic. It was only attended by 10 people.