Final Voyage

by Eyers, Jonathan

  St Nazaire was not an ideal location from which to evacuate large numbers of people. Though a major port, it was located in the estuary of the River Loire, and its waters were too shallow for some of the larger vessels that came to St Nazaire. Some had to anchor several miles away and have people brought to them by smaller boats. One of these was the liner RMS Lancastria, which could have gone on to be remembered for bringing up to 9,000 evacuees back to Britain. Instead she went on to suffer the worst disaster in British maritime history, which would barely be remembered at all.

  From luxury liner to rescue ship

  When launched in 1920, Cunard named their new 578ft (176m) liner the Tyrrhenia. Built in Clydebank, the Scottish town that grew up around – and was named for – its famous shipyards, the 16,243-ton liner was painted with the same striking black and white livery that the Titanic had had. Unlike the Titanic she only had one funnel, which was raked slightly towards the stern and painted red. She was one of the first Cunard liners to have a cruiser stern, which reduced water resistance compared to more gently curved sterns. Towering over her sun decks were two masts, one on either side of the funnel.

  Across her seven decks she could carry up to 2,200 passengers, initially in three classes but later only two. She was given the name Tyrrhenia in the hope that it would appeal to Italians looking to emigrate to America, but in 1921, before the Tyrrhenia was even ready for her first voyage, the US government brought in the Immigration Act, which restricted immigration. Her maiden voyage took her from Glasgow to Quebec and Montreal, and later she sailed between Liverpool and New York, but her name proved unpopular with English crew and American passengers. In 1924, having acquired the unflattering nickname Soup Tureen, the Tyrrhenia was renamed the Lancastria. From 1932 onwards the Lancastria spent much of her time cruising the waters of northern Europe and the Mediterranean.

  When war broke out between Britain and Germany in September 1939, the Lancastria was on a cruise in the Bahamas. She was ordered to New York immediately for a refit, her black and white livery to be painted over in standard battleship grey, and for half a year afterwards she carried cargo. In April 1940 the British government requisitioned the ship from Cunard and used her as a troop transport, carrying soldiers to Norway to defend it from German invasion. A month later, Norway having fallen to the Nazis, the Lancastria was back to take those soldiers home again.

  Her crew was given shore leave. That wasn’t to last long.

  Following her return from Norway, the Lancastria headed to Liverpool, with the plan that she be dry-docked for an overhaul. Her crew was given shore leave. That wasn’t to last long. Only hours later they were all recalled. Under the command of Captain Rudolph Sharp the Lancastria was to sail for St Nazaire immediately. Sharp was from a long line of sailors, and had several decades of experience as an officer on cruise liners, having served aboard the Mauretania, the Queen Mary and the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic. During the First World War he had narrowly escaped another maritime disaster, having left the Lusitania just before her final voyage.

  ‘A head in a noose’

  By late evening on 16th June, tens of thousands of men around St Nazaire harbour were practising that most British of arts – queuing. This particular queue stretched for five miles. Many of the men had not slept more than a few hours over the previous three days, and some of them had walked all the way from Belgium. One man had dived into a ditch and broken his ankle when a German plane flew overhead, but as the only alternative to keeping on walking was capture by the advancing Wehrmacht, he just tightened his boot and practised that other British art – keeping a stiff upper lip.

  Everyone else had raided their stores then set fire to everything they could before leaving for St Nazaire. They grimly accepted the Germans were going to win this one, but at least the promise of going home lifted their spirits. Some French citizens spat at them as they headed to the harbour, but many of the men did not fully understand why – not knowing all the details about what had happened at Dunkirk, they perhaps did not realise that the Allies were in retreat all over Europe and that the fall of France was imminent.

  Without the same level of rear-guard defence that French troops had provided for the evacuation from Dunkirk, St Nazaire was being swiftly surrounded. German soldiers were closing in fast, only 25 miles from the harbour as Operation Ariel progressed. But the biggest threat was not from troops approaching over land but from the planes of the Luftwaffe already overhead. German planes had inflicted many of the casualties suffered during the evacuation at Dunkirk, strafing lines of men walking down roads and bombing boats and ships as well as soldiers on the beaches. The men queuing in St Nazaire weren’t too bothered by the sound of the planes. By that time they had been listening to the sounds of a sky dominated by the Luftwaffe for weeks, and at least around St Nazaire those sounds were accompanied by a more reassuring one – that of the RAF’s Hurricanes on patrol.

  The Lancastria reached the River Loire estuary overnight and anchored at 4am on the 17th. A misty dawn gave way to bright sunshine and the promise of a warm summer afternoon with calm waters, which was ideal. Captain Sharp was dismayed that they were still miles from the harbour, knowing that loading men from tenders would cause unpredictable delays. But the bay being so shallow, they had no choice. If the Lancastria got any closer she risked running aground, or being unable to turn. Sharp noted what a French skipper told him – that anchoring there was like putting his head in a noose – then carried on with his mission.

  Sharp was to ‘load as many men as possible without regard to the limits set down under international law’.

  At around 6am Royal Navy officers boarded the Lancastria and demanded that Sharp take as many men as he could possibly fit on board. A civilian captain on a requisitioned vessel, Sharp knew he was in no position to argue, but he made it perfectly clear in the log what they had told him, that he was to ‘load as many men as possible without regard to the limits set down under international law’. Whether that order came from the naval officers on the ground or whether they were simply passing the message down from the Admiralty is not known, for the same reason much of the official version of events is not known, and won’t be until 2040.

  As the first tenders arrived at about 7am, the Lancastria’s crew rehearsed a boat drill. With German bombers trying to reach other vessels in harbour, and reports of U-boat movements in the area too, the Lancastria’s officers wanted to be ready for any eventuality. However, their preparations did not anticipate just how many of those waiting in St Nazaire that the ship would be expected to take.

  Sharp wanted to limit the number coming aboard to 3,000, which was already well above the legal limit of 2,200. He was ignored by those co-ordinating the evacuation from the harbour. His stewards lost count after about 6,000 had boarded the Lancastria, but they kept on coming for several hours more. By the time Sharp decided enough was enough, at 2pm, an unknown number of people crowded his vessel. Lower estimates suggest at least 7,500 were on board. The upper estimate stands in excess of 9,000.

  Lambs to the slaughter

  Despite the drab military paintjob, the Lancastria was still a luxury liner at heart. The military hadn’t ripped out all of the lavish accoutrements that her high class (and high paying) passengers expected, so she still had a luxurious dining room designed like a Renaissance parlour, she still had various saloon bars, a gym and a couple of swimming pools. Her crew still included the stewards, who continued to wear their pristine white uniforms with polished gold buttons.

  It was an astonishing juxtaposition for many of the soldiers who started coming aboard just after 7am. Many of these working class men would never have been aboard a liner unless they had worked on one in peacetime, but now in wartime they left the bombed towns of France, rode out of harbour in a small overcrowded tender, then had to climb up the rope netting thrown over the towering sides of the Lancastria. It was like climbing up the outside of a building, but when they got on deck they were greete
d by stewards and invited to the dining room for a silver service breakfast. Waiters brought hot tea and coffee, freshly baked bread, eggs, bacon, sausages, porridge and citrus fruit. For many this was the first hot meal they had had in weeks. After filling up they even had the option of visiting the on-board barbershop for a shave.

  The first to board were given little tickets with their cabin number, but as the tenders continued to go back and forth throughout the morning and past lunchtime, the cabins quickly filled and men were directed towards the holds instead. Lifejackets were offered to all to begin with, but some men only took them because they thought the lifejackets would make useful pillows. Those who had not slept properly for days looked for somewhere quiet to lie down and get some immediate rest, and the bowels of the ship seemed the best place for that.

  The Lancastria’s holds were the size of warehouses. Mattresses lined the floor with hardly room to step between them. Dim electric bulbs set into the walls and covered by thick glass plates provided the only light, but it was at the perfect level for those who wanted to get to sleep straight away. Those suffering seasickness went to the hold at the very bottom of the ship, close to the engine room. It was hot, stuffy and, with so many crowding in, quite airless too, but the truly exhausted didn’t care. One man, however, retorted that the dimly lit hold full of unconscious figures reminded him of a morgue, and he decided to head back up on deck. It was a decision he unlikely regretted. Few of those who settled at the bottom of the ship survived.

  The men only took lifejackets because they thought they would make useful pillows.

  Whilst the first on board may have got the silver service treatment, by the time the last were allowed aboard just before 2pm, they were lucky if they could make their way through the crowds to reach the dining room for a cup of tea. The Lancastria was now so overcrowded that a major was sent to a cabin with four bunks only to find seven other officers already sharing them. When the major complained to the purser, the purser told him three more men would be joining them shortly, and they would be sleeping on the floor. And two of them were colonels.

  The last to board couldn’t even get inside. They would have to spend the journey squeezed onto the open deck. Most were not too bothered, because it was only a relatively short trip – 300 miles – around Ushant and across the Channel to reach Britain, and they were simply glad to have not been captured by the Germans. Lifejackets had long since run out, but nobody was particularly bothered about that either. High spirits reigned, and as the men were jostled into tighter and tighter spaces an infectious chorus of sheep noises spread amongst them.

  The Lancastria was now so overcrowded that a major was sent to a cabin with four bunks only to find seven other officers already sharing them.

  Attacks from the air

  At 1.50pm, German bombers appeared in the sky. Less than a mile away from the Lancastria another liner, the 20,000-ton Oronsay, also lay at anchor as boats brought men to her from St Nazaire too. There was nothing the crews of either ship could do to evade a bombing but they used their ships’ klaxons to signal that an air raid was imminent. This time the Lancastria escaped undamaged. A bomb hit the Oronsay’s bridge and killed several officers and crewmen, but did no major structural damage.

  Shortly thereafter Captain Sharp ordered the rope netting be retracted, the sally ports in the sides of the ship shut, and the small boats milling around the Lancastria turned away. The captain of a nearby destroyer, HMS Havelock, recommended that Sharp leave for Britain as soon as possible. The Germans were closing in. Those bombers had surely reported the liners’ positions, and there were also reports of U-boats in the area. Sharp requested an escort across the Channel, a destroyer like the Havelock that might be able to detect submarines and drop depth charges, or at the very least make the Lancastria look less vulnerable than she was. But the Havelock had to remain at St Nazaire until the operation was complete. So Sharp decided to wait too. More worried about submarines than aircraft, he thought it would be safer to travel with another ship, whether a warship or another liner like the Oronsay. His chief officers all concurred.

  Some of those below deck may have disagreed. Men near portholes in the lower decks watched the bomber attack on the Oronsay and started to make their way up top. If the Lancastria fell victim to a major air raid, they realised, it would be just as dangerous to be stuck at the bottom of the ship as it would be to be standing on deck. Those on deck weren’t quite so bothered. They had waited the longest to board the ship and now they were enjoying the warm mid-afternoon sun. Those fighting their way up to the top found other unconcerned men sleeping on the stairs or playing cards on the floor in passageways.

  Sharp intended to leave at about 4pm, but he had left it too late. At 3.48pm, when the captain was in his cabin, the lookouts spotted more incoming planes and they were not the RAF’s patrolling Hurricanes. They were the Luftwaffe’s Junker bombers, and this time they were coming straight for the sitting duck Lancastria.

  The Lancastria’s klaxons signalled another air raid, but there was no panic amongst men who had been listening to planes and sirens for weeks. Alarm below decks resulted in nothing more than a few portholes being closed in case a bomb landing in the water sent a surge of water against the hull. As the first Junkers passed overhead and their bombs completely missed the Lancastria, those watching from the sun deck laughed and jeered. Their laughter didn’t last long. Those manning anti-aircraft guns on the deck of the Lancastria tried to drive the Junkers away, but the planes kept coming. Their 500lb bombs got closer and closer.

  In quick succession, three direct hits sealed the Lancastria’s fate.

  In quick succession, three direct hits sealed the Lancastria’s fate. Few on board would have doubted these were mortal wounds. Those who saw the explosions were temporarily blinded by flashes like sheet lightning. Everyone else on the ship heard the deafening sound, like they were inside a thunder cloud. The explosions smashed much of the glass on the Lancastria. For a few moments the ship was plunged into darkness, but the lights soon flickered back on. The stricken vessel continued to buck and shudder long after the debris had settled.

  The bombs had exploded in holds 2, 3 and 4. One of them smashed through the restaurant, where men were eating, and exploded beneath it, tearing a hole in the hull and causing some of the restaurant to cave in on top of the diners.

  Some 800 RAF personnel were in hold 2. The bomb detonated as it crashed through the hatch overhead. Turning the metal into shrapnel, the bomb killed nearly everyone in that hold instantly. Many were decapitated. Most of those who survived would live long enough to discover the explosion had destroyed their escape routes, before fire and thick black smoke overcame them.

  Many survivors later claimed that one of the bombs went down the Lancastria’s funnel. Officers on the bridge corroborated this story because immediately after the attack they tried to contact the engine room but couldn’t get a response, so assumed it had been destroyed. However, all of the crew in the engine room survived, despite it being so deep inside the ship. They escaped through an engineering duct that led all the way up to the main deck. One of the survivors had been standing on the platform above the boiler room during the air raid, and a bomb falling down the funnel would have destroyed that platform and killed him. The bomb actually fell into hold 4, which was immediately behind the bridge. From a certain angle it would appear like it had gone down the funnel instead. This bomb tore a hole in the port side below the waterline. Smoke from the explosion soon enveloped the entire bow of the ship.

  It was in the middle of a spreading oil slick that the Lancastria began to sink.

  The bomb that hit hold 3 ruptured fuel tanks. Fortunately the explosion didn’t set fire to the oil, but 1,400 tons spilled out into the water. It was in the middle of a spreading oil slick that the Lancastria began to sink.

  Twenty minutes to live

  Captain Sharp, who had been in his cabin when the air raid began, rushed to the bridge as his ship deve
loped a noticeable list to starboard. If he hadn’t feared the worst before he got there, what he saw when he joined his officer of the watch must have left him with no doubts. Looking down through the churning smoke, past the panicking men trying to escape in every direction, he saw the rush of white water bursting up through the middle of the ship from hold 4. The Lancastria was going down by the head and listing ever further to starboard. Sharp gave the order to abandon ship.

  Those nearest the side of the ship could look overboard and see water flooding into a gaping hole in the hull.

  Amidst the chaos of a sinking ship overcrowded to perhaps more than four times capacity, any order would struggle to circulate. Many men didn’t need to hear it from the captain anyway. Those nearest the side of the ship could look overboard and see water flooding into a gaping hole in the hull. As soon as the Lancastria started to list, the cry went up around those on deck to jump overboard. Soldiers began jumping by the dozen.

  Officers struggling to maintain some sense of order and control used megaphones to order crewmen to clear away the lifeboats. Other orders were given to lower ropes into the rapidly flooding forehold, but too many in the hold grabbed the ropes at the same time. It was impossible to pull any of them up, and none of them managed to climb up either.