The Sinking of the Lancastria
Read The Sinking of the Lancastria Online
Authors: Jonathan Fenby
Jonathan Fenby
is a former editor of the
Observer
in London and of the
South China Morning Post
in Hong Kong, which he steered through the handover of the colony from Britain to China in 1997. He has also worked for
The Economist
, the
Guardian
, the
Independent
and Reuters. His previous books include the acclaimed
On the Brink: The Trouble with France
and
Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost
.
Also by Jonathan Fenby
THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF MODERN CHINA: THE FALL AND RISE OF A GREAT POWER
DRAGON THRONE: THE IMPERIAL DYNASTIES OF CHINA
THE SEVENTY WONDERS OF CHINA (ED.) ALLIANCE: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW ROOSEVELT, STALIN AND CHURCHILL WON ONE WAR AND BEGAN ANOTHER
THE SINKING OF THE LANCASTRIA: BRITAIN’S WORST NAVAL DISASTER AND CHURCHILL’S COVER-UP
GENERALISSIMO: CHIANG KAI-SHEK AND THE CHINA HE LOST
DEALING WITH THE DRAGON: A YEAR IN THE NEW HONG KONG
ON THE BRINK: THE TROUBLE WITH FRANCE
THE GENERAL: CHARLES DE GAULLE AND THE FRANCE HE SAVED
TIGER HEAD, SNAKE TAILS: CHINA TODAY, HOW IT GOT THERE AND WHY IT HAS TO CHANGE
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2005
This ebook edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015
A CBS company
Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Fenby
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Jonathan Fenby to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ebook ISBN: 978-1-47114-296-3
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To the memory of those who died
on the Lancastria – and to those
who survived
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I WAS FIRST TOLD
about the
Lancastria
by Tom Wallace, and so owe a prime debt to him and his wife for having put me on the trail that led to this book. It could not have been written without the help of the Lancastria Association, and its compilations of recollections of survivors edited by John L. West and Colin Clarke in 1988 and 1998. I am deeply grateful to the Association for its help, particularly to the Secretary, Rob Miller. Equal thanks goes to survivors for their memories, papers and photographs, in particular to Fred Coe, Stan and Vic Flowers, Harry Harding, Denis Holland, Morris Lashbrook and Joe Sweeney. Another major source was the thirty hours of oral history from survivors recorded by the Imperial War Museum whose staff was especially helpful. I am also grateful for help from the Public Records Office at Kew, Steven Prince of the Naval Historical Branch of the Ministry of Defence, and Allen Packwood of the Churchill Archive at Cambridge.
Warrant Officer David Curry provided material on RAF units involved in the disaster, as well as showing me objects from the
Lancastria
collected at RAF Digby and letting me read his own work on Operation Aerial. I drew on Harry Grattidge’s memoirs and on Cunard accounts of the liner’s peacetime career. Auriol Stevens provided recollections from Captain Barry Stevens to throw light on the decision not to leave St-Nazaire – for which I am also grateful for the good offices of Hugh Stephenson. John Duggan recounted his family’s exodus and read the manuscript. Jack Altman provided a lead that helped to get the project going. Sally Tagholm provided valuable help with the research and Sara Arguden gave her usual aid and comfort.
In France, Christophe François was an invaluable guide and an unselfish provider of material. I was also grateful for the assistance of Claude Gurio, Emile Bouton, the inhabitants of Les Moutiers, Thérèse Dumont at the Mayor’s office in St-Nazaire, Yannick Bigaud, Mayor of Guémené-Penfao, and Dr Tessier of St-Nazaire. The Naval Archive at Vincennes. The departmental archives at Nantes and the Eco-Musée at St-Nazaire both provided local material including Denise Petit’s account.
André Villeneuve gave useful books and thoughts on the collapse of France, and he and his wife, Lisa, were generous hosts during research in Paris. Annie and the late Luc Besnier supplied a most agreeable haven on trips along the Loire.
Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson was his usual supportive self. Andrew Gordon’s encouragement fuelled the writing, and he nudged me to give the story a proper ending. Cassandra Campbell was an ideal editor, and the manuscript benefited from the attentions of Carol Anderson and Samantha Bell.
As always, I am hugely indebted to my wife, in the research in France, in improving the manuscript in many ways, and in her enthusiasm for telling the story of the
Lancastria
.
The Sinking of the
Lancastria
PROLOGUE
‘THIS IS THE END,’
thought Captain Field, lying on his back in the oily sea. ‘What a place to drown.’
Around him, the sea was covered with the dead and dying. Desperate people were fighting for their lives, grasping hold of planks, chairs, military packs, oars – or one another – as they battled to stay afloat. Behind them, silhouetted against the sky, a throng of soldiers crowded on the upended hull of the great ship which was sinking deeper in the water by the minute. Raging fires inside the hold sent up huge palls of smoke.
A few hours earlier, thousands of soldiers and air crew who had boarded the ship had regarded her as their escape route to England, and safety. They were among the forgotten men of the early summer of 1940.
After the Dunkirk evacuation ended at the beginning of June, Winston Churchill had assured the nation that ‘the
British Expeditionary Force has been completely and successfully evacuated from France’. That was a spectacular piece of disinformation. Around 150,000 British troops were left behind, strung out from Champagne to the west coast.
Some trailed across France for two weeks as the German army advanced remorselessly and dive bombers swooped from the clear summer skies. Others stayed put in their bases in the west of France before finally being given the order to head to the coast for evacuation home.
Reaching the last open harbour at St-Nazaire, they had seen the five-decked, 16,243-ton
Lancastria
lying out in the wide estuary of the River Loire. She was the largest of a fleet sent to save tens of thousands of men crowding into the port town. As they swarmed aboard the former Cunard liner turned into a troopship, some felt it was almost as good as being back in Blighty. One thought the ship looked as solid as the Strand Palace Hotel in London.
In the mid-afternoon of 17 June, four bombs from a German plane hit the
Lancastria
, causing her to list sharply and then to turn over in the water.
For those caught in her holds when the bombs exploded inside the ship, she became a death trap of destruction and raging flames. Eight hundred RAF men died when a bomb hit the hold where they were sheltering. Another ripped through the ship’s hospital. Steam escaping from a ruptured boiler horribly scalded stokers.
For others, the sinking hull of the overturned liner became the last place of refuge. At first, they screamed and shouted at the planes swooping down to machine-gun the wide bay. Some called for an RAF ace, ‘Cobber’ Kain, who had shot down seventeen enemy aircraft – not knowing that he had been killed in an accident two weeks earlier. Then they began
to sing; first, the pub favourite, ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, and, led by a strong tenor voice, ‘There’ll Always Be an England’. An immaculately turned-out officer standing on the sinking keel smoked a cigarette as if he was safe on dry land. Looking back while he swam away, a 19-year-old Welsh trooper, Henry Harding, saw figures trying to scramble out of the portholes as flames flared in the hull. He could glimpse hands behind the bodies, either trying to push them out or pull them back. ‘If there’s a Hell, that’s it,’ he said to himself.
For those who jumped into the sea, the priority was to get away before the suction of the fast-sinking vessel dragged them down. Many ripped off their clothes to ease their progress through the water as oil spewed from the ship’s ruptured tanks. Captain Field decided it was time to remove his trousers to make swimming simpler.
Another officer, Captain F. E. Griggs of the Royal Engineers, was moving as fast as he could through the warm, calm water. The previous week, he had been enjoying French food and wine as he drove across the country. Now, he was swimming for his life. Unlike many of those around him, he retained his full uniform with its Sam Browne belt, shoes, tin hat, plus a life belt. Oil coated him from head to foot. A German plane came over to strafe, but its machine-gun bullets missed him. The surface of the sea around him was strewn with dead small fish. ‘I’ve got the oil and the sardines,’ Griggs thought. ‘All I want now is the tins!’
After jumping from the ship, Sergeant Harold Pettit had dropped deep below the surface, and felt he was bound to drown. Then he had come up, but he was suffering from sickness and diarrhoea. He joined a circle of five men, a couple of whom had life jackets. The six of them clung together, occasionally losing their grip because of the slimy oil
and their tiredness, though they still had enough spirit to joke about their appearance. Weakening, Pettit thought he was going to go under again. Then, he suddenly heard a voice saying, ‘Don’t go yet, there’s annuvver one ’ere’ – and he was hauled, naked and covered with oil, on to a raft towed by a launch from a British destroyer.
Sidney Dunmall, a private in the Pay Corps who had been among the last to board the
Lancastria
, dug his nails into a plank thrown down from the ship, hanging on desperately as he tried to get away. But the suction dragged him back, and his plank banged against the side of the liner. Just then, a man wearing a life jacket swam by.