RMS Lancastria

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The RMS Lancastria was a Cunard liner sunk on June 17, 1940 during World War II with the loss of, possibly, 4,000 lives.

Launched in 1920 as the Tyrrhenia for the Anchor Line, a subsidiary of Cunard, the 16,243 ton (16,503 tonnes), 578 foot (176 m) liner could carry 1,785 passengers in three classes and was built by William Beardmore and Company of Glasgow. She made her maiden voyage on June 19, 1922.

She was refitted for just two classes and renamed Lancastria in 1924. She sailed scheduled routes from England to New York until 1932, and was then used as a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. With the outbreak of the Second World War, she carried cargo before being requisitioned in April 1940 as a troopship, becoming the HMT Lancastria. She was first used to assist in the evacuation of troops from Norway.

She was sunk while taking part in Operation Ariel, the evacuation of British nationals and troops from France after Dunkirk. After a short overhaul, she left Liverpool on June 14 under Captain Rudolf Sharpe, and arrived in the mouth of the Loire river estuary on June 16. By the mid-afternoon of June 17, she had embarked an unknown number (estimates range from 4,000 up to 9,000) of civilian refugees and RAF personnel. The ship's official capacity was 3,000.

She was bombed at around 16:00 by Junkers 88 aircraft from II. Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 30. Three direct hits caused the ship to list first to starboard then to port and she rolled over and sank within twenty minutes. Over 1,400 tons of fuel oil leaked into the sea and was set partially ablaze, possibly by strafing. Many drowned, were choked by the oil, or were shot by the strafing German aircraft. There were 2,477 survivors. The death toll accounted for roughly a third of the total losses of the BEF in France. She sank around 5 nm (9 km) south of Chémoulin Point in the Charpentier roads, around 9 nm (17 km) out of St. Nazaire.

The immense loss of life was such that the British government banned any public announcements of the disaster through the D-Notice system. The story was broken by the New York Times and The Scotsman newspaper on July 26 and the British press did make brief mention of the story. Due to the imposition of the D-Notice, survivors and the crews of the ships that had gone to the aid of Lancastria did not discuss the disaster at the time due to the fear of court martial. The British Government is refusing to make the site a war grave under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 despite Freedom of Information documents proving this could be achieved, although the French Government recently placed an exclusion zone around the wreck site.

Rudolf Sharpe survived the sinking and went on to command the Laconia, losing his life along with many Italian POWs on September 12, 1942 when the ship was torpedoed off West Africa.