LANCASTRIA - TYRRHENIA

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LANCASTER - TYRRHENIA Of all the great Cunard ships, none has a tale more harrowing than the LANCASTRIA, an elegant liner built by W Beardmore at Dalmuir, on the Clyde.

Launched in May 1920 under its original name of TYRRHENIA, its maiden voyage was to Quebec and Montreal in 1922.
Cunard re-named it, and it saw regular service until April 1940, when it was requisitioned as a troopship.
That June, it was involved in the mass Dunkirk evacuation. With some 5200 troops and some refugees aboard, it was leaving St Nazaire when it suffered a direct hit from a German dive-bomber.

Many passengers died horribly as the bombs fell, including 800 RAF men who died in a hold where they had been sheltering. German planes machine-gunned survivors as they struggled to stay afloat.
A nineteen-year-old Welsh trooper, swimming away from the sinking wreckage, glanced back and saw figures trying to scramble out of portholes, as flames burned just feet away.
The trooper could glimpse hands behind the despairing figures, either trying to push them out or pull them back in. "If there's a Hell," he told himself, "that's it."

Men and women fought for their lives but the ship sank within twenty minutes.

When news of the disaster reached Winston Churchill in London, his instinct was to suppress it, so as not to damage national morale at a sensitive point in the war.
He intended lifting the ban after a few days but, such was the press of war-time events that he forgot.
Six weeks after the sinking, however, some national newspapers carried reports, even if for just one day.

The exact number of the LANCASTRIA's dead varies but some reports suggest more than 5000 perished.
MSP Christine Grahame has called for proper recognition of the events of June 17, 1940, but whether or not that happens, a fitting memorial to the tragedy is a book by Jonathan Fenby The Sinking Of The Lancastria (Pocket Books, £7.99)

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