RMS Lancastria

RMS Lancastria is a Transatlantic liner British cast at the time of the Second world war.

Baptized at the origin RMS Tyrrhenia , this 170 meters length steamer, launched in 1922, belonged to the British company Cunard Line. It cost 1 359 907 £ for its construction which had enormously took delay following a Grève of the workmen of the Shipyard W. Beardmore of Glasgow.

It was renamed Lancastria on February 5th, 1924.

The tragedy

Like many ships, it had been requisitioned with the declaration of war. The June 17th 1940, it was charged to take part in the evacuation of the 40 000 British soldiers still on the territory French as well as civil refugees.

In the night of the June 17th 1940, with broad of Saint-Nazaire, the Lancastria , is bombarded by four planes German Junkers Ju 88 . The bad luck makes that a bomb falls into one from the chimneys from the ship. The ship runs in 24 minutes.

The shipwreck of the Lancastria gives officially a report on 5 200 dead, but certain sources advances until 7 000, as a large majority of the British soldiers. One cannot know how much passengers were on board, the logbook being still under the military secrecy until 2040, but one knows, whom because of the circumstances of the rout, no instruction of limit of the number of loading had been enacted whereas the normal capacity of the steamer was of 3 000 people.

2 is counted; 477 survivors of this a long time occulted catastrophe.

It is about the one of the most fatal shipwrecks of the history, with those of the Cape Arcona , of the Wilhelm Gustloff and of the Goya in 1945 in the Baltic, and those of the Junyō Maru , of the Toyama Maru and of the Ukishima Maru in 1944 in the Pacifique.

Tri Yann devoted a song of their last album " Abysses" (2007) on the tragedy of Lancastria.

External bonds

http://www.lelancastria.com/
http://www.lancastria.org.uk/
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

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