The Lancastria - a forgotten disaster

On May 19, I blogged about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during World War Two, which resulted in the deaths of around 9,000 German civilians, soldiers and sailors. Now a campaign has been launched in the UK to properly commemorate the sinking of the British liner, Lancastria (pictured) off the French port of St Nazaire in June 1940.

The ship was carrying up to 9,000 British soldiers and French and Belgian refugees when it was attacked by German bombers the day before France surrendered to the Nazis. It is thought that about 4,000 drowned.

Today people such as General Lord Dannatt, former head of the British army, the actress Joanna Lumley and the author Louis de Bernieres say the British government should do more to preserve their memory, describing the loss of the Lancastria as a ‘forgotten disaster’.

They want the government to designate the wreck an official war grave, and they refer to reports that some documents relating to the disaster are still being kept secret. The government says the wreck is already protected under French law, and that all ‘contemporary’ documents have been released. 

The Wilhelm Gustloff - the worst ever maritime disaster

The Narrow Escapes of World War Two series on the Yesterday tv channel this week featured the worst maritime disaster in history. On the night of 30 January 1945, the German cruise liner, the Wilhelm Gustloff was carrying more than 10,000 refugees, soldiers and sailors, packed like sardines, trying to escape the advancing Red Army.

The vessel was heading along the Baltic coast from Gdynia in what was still occupied Poland towards Kiel when it was hit by three torpedoes from the Russian submarine, S-13, about 20 miles off shore.

The captain had reluctantly put on the ship’s navigation lights in order to avoid a collision with German naval vessels in the area, and this had made it a highly visible target for the submarine. In the resulting nightmare with icy Baltic water pouring into the ship, some passengers simply decided to end it all, and shot themselves.

A few people managed to get into lifeboats, and about 400 were picked up by a German destroyer, but altogether it is thought that no more than 1,000 people survived. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

A night to remember

Wreaths were laid in Belfast today to commemorate the 1,500 people who drowned when the Titanic sank exactly 97 years ago. The great liner was built at Harland and Wolff in the Northern Ireland capital, and although hers was not the worst shipwreck the world has ever seen – in wartime, that unwelcome distinction would apply to the Wilhelm Gustloff which took up to 10,000 people to the bottom, and in peacetime to the Filipino ferry Dona Paz, which claimed up to 4,375 victims - it remains probably the most famous.

Not surprising when you think that the passenger list read like a Who’s Who of the world’s richest people, that she was the fastest, most opulent ship on the sea, that this was her maiden voyage, and that she was commanded by her shipping line’s star captain Edward J. Smith, who had famously declared that it was not possible for a ship like this to sink –“modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.”

In fact, an encounter with an iceberg a few minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912 sent the Titanic to the bottom in a couple of hours. (For more on ships and icebergs see my blog of February 20.) The watertight compartments that were supposed to make the vessel unsinkable had not actually been watertight. So the sea could fill up one, and then lap over into the next, and there were not enough lifeboats. (See my blog of January 21.)

Of the 705 people who survived the shipwreck, only one is still alive today - Millvina Dean, who was just nine weeks old. She was rescued along with her mother and her two year old brother. Her father, then aged 27, perished. This week she is selling the last of her Titanic memorabilia to help pay her nursing home fees.

Two related anniversaries

On this day......76 years ago, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. In the dying months of the First World War, Hitler had been awarded the Iron Cross (the officer who recommended him for the decoration was Captain Hugo Guttman, a Jew). After the war, his dream of becoming an artist never came true, and he went off to run the propaganda operation of the National Socialist (Nazi) party.

After an abortive Nazi coup, he spent nine months in prison, and used the time to write the first volume of Mein Kampf in which he denounced Communism and the Jews. During the 1920’s the Nazis never managed to poll more than 6.5% in Reichstag elections, but then came Hitler’s big break – the Great Depression. Terrified by the spectre of Communism, big business began bankrolling him, and the rest is disaster history. The Nazis were setting up concentration camps within weeks, and through murder, forced labour, starvation, medical experiments etc, they killed perhaps 20 million people.

On the 12th anniversary of Hitler’s coming to power, on January 30, 1945, a ship named the Wilhelm Gustloff was carrying German refugees along with soldiers and sailors across the Baltic away from the advancing Russian forces. There were up to 10,500 people on board when she was hit by a torpedo from a Soviet submarine. It is believed that not more than 1,000 survived, making this the worst shipwreck in history.