3.The Sinking of the Lancastria
A fortnight after the evacuation at Dunkirk, some 150,000 British troops remained stuck in France. As the German advance thundered west, the troops made a mad dash to the coast in the hope that a troopship awaited them there. One such vessel was Lancastria, a Cunard liner pressed into service and now anchored off the port of St-Nazaire. On 17 June 1940, ready to head for home, the ship was bombed by the Luftwaffe. As she sank, between 3,500 and 4,000 of those on board lost their lives. Re-creating this extraordinary episode with great narrative flair, author Jonathan Fenby describes not just the human stories behind the disaster, but the cover-up that followed as Churchill ordered a blanket ban on news stories for the sake of the country’s morale.
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The Sinking of the Lancastria
