Final Voyage by Eyers Jonathan

Author:Eyers, Jonathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

Attacks from the air

At 1.50pm, German bombers appeared in the sky. Less than a mile away from the Lancastria another liner, the 20,000-ton Oronsay, also lay at anchor as boats brought men to her from St Nazaire too. There was nothing the crews of either ship could do to evade a bombing but they used their ships’ klaxons to signal that an air raid was imminent. This time the Lancastria escaped undamaged. A bomb hit the Oronsay’s bridge and killed several officers and crewmen, but did no major structural damage.

Shortly thereafter Captain Sharp ordered the rope netting be retracted, the sally ports in the sides of the ship shut, and the small boats milling around the Lancastria turned away. The captain of a nearby destroyer, HMS Havelock, recommended that Sharp leave for Britain as soon as possible. The Germans were closing in. Those bombers had surely reported the liners’ positions, and there were also reports of U-boats in the area. Sharp requested an escort across the Channel, a destroyer like the Havelock that might be able to detect submarines and drop depth charges, or at the very least make the Lancastria look less vulnerable than she was. But the Havelock had to remain at St Nazaire until the operation was complete. So Sharp decided to wait too. More worried about submarines than aircraft, he thought it would be safer to travel with another ship, whether a warship or another liner like the Oronsay. His chief officers all concurred.

Some of those below deck may have disagreed. Men near portholes in the lower decks watched the bomber attack on the Oronsay and started to make their way up top. If the Lancastria fell victim to a major air raid, they realised, it would be just as dangerous to be stuck at the bottom of the ship as it would be to be standing on deck. Those on deck weren’t quite so bothered. They had waited the longest to board the ship and now they were enjoying the warm mid-afternoon sun. Those fighting their way up to the top found other unconcerned men sleeping on the stairs or playing cards on the floor in passageways.

Sharp intended to leave at about 4pm, but he had left it too late. At 3.48pm, when the captain was in his cabin, the lookouts spotted more incoming planes and they were not the RAF’s patrolling Hurricanes. They were the Luftwaffe’s Junker bombers, and this time they were coming straight for the sitting duck Lancastria.

The Lancastria’s klaxons signalled another air raid, but there was no panic amongst men who had been listening to planes and sirens for weeks. Alarm below decks resulted in nothing more than a few portholes being closed in case a bomb landing in the water sent a surge of water against the hull. As the first Junkers passed overhead and their bombs completely missed the Lancastria, those watching from the sun deck laughed and jeered. Their laughter didn’t last long. Those manning anti-aircraft guns on the deck of the Lancastria tried to drive the Junkers away, but the planes kept coming.

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