Mystery ship at St Nazair June 18th 1940

[ScouseBoy]

Not neccessarily so.

If their home port was Douglas,  they may just have been issued with stock from the Company store depot with the name of the other ship on it.

And do not forget it was a  national emergency..       There was chaos.     

[ScouseBoy]

Please  sign the HMT  Lancastria petition  at      http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/16594           

requesting that the 100 year embargo on the release of the files should be lifted.

[HMac]

Regarding the LANCASTRIA petition, I doubt there is a 'D' notice or any files concerning this ship with a 100 year embargo. Files in WO 361 are open.

However, one of the most controversial aspects of the sinking of the Lancastria was the alleged cover up of the facts by Churchill's Government. As soon as news reached the Cabinet Office about the Lancastria, Winston Churchill issued a 'D' notice on the news, suspending publication about the disaster until the 'D' notice was lifted.

He later wrote that: 'When news of this came through to me in the quiet Cabinet room during the afternoon, I forbade its publication, saying that the newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least. I had intended to release news of the disaster a few days later, but events crowded in so black and so quickly, that I forgot to lift the ban, and it was some time before the knowledge of this horror became public.'
 
So, the news actually came to light five and a half weeks later. At the time of the sinking, Churchill's Government had been in existence just one day longer than our current government [date of lecture 17 June 2010], and in that time, they had dealt with the evacuation of Dunkirk, the fall of France, the evacuation of the second BEF, and the very real prospect of an invasion across the Channel.
 
While none of this forgives the blackout on news of the Lancastria, it does explain why Churchill may have genuinely forgotten to lift the ban. The Lancastria was just a bad news story in a sea of bad news stories.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/podcasts/loss-of-lancastria.htm


Regards
Hugh 

[robhw]

I have just read the discussion about the Ben My Chree at Dunkirk and can add something. My late father was on the crew of this ship and he told me that after taking troops from Dunkirk they went down to Brest with the intention of picking up more troops who had moved down there. He used to say that when they got there the harbour was already under German fire so the skipper did not dock and they sailed out. It is possible that he got the harbour wrong and it was in fact St Nazaire or perhaps they then went on to St Nazaire. I guess in time peoples memories do get blurred.

[ScouseBoy]

The fog of war,  as they say.

[Sapper59]

So now we have three soldiers who say they were on board, a civilian lady who boarded what sounds like a packet ship and now a crew member whose son says his farther was possibly St, Nazair on 17th June 1940 on the Ben-My-Chree, (several ship arrived at Brest only to be moved on the St. Nazaire) so either it was another ship or another ship was in dry dock on that day, can't be in two places at the same time, so someone is wrong. The logs say in dock with clean loos but.... I have checked the ship register and there was not another ship with a name anything like Ben-My-Chree on the seas at that time and it can't be a confusion on dates as the LAST ships left St. Nazair on the 18th, June        weirder and weirder

[ScouseBoy]

She may have been on a sensitive or secret mission.  She may have been carrying a senior politician or a high ranking officer.

[MJW01]

Sorry that I've come very late to this but I might be able to shed some light on it. My grandfather was part of the BEF and was evacuated from St Nazaire. He narrowly missed getting onboard the Lancastria and watched from the harbour as it was attacked and sunk. He was evacuated soon after and was then posted to the Isle of Man to guard prison camps housing 'aliens' (German, Austrian and Italian civilians living in the UK). It was there that he met my grandmother. After they married in 1942, he was talking to her father, my great-grandfather. They discovered that they had both seen the sinking of the Lancastria that night at St Nazaire; my grandfather from the dockside and my great-grandfather, from the the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company ship he was serving on, lying off the French port. I have struggled to find any mention of IoMSP ships involved in Operation Aerial and wondered how the story of their conversation came about. But the accounts here could explain it.