Ahoy - Mac's Web Log

Hello Mac,

First of all I would like to congratulate you on producing this wonderful website, a great credit to you.

When my father passed away in 2005 I suddenly realised that, though he had told many tales of his time in the army 1939/45, I really only had the basic details. His tales always sounded interesting and I now want to try and find a lot more about the places he went to and the battles he was involved in. He was at Monte Cassino in Italy and also, more relevant to your site, he was involved in the evacuation of Dunkirk or, more specifically, Saint Nazaire.

He was rescued by one of the fleet of small craft and told of how those on board watched the RMS 'Lancastria' go down and how they pulled some survivors from the sea. I remember how he always joked about the small boat that rescued him being captained by a drunken scotsman and had a chinese crew! He also said that the small vessel nearly sank in the wake of a French warship that was heading out of Saint Nazaire for North Africa. I just wondered if you knew of any records that list the names of the small vessels that were off Saint Nazaire at the time the 'Lancastria' sank and whether crew lists were ever documented? Also, would there be records of the French warships name that made a run for it? I know it is a long shot, but I would dearly love to know the name of the small vessel and of the captain who rescued my father and his fellow soldiers. A wonderfully brave seaman, sober or not!

Thank you again for a very interesting, totally addictive, site!!

Best wishes,
Roger Hall, Shrewsbury, England, UK.

Roger,

Thank you for your quite flattering remarks about AHOY.

It is a joint effort with my web master Terry Kearns in Atlanta Georgia who takes my writings and research and turns them into our site that is out there on the WWW for anyone who may by chance visit us. Without my friend and his expertise AHOY would not operate.

Nice area you live in in Shropshire, my last ship was HMAS Shropshire, which had been subscribed to by the people of your County, and donated to the RAN through the initiative of Winston Churchill to replace Canberra, sunk at Savo Island on August 9 1942, many who survived the sinking, as I did, went on to join Shropshire, and be the best ship I ever had the pleasure to serve in.
 
Roger, I do not have any details about the small boats that may have taken off the soldiers and your father from St Nazaire, but there are two Lancastria Associations, one in England and one in Scotland, here are their URL's and I suggest you pose your question about the drunken Scottish skipper.

http://www.lancastria-association.org.uk/ ( England Association URL )

http://www.lancastria.org.uk/ ( Lancastria Association of Scotland )

I have no detail about a French warship leaving St Nazaire, but I do correspond with a Frenchman Yves Beaujuge, at St Nazaire and he has a web site at URL:

http://www.lelancastria.com/ 

it might be worth asking him if he has any record of French warships departing the scene on that fateful day.

Again nice to hear from you and best wishes,

Mac. Gregory.

Dear Mac

Many thanks for your swift response to my enquiry, it is much appreciated. Yes, Shropshire is a beautiful county and we are very lucky to live here, even on this cold and blustery autumnal morning!

Thank you very much for your information, I will certainly contact the people you suggested. Yves's website looks particularly encouraging as he has a list of all the ships in the area at that time.

After writing to you I continued my search and came across a BBC report from 2005 about the 65th anniversary of the sinking. The report mentions a few of the ships involved in the evacuation and from there I found this website http://naval-history.net/xDKWW2-3900Intro.htm which gives details in depth of ship movements on 17th June 1940 and includes numbers of troops rescued by each vessel, plus details of ships lost. It is a very detailed site with a great amount of info on all naval activity between 1939 and 1942. It is obviously an ongoing project and may be of interest to other people contacting you.

Also, this website http://www.photoship.co.uk/Old%20Ships/picturesp.html has photos of many of the ships involved in the evacuation........and almost every other vessel around in WW1 and WW2! Finally, this site http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz/searchguide has details of thousands of ships histories, including many involved at St Nazaire. No doubt you are aware of these sites already, but others may benefit from the amazing detail they hold.

So, with your help and a bit of 'digging' myself, I have made quite a bit of progress already! What all this research has done has made me realise, even more, just how much my generation and my daughters generation owe to people like my father, yourself and millions of others who risked and sometimes lost there lives so that we have been able to live in peace. I think we should make sure that this and future generations are made aware of the sacrifices made by your generation and the Internet and websites such as yours are wonderful examples of how that awareness can be spread.

Very best wishes and thanks again,
Roger

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