see "Loss of HMT Lancastria at St Nazaire" and "I wish to make an Internet site on the wreck of the Lancastria"
Hello Mac,
Congratulations on a most enjoyable and informative website.
I was drawn to it whilst searching for information on Lancastria and the other ships involved in the St Nazaire evacuation.
My interest was prompted as I have started transcribing my late father’s memoirs. He was heading out for Lancastria when she was sunk, and subsequently returned to England on Oronsay.
Can you please let me have details of Yves’ website re St Nazaire.
He may be interested in what my father had to write about the incident.
Many thanks
Cliff Thornton
Essex, U.K.
Cliff,
Thank you for your kind comments.
http://www.lelancastria.com/
http://www.lelancastria.com/Contact-us.html
If you wish to send us your story about your late Father, we would be pleased to add it to our Lancastria site, and Yves may well see it that way.
Best regards,
Mac.
OK Mac,
Thank you for your interest.
Please find attached an extract from my father’s notes.
This is an edited version as his notes reflect his horror and emotions at witnessing the loss of the Lancastria and its men.
It was his first introduction to the horrors of war and judging by his detailed notes it left a great impression on him.
I would be interested to learn the name of the captain of the “Oronsay”.
I have searched the Net but to no avail.
Thanks
Cliff
The following is an edited extract from the unpublished memoirs of Eskdale W. Thornton, serving in the Royal Engineers (990 Port Maintenance Company), written in 1943.
Nantes – Sunday 16th June
We heard that the local NAAFI had been thrown open for British troops to help themselves. I filled the legs of my battle dress trousers with packets of cigarettes and chocolate. We were warned to pack up our things as we might have to move at short notice. We went to bed with uneasy minds….but somehow got to sleep….but not for long.
It was about 01.30 hrs when we were roused by Capt. Triffitt and told to parade in one hour with rifles, ammo and spare uniforms. We fell in and waited for transport. We didn’t know where we were headed, but after a while I realized we were making for St Nazaire. The trucks took us to the edge of the docks and we marched on, over some dock gates (they figured in the news a year or two later) and plonked down to await developments.
In came a destroyer, up alongside the quay, and 300 of us went aboard. She eased off and started to back out, stern first, when one of her screws got entangled with a hawser….and we didn’t move an inch in the next hour. We fretted, we fumed. We started to sing the old anthem “Why are we waiting?”. We shouted, we raved,…we WERE annoyed, to say the least. We didn’t know how near Jerry was…maybe 50 miles away…maybe 5…but we didn’t fancy being caught like rats in a trap on that destroyer lying a few yards off the quay edge.
At length it got underway again…slowly…and out into St Nazaire bay. Our destroyer came alongside a French paddle boat and we got orders to jump across – with our kits – then the paddle boat set off and made tracks for a large troop transport lying maybe 1,000 yards away.
And then the fun started……
The clouds were low….the sky was one mass of cloud with gaps here and there. And out of these gaps there started to come diving planes….strange looking planes……JERRIES……I never saw more than two at any one time, and I can’t say how many there would be “on the job” but I guess at a dozen.
There were three British fighters …Spitfires…but to us their technique seemed all wrong. A Jerry would dive out of a gap, let loose at a ship, and away into the clouds again. All three British Spitfires went away like blazes after him into the clouds, and then out of the clouds from another direction would come another Jerry who would go with his dirty work unmolested, until the three Spitfires came back into sight, spotted him, and then all three would go after him, he would go up into the clouds and the performance would start all over again.
There were two destroyers in the bay and they did their best….but Jerry was clever. Down out of the clouds, bomb, bomb, bomb and then up into the clouds again….all in a matter of seconds….they hardly had a chance to get a range before the plane was gone.
Away to the N.W. I saw one plane dive down on a large troop transport… three bombs seemed to come down…two made terrific splashes…one didn`t. That was the Oronsay…of which more later.
By this time we were a mere 400-500 yards from the first Transport, that I later learned that it was the “Lancastria”. It is said to have had on board 5,700 soldiers and nurses…and wounded…and was only waiting of us 300 to get going. We never reached it. A Nazi plane dived down on it, from stern to bows and let loose. I saw two bombs….some say there were three, but I only noticed two…I saw them fall and hit the boat. Didn’t make much of a sight ….at first.
One loses sense of time…one is shaken…gets excited….it all seems a dream at times. But according to my recollection, that boat …a 16,500 ton vessel…went down in 16 minutes, some say 12, some say 25.
It had been an oil boat…one or other of the bombs had hit the tanks….and over the water there was a carpet of thick oil…some say nine inches deep….that seems on the high side….but it was certainly inches. It was a surface that even the best swimmer could not keep his head out of….and into that went thousands of our lads. They just drowned in oil….by the hundred….
And that oil caught fire…..
And Jerry machine-gunned the lads in the water too….
It was natural that we try to rescue some of them….there were lifeboats on our paddle-boat…but when attempts were made to lower them they appeared to be for decoration only. I’ve heard one was actually lowered but can’t be certain for there was another diversion….Jerry turned his attention on we 300 squeezed like sardines on the paddle-boat…. A wooden thing and we all knew that we didn’t need two or three bombs….one solitary bomb, even a small one, in the right spot and we were going to get very wet…if not oily.
The paddle-boat had no gun…the destroyers were a long way away and firing at another plane. But we had our rifles…and I estimate that 200 rifles started belting controlled fire at those planes each time one dived. Whether it was our rifle fire or not I don’t know…but after nine dives at us…in which no bomb fell near enough to splash us …Jerry left us alone.
We went on alongside another transport…the “Oronsay”…but were waved way…and left it. The French skipper of the paddle-boat was frantic by this time and I believe he only carried on because he was “pressed”….by something sticking in his back. Things looked black though when the “Oronsay” wouldn’t take us. Signals were exchanged with one of the destroyers and eventually we went back alongside “Oronsay” and started to scramble aboard. We had to climb up onto the bridge, along its very edge, climb up on some boxes and then leap for it…. one by one….300 of us.
I wandered away on the “Oronsay” …up onto “C” and “D” deck…where I found everything a shambles. This was the boat I’d seen hit earlier on. Jerry had dived across her….over the bridge…from starboard to port…and his second bomb had hit the bridge fair and square….gone clean through…the floor of the bridge was one gaping hole….through the skipper’s quarters (I think) on “A” Deck, and made one great mess of the lounge on “B” Deck. One of the near misses had caused something more than a slight leak. One thing saved her, only nine weeks before, a covering of
re-inforced concrete had been put over the bridge….nine inches thick. Nowhere else on the boat….just there on the bridge…where the bomb had hit. It knocked the concrete into thousands of fragments, like a toffee hammer hitting a slab of toffee, but it did its job and took the main blow. Only snag was that the bits of concrete had peppered the life boats on both sides for’ard. The for’ard funnel was also like a sieve.
It was said that the bomb, in exploding had snipped the peak off the skipper’s cap….
I certainly saw him in his cap…minus peak.
Before moving off we took on a good few survivors, mostly those who had been in the oil and water and got yanked out quickly. I only remember seeing six survivors who were really clean. The first was a man who, when “L” had been first hit, had stripped off completely and swum for it. I remember him being hauled aboard our paddle-boat and asking for a fag….
The others were some officers who joined the “Oronsay” with a lifeboat… the only one which made the grade from the “L”.
The survivors were badly shaken. We showered clothes on them from our kit-bags…but 19 out of 20 wouldn’t put clothes on. They just wanted a blanket, something they could throw off quickly and dive for it.
Of the survivors we took on board, all did not last out to England….we had to leave a lot at different points on the way.
The first night I slept on deck, I felt safest there. We were on our own…no escort…but doing a nice speed…6,000 of us….somewhere off the coast of newly occupied France. Soon after daybreak I noticed through the haze that land lay away on the starboard bow….and I realized that couldn’t be England. A few seconds later the ship gave a lurch to port and it turned through 90 degrees in less space than I would have dreamed, and we sailed out into the Atlantic, away from the land like blazes….
That was the only miscalculation I am aware of on the part of a skipper who brought that boat home on a pocket compass, a small map and a bit of wire. He was decorated for it and deserved it.
Cliff,
Thank you for that.
I thought that Oronsay had to limp home to England without her Captain, I think he may have been killed, I can find no trace of his name, see this report.
We made our way over to the “Oronsay”, a 20,000 ton liner and this had also been bombed. The bridge had been blown away, and the engines were not working. Although bombs were still falling all round, and it was still being machine-gunned, we got on board, still lucky not to be hit, it was a miracle the shop did not sink.
The wonderful crew eventually got one engine working and they rigged up manual steering from the stern, and we got moving as dusk fell. We limped away slowly across the Bay of Biscay, committing the dead to the deep as we went. It was a very dangerous area for submarines and E-Boats, but we eventually got to Falmouth, with a bad list to the starboard. The wounded were put ashore on Falmouth, and then we went off to Plymouth and then to Liverpool.
Best regards,
Mac.
Hi Mac.
I'm not sure that the Captain of the Oronsay was killed at St-Nazaire.
From The Sinking Of The Lancastria (Fenby, 2005), pp.203-204: "The direct hit on the Oronsay's bridge by a German bomb at lunchtime had destroyed the chart, steering and wireless rooms, as well as breaking her captain's leg. ..The captain had been told he could land the men back in St-Nazaire, but he chose to head for home, leaving at dusk."
A later report head-lined Gallantry At Sea appeared in The Times 10 Oct 1940:
"O.B.E. (CIVIL DIVISION)
Captain A. E. NICHOLLS, master, ss. Oronsay (Orient
Steam Navigation Company, Limited, London).
COMMENDED
Mr. I. E. G. GOLDSWORTHY, R.D., Staff Commander,
ss. Oronsay.
The transport Oronsay was withdrawing troops from
France and rescued a large number of military officers
and other ranks. She was heavily attacked from the air.
Captain Nicholls, ably assisted by Staff Commander
Goldsworthy, who had been injured, showed outstand-
ing resource and coolness and brought his ship home
without any bridge instruments or charts."
The first seems to contradict the second as to who was injured.
Best regards,
Martin Elliget
London (ex Brisbane)
Martin,
No one from the Oronsay is listed as killed in the CWGC lists, he did break a leg and helped to get his ship home to England.
But you have found his name for me, my thanks Martin.
All the best,
Mac.
Hi Mac.
I'm not sure that the Captain of the Oronsay was killed at St-Nazaire.
From The Sinking Of The Lancastria (Fenby, 2005), pp.203-204: "The direct hit on the Oronsay's bridge by a German bomb at lunchtime had destroyed the chart, steering and wireless rooms, as well as breaking her captain's leg. ..The captain had been told he could land the men back in St-Nazaire, but he chose to head for home, leaving at dusk."
A later report head-lined Gallantry At Sea appeared in The Times 10 Oct 1940:
"O.B.E. (CIVIL DIVISION)
Captain A. E. NICHOLLS, master, ss. Oronsay (Orient
Steam Navigation Company, Limited, London).
COMMENDED
Mr. I. E. G. GOLDSWORTHY, R.D., Staff Commander,
ss. Oronsay.
The transport Oronsay was withdrawing troops from
France and rescued a large number of military officers
and other ranks. She was heavily attacked from the air.
Captain Nicholls, ably assisted by Staff Commander
Goldsworthy, who had been injured, showed outstand-
ing resource and coolness and brought his ship home
without any bridge instruments or charts."
The first seems to contradict the second as to who was injured.
Best regards,
Martin Elliget
London (ex Brisbane)
Martin,
No one from the Oronsay is listed as killed in the CWGC lists, he did break a leg and helped to get his ship home to England.
But you have found his name for me, my thanks Martin.
All the best,
Mac.
Wow! That is excellent news Mac.
I will add the details to my father’s memoirs.
Please pass my appreciation on to Martin Elliget for his discovery.
I noticed that Captain Sharpe of the Lancastria is mentioned in several websites.
I hope that you may be able to redress the balance owing to Capt. Nicholls.
All the best
Cliff
Cliff,
Captain Sharpe when in command of Laconia, and carrying about 1,800 Italian POW's was sunk by German U-Boat U-156, and he went down with his ship.
I have sent my Web Master the details of Captain Nicholls, and he will no doubt publish it on AHOY.
Best regards,
Mac.
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