Sir, As the author of a book on the sinking of the Lancastria in 1940, may I add to Mr Boney’s letter about how the story was handled at the time (June 19)?

When he learnt of the disaster on the evening of June 17, Churchill decided that the British media should be instructed not to report it. There had been quite enough bad news, he felt — Marshal Pétain was taking power in France and seeking an armistice with the Germans at that very moment. Though British newspapers had prepared reports after survivors got back to Britain, they obeyed the order and did not print them.

The ban remained effective until the end of July when the New York Sun ran photographs of the sinking. These had been taken by a British merchant sailor on another ship at the scene in the Loire estuary, who had subsequently crossed to the US. After New York correspondents of British newspapers sent the news back to London the papers ran the reports they had been sitting on.

What was intriguing was that, after that, the disaster seemed to slide out of history. Despite the death toll of 3,500 or more, it got hardly a mention in subsequent accounts of the war, including the official Royal Navy volume on the period. The current effort by the Lancastria Association in Scotland to gain full recognition for those who died off Saint-Nazaire on June 17, 1940, is a long overdue effort to put that right. It deserves all support south of the Border, too, despite Downing Street’s refusal to do so as the Scots have.

Jonathan Fenby
London WC1

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