The Doomed Story of the Lancastria — Britain’s Worst Sea Disaster That Churchill Kept Secret

On the afternoon of June 17, 1940, a short report reached 10 Downing Street. Churchill read it and decided on the spot that it would not be published — the papers, he said, had quite enough disaster for one day. The report concerned a grey-painted former cruise liner anchored off the coast of western France. Her name was the Lancastria, and somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000 people were aboard her. By nightfall, about 2,500 had been pulled from the water alive. It remains the largest single loss of life in British maritime history — more than the Titanic and the Lusitania combined. And for weeks, the country was told nothing. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lan... https://navyhistory.org/2021/09/the-l... https://schoolshistory.org.uk/topics/...