Ship History

	History


RETURN TO THE HOMEPAGE S.S. CITY OF BENARES 1936
Ellerman Lines era (1936 - 1939): The City of Benares was built in 1936 by Barclay Curle & Co., Glasgow for Ellerman Lines and was their only two funnelled liner. She was designed for their England to India service. Sadly during the Second World War she was tragically sunk while carrying child evacuees from Britain to Canada under the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) programme. Wartime Service and Her Tragic Loss (1939 - 1940): During the Second World War, like many other ocean liners, the City of Benares was requisitioned as a troopship. In 1940 the City of Benares was part of convoy OB-213, and was being used as a refugee ship in the overseas evacuation scheme of Great Britain, organised by Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) which had been set up in June 1940. Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II, were designed to save the population of urban or military areas, from Nazi German aerial bombing of cities and military targets such as docks. Civilians, particularly children, were moved to rural areas thought to be less at risk. Operation Pied Piper began on 1 September 1939 and prior to the Battle of Britain officially relocated more than 1.5 million people. It was a unique period in British history. In May 1940 the threat to the UK from German air attacks grew and the possibility of invasion heightened, leading to spontaneous offers of hospitality and refuge for British children from overseas governments. These began with Canada on 31 May, where the government forwarded offers from private households to the United Kingdom government. In a few days similar offers were received from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. To co-ordinate the British response to these offers, an interdepartmental committee was established, chaired by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions, Geoffrey Shakespeare, and including representatives from the Ministries of Health, Labour, and Pensions, the Dominions, Home, Foreign and Scottish Offices, the Treasury and the Board of Education. The committee established a Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) in June 1940. Further waves of official evacuation and re-evacuation occurred from the south and east coast in June 1940, when a seaborne invasion was expected and from affected cities after the Blitz began in September 1940. There were also official evacuations from the UK to other parts of the British Empire, and many non-official evacuations, within and from the UK. The Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) scheme was a British organisation, that between July and September 1940 evacuated British children from the UK, in order to escape the Blitz (and World War II more generally). The children were sent to mainly to Canada, but also to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In the first few months over 210,000 children were registered with the scheme. A month before the voyage of the City of Benares, a German U-boat torpedoed one ship carrying British children, the S.S. Volendam, on the 30th August 1940; fortunately, all passengers were rescued. But a worse disaster was about to occur which would have far greater consequences for the overseas evacuation programme. On this voyage from Liverpool 90 child evacuee passengers were being evacuated from wartime Britain to Canada. The City of Benares ship departed Liverpool on the 13th September 1940, bound for the Quebec and Montreal in Canada, under the command of her Master, Landles Nicoll. She was the flagship of the convoy commodore Rear Admiral E.J.G. Mackinnon DSO RN and the first ship in the centre column. Late in the evening of 17 September, she was sighted by U-48, who fired two torpedos at her at 23.45 hours. Both torpedoes missed, and at 00.01 hours on 18 September, the U-boat fired another torpedo at her. The torpedo struck her in the stern causing her to sink within 30 minutes, 253 miles west-southwest of Rockhall. 15 minutes after the torpedo hit, the vessel had been abandoned, though there were difficulties with lowering the lifeboats on the weather side of the ship. HMS Hurricane arrived on the scene 24 hours later, and picked up 105 survivors and landed them at Greenock. During the attack on the City of Benares, the S.S. Marina was also torpedoed. Unfortunately the HMS Hurricane mistakenly counted one of the lifeboats from the S.S. Marina for one of the lifeboats from S.S. City of Benares. As a result, Lifeboat 12 was left alone at sea. Its passengers had three weeks supply of food, but enough water only for one week. In the lifeboat were approximately 30 Indian crewmen, a Polish merchant, several sailors, Mary Cornish, Father Rory O'Sullivan (a Roman Catholic priest who had volunteered to be an escort for the evacuee children), and six evacuee boys from the CORB program. They spent eight days afloat in the Atlantic Ocean before being sighted from the air and rescued by HMS Anthony. Their ordeal in that time awaiting rescue must have been horrendous. The consequences of the attack were devastating, even by wartime standards, and it marked the effective end of all overseas evacuation from Britain, both public and private. Seventy CORB children were among 134 passengers killed, along with 131 of the 200-strong crew; loss of life was exacerbated by severe weather in the night, including gale-force winds, storms, rain and hail. The ship, built in 1936 and weighing 11,000 tons, had been fitted with up-to-date facilities for carrying passengers, with special provision for children. One of the last CORB vessels to sail, it had passed safety checks from Ministry of Shipping representatives prior to sailing. It left Liverpool in convoy on 13 September, with lifeboat accommodation for 494 people and additional buoyancy apparatus for another 452; regular boat drills were held on the voyage. Yet the combination of weather, darkness and isolation was to result in a death toll that shook Britain and its allies, and became one of the war’s most notorious events. As a result the City of Benares went down in history and forever is remembered as "The Children's Ship" due to this very tragic sinking. In total, 248 of the 406 people on board, including 77 of the 90 child evacuees. It was one of the worst maritime tragedies of the Second World War and prompted the immediate cessation of the overseas evacuation programme. By this time the Children's Overseas Reception Board had evacuated 2,664 children, who became known as "Seaevacuees", over a period of three months. Canada received the bulk of them – 1,532 in nine parties. Three parties sailed for Australia, with a total of 577 children, while 353 went to South Africa in two parties and 202 to New Zealand, again in two parties. A further 24,000 children had been approved for sailing in that time and over 1,000 escorts, including doctors and nurses, enrolled. At its height, CORB employed some 620 staff. Wealthy parents continued to send their children to safe countries. It is estimated that during the first two years of the war around 14,000 children were sent privately to the CORB countries. However this is a small number compared to the thousands of children who were evacuated from the major cities to other locations within Britain. Although evacuation ceased when the SS City of Benares was torpedoed in September 1940, CORB remained active. It was only disbanded, along with the advisory councils, four years later, at which point the perceived German military threat had diminished.