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SHE lies 70ft down, a brown-black, rusting steel tomb, the final resting place for countless soldiers, airmen, sailors, refugees, men, women and children.
Infinitely silent now in the olive-green dark water, as embracing tides swirl silt around her ruptured, wounded form, her collapsing bulkheads speak of the frenzied moments when she was transformed from a beacon of hope into a burning, sinking mass grave.
This is the wreck of Lancastria, Britain's biggest maritime disaster. A tragedy so overwhelming that Prime Minister Winston Churchill, fearing the effect on morale after Dunkirk, decided it was too unbearable to be reported. He never lifted the ban.
It is believed that up to 5,000 souls - perhaps many more - perished on board the former Liverpool-based Cunard Line luxury cruise ship, as she was about to depart from her anchorage off St Nazaire, as France fell in World War II.
Lancastria was part of Operation Aerial, a near-forgotten mop-up mission to evacuate the 150,000 soldiers left behind in Europe after Dunkirk. Columns of troops and refugees funnelled into St Nazaire, fleeing the on-coming German advance as it swept westwards across France.
It was Lancastria's ill-luck to delay her departure on Monday afternoon, June 17, 1940, as her master, Capt Rudolph Sharp, of Birkenhead, fretted about needing an armed escort down the Loire estuary and U-boats lurking off-shore.
While debating this, Lancastria, crammed with some 7,000 people, was an ideal target for the crack squadron of Junkers Ju88 dive bombers which swooped over the harbour.
Four direct hits caused catastrophic damage as the bombs smashed through cargo holds (packed with airmen) and down the funnel (or near it) at 3.45pm. With her hull plates blown out beneath the waterline, Lancastria soon foundered.
As she rolled over, people swarmed over her sides like ants racing from a flooding nest. Thick oil gushing from her burst fuel tanks coated everybody black, whether alive or dead in the water around her. Yet one officer stood on the up-turned hull and nonchalantly lit a cigarette before stepping into the water.
'Lancastria represented a floating piece of Britain for many at the end of their tether,' says Jonathan Fenby, who has written the first comprehensive account of the catastrophe.
'People were desperate to get aboard her. A soldier described her as seeming as solid as the Strand Palace Hotel, which evokes so many comforting images.
'Her officers were under colossal strain and had seen the Orient liner Oronsay hit nearby. But Capt Sharp ignored orders to leave, waiting for a destroyer escort. Meantime more people poured on board.
'There are three stories happening simultaneously. The fall of France, the mass exodus westwards and the Lancastria tragedy.'
In this highly-readable, moving account, Fenby skilfully weaves these themes together, using information from the Lancastria Association (for survivors and families), archives, museums and first-hand research in France. Packed with characters, it is also chocker with heartbreaking and up-lifting stories of human endurance, with some surprising humour.
'I interviewed about a dozen survivors out of the two dozen left, plus others like an old farmer who had found the bodies washing ashore. For years afterwards, fishermen were finding human bones in the nets,' says Fenby.
Two-year-old Jacqueline Tillyer was pitched out of a lifeboat into the sea. Her mother, Vera, held her, crying 'Baby here, baby here'.
The toddler took up the cry and repeated the words until she passed out. Rescued by a British destroyer, HMS Highlander, the captain's steward dunked Jacqueline alternately in basins of hot and cold water and she revived.
Lancastria's First Officer, Harry Grattidge, swam around after the ship sank and saw a startled face staring out of whirlpool. Grabbing the head by the hair to drag the person to safety, he suddenly realised that it wasn't attached to a body.
On arrival in Plymouth, survivors were officially ordered not to talk about the tragedy. Even after the war, many survivors simply never discussed it. Besides the attitude, as L/Cpl Fred Coe said, was that you had to get on with life.
Fenby says: 'All these small elements I hope go together to make a bigger narrative to explain how people behaved under extreme stress. This is a real British finest hour story THE Sinking of the Lancastria, Britain's Greatest Maritime Disaster and Churchill's Cover-up, by Jonathan Fenby, Simon & Schuster, pounds 14.99
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