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Below are a collection of eyewitness accounts from local French people who witnessed the disaster from various points around the shore and overlooking Lancastria’s position, 5 miles away.
Madam Alice Evain, whose father was British:
"About June 10th 1940, my mother, brother and myself were refugees from Paris and travelled to Pornichet, a few kilometres from St. Nazaire. I was 18 at the time. One day we suddenly heard a regimental band coming from La Baule towards St. Nazaire, all very determined, some of the boys on stretchers as a big hotel at La Baule had been occupied as a hospital. They were singing military marches, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary", for instance, with all their heart.
"The next thing I remember was the bombing of St. Naziare and we heard the bombs and saw black clouds. We were all horrified. Some day afterwards as we walked along the sea we were shocked to see a naked body, all white amongst the dark rocks. During the day an old truck stopped in front of our house, probably to gather more corpses. These were thrown among a pack of bodies the next day.
"The next day another body had been deposited by the sea, face down in the sand. A German officer came down from the road to look at this dressed British soldier. He stayed a while to examine the body. It is extraordinary to recall these terrible days after a long silence. We learned recently that these events had been hidden from the British people."
Emile Boutin :
"The first bodies came ashore here at Le Moutiers on June 28th and there were many of them on June 28th. After that date there was practically none, and then very many more on July 11th .
"There had been a storm and this had stirred and sent back bodies to the shore, then there were quite a few, I have the exact figures at home, I have all the arrival dates. Sometimes one body arrived, sometimes 16 arrived at once, you see, other times there were four days, five days without anything….
"On a sea dike near to my home they were washed up. Well this dike protected the land at the back, so that the sea could not damage anything. Theoretically. So this is where we made the cemetery for the victims, just behind the wall.
"It was very basic, a communal grave and we put them all in it together, that's it. And they stayed here until the end of the war. Moutiers people never talk, never talked about the Lancastria, but about the cemetery of the British.
"Locally when we refer to the cemetery of the British, it was not the one that is in the municipal cemetery in the village, where the victims were taken after the war, it was down at the shoreline, near to the dike.
"Hundreds of bodies arrived that summer on the coast, from Piriac to the Island of Ré, but especially in Saint-Nazaire, La Baule, La Pointe Saint Gildas, Bourgneuf bay, Noirmoutier and the Island of Yeu."
Michel Lugez:
"On June 17th, 1940 I am in the Old Pornichet square and general commotion: everybody is talking about the German planes dropping bombs on the ships that are in the bay.
"At first, I head for the shore to see and indeed we saw the planes that were dropping bombs on the ships in the bay. There was an enormous amount of ships embarking the troops again: cruise ships, small ones…. and cargo boats as well.
"And then in the afternoon, this is when we also found out that the Lancastria was sinking, we went back to see and from here we really saw what was happening: all the small boats that were going to try and rescue them…unfortunately, we could do absolutely nothing.
"The bodies did not reach the shore immediately after the ship sank but by July the bodies came ashore in large numbers. Here in Pornichet for example, there were two or three at each tide. At the Pointe du Bec there were others. At Sainte Marguerite, all along the coast there were corpses that were given back by the sea. At each tide, there were corpses being washed up on the beach…"
Claude Gourio:
"We were placing them on the dock at the slipway in Pornic. We were placing them on the dock and after they were brought to the morgue to be identified. In France, in the French navy we wear bracelets on our wrists to identify the seaman. There they had chains around their necks with their ID plates on it, with their name and their number. They practically all had it and this helped with the identification. Many of the bodies had lost the arms and the hands and if they had been French it would have been impossible to identify them. That was something that shocked everybody and that's why we do not talk about this event any more, it was too horrifying."
Charles Merlet:
"We walking along the coast on December 2nd. That's when we noticed that there were bones, more bones and military clothing.
"And in these clothes that had really deteriorated and were damaged, we collected the wallets of these poor men who drowned… And then the many bones, we never collected them; it was not possible there were so many all over…
"But the wallets, all the papers, my brother collected them; there were about fifteen, 14 or 15 perhaps 16…..
"He kept them all during the war at home, and finally he gave them to the allies who came on shore from the torpedo boat the Iroquois which came to the Island of Yeu at the time of the Liberation. He had put them in an envelope or in a bag, and he gave them to the Canadians.
"For what purpose? Well to give them to the authorities, to pass on to the families."
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