Miracles on the Water - the Heroic Survivors of the U-boat Attack on the SS City of Benares - One of the Great Lost Stories of WWII

by Nagorski, Tom

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London United Kingdom: Robinson, 2007 345 pages index b/w photos - The SS City of Benares was a cruise liner built for Ellerman Lines by Barclay, Curle & Co of Glasgow in 1936. During the Second World War, on September 17, 1940, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-48 with the loss of 248 of the 406 people on board, including 77 of the 90 child evacuee passengers. The 90 children were being evacuated to Canada from wartime Britain for their safety. This act prompted the immediate cessation of the official overseas evacuation scheme of Great Britain, the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB). The SS City of Benares was the flagship of convoy OB-213, and there were several famous persons aboard. These included Mary Cornish, an accomplished classical pianist who had volunteered as a children's escort, and James Baldwin-Webb, a parliamentarian. During the attack on the SS City of Benares, the SS Marina, part of convoy OB-213, was also torpedoed. HMS Hurricane came to the rescue about 24 hours later. But it had counted one of the lifeboats from the SS Marina for one of the lifeboats from SS 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 on the Atlantic Ocean before being sighted from the air and rescued by HMS Anthony. . Reprint. Soft Cover. New/No Jacket.

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