SS City of Benares was a British steam turbine ocean liner, built for Ellerman Lines by Barclay, Curle & Co of Glasgow in 1936.
During the Second World War, City of Benares was used as an evacuee ship to transport 90 children from the United Kingdom to Canada. The sank her by torpedoes in September 1940 with the loss of 260 people out of a complement of 408, including the death of 77 of the evacuated children. The sinking caused such public outrage in the United Kingdom that it led to Winston Churchill cancelling the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) plan to relocate British children abroad.
Prewar history City of Benares was built by Barclay Curle in Glasgow, Scotland. She was launched on 5 August 1936, and completed in October 1936. Benares, as she was known, was long, with a beam of and draught of . She was powered by three steam turbines, which were supplied by Cammell Laird. They were oil-fired and drove a single screw via single-reduction gearing, giving her a speed of , though, during her trials she achieved a speed of , without excessively pressing the turbines.
Her maiden voyage departed on 24 October 1936 from Liverpool to Bombay via Marseille, Suez and Karachi. Her return voyage departed on 7 December 1936, with a full cargo of Indian produce. From the beginning of her maiden voyage to the sailing of City of Port Elizabeth in 1952, she was the largest and most modern ship in the Ellerman fleet. She was also the only ship in Ellerman Lines that had more than one funnel (though her forward funnel was a dummy). She was managed by City Line Ltd on behalf of her owners, Ellerman Lines Ltd. The UK official number was 164096 and her call sign was GZBW.
Second World War When war was declared on Germany by Great Britain on 3 September 1939, Benares was on her way to England, having just finished her usual cruise to India. When the news of war reached the ship she was immediately re-routed to Cape Town, South Africa. There, all passengers disembarked, the ship was fitted out with a stern deck gun and repainted in naval grey to camouflage her from enemy U-boats. When Benares sailed again, she had no passengers.
Later in May 1940, Ellerman Lines decided to provide three of its largest passenger ships, Benares, , and City of Simla, for the CORB to evacuate children. These three liners were fitted out for war service, and by August Benares, City of Simla, and City of Paris were ready for service. This would be Benares first Atlantic-crossing. On 10 September 1940, City of Paris set sail with 45 CORB children, bound for Cape Town.
Final voyage On 13 September 1940 Benares departed Liverpool, England, sailing in Convoy OB 213, bound for Montreal, with 408 people — 90 CORB children (ages five to fifteen), their ten escorts (3 men, 7 women), 91 fare-paying passengers (including ten children and forty-three women), 6 convoy representatives, 168 Indian Lascars (the catering crew was from Portuguese Goa) and 43 British crew (including five women). She was under the command of Captain Landles Nicoll and the commodore of the convoy, Admiral Edmond J. G. Mackinnon. As she was the lead ship of the convoy, she was placed in the centre column, column 5. The convoy had the protection of a destroyer, , accompanied by two corvettes — and .
Some of the CORB children could rightly be called refugees. Two of the children, Patricia (Pat) Allen (of Liverpool), twelve, and Michael Brooker (of Kent), ten, called 'veterans' by the other children, had survived the U-boat attack on Volendam, which had been carrying 321 CORB children, 31 escorts, 255 other passengers, and 273 crew. The hit Volendam with two torpedoes, only one of which detonated. The other was found later in the ship's bow. The ship did not sink, but all the passengers were still evacuated in eighteen lifeboats. There was only one casualty, the ship's purser, who fell between a lifeboat and the ship, and subsequently drowned. Patricia Allen came home to discover her house had been destroyed, while Michael Brooker's had an unexploded bomb in it.
The Grimmond home in Brixton had been bombed too, so Edward Grimmond and his wife, Hannah, decided to send five of their eleven children off to Sherwood Lane School in Liverpool (where the CORB children were staying before they boarded Benares). They were Augusta (Gussie), thirteen; Violet, ten; Constance (Connie), nine; Edward (Eddie), eight; and Leonard (Lenny), five. These children had been on the reserve list but when the escorts saw the ordeal the children had been through, they took them off the reserve list and added them to the list of children who would be sailing on Benares. It was a decision they would regret for the rest of their lives.
The six escorts assigned to care for CORB children were Miss Mary Cornish, an accomplished pianist who taught lessons; Miss Sybil Gilliat-Smith, a preschool teacher, accomplished artist, and ambulance driver during air raids. Mrs. Maud Hillman, an infant teacher; Mr. Michael Rennie, who felt a calling to the church and was going to go into theology after the trip; Reverend William Henry King, 28, an Anglican cleric; and Father Roderick (Rory) O'Sullivan,, a Roman Catholic priest. Accompanying the escorts who cared for the children were senior escort Miss Marjorie Day and a teacher at a private girls school; reserve escort Mrs. Lilian Towns, an ambulance driver from New Zealand, plus doctor Mrs. Margaret Zeal, and her assistant, as nurse, Miss Dorothy Smith. Two of the paying passengers, Anne Fleetwood-Hesketh (the mother of Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh) and movie director, Ruby Grierson spent their day with the children. Mrs. Fleetwood-Hesketh had volunteered early on in the voyage to help with the children, while Grierson filmed the children for a new movie about the government evacuation of children.
Among the paying passengers were some twenty foreign passengers, several of whom were fleeing from the Nazis. Many had made heart-wrenching escapes, in which they had to leave their families behind. Helen Schoenbach, a twenty-two year old German girl, had escaped from Germany with her family, now she had to leave them in England. She remembered the streets in Germany, Catholics, Jews, Slavs and the other so called 'inferior races' being taken away by soldiers, either to be killed or to work in death camps and concentration camps. One of the passengers, Mrs. Amelie von Ingersleben, a German baroness and author, had managed to cleverly escape from a concentration camp.
Among the paying passengers, ten of whom were the young sons and daughters of civilians, were the British Parliamentarian, Colonel James Baldwin-Webb, on his way to Canada to help with the Red Cross. Rudolf Olden, a German author, was forced to sail to North America, as he had been exiled from Germany for criticizing Hitler in his newspaper. With him was his wife Ika, though their daughter, Mary Olden, had been sent ahead of them on another passenger liner. Monika Lanyi, daughter of the famed German writer Thomas Mann (who had also been exiled from Germany) was traveling with her husband, Jeno. Alderman William Golightly, of the Northumberland Miners' Association, was on his way to a business meeting. Also aboard was the playwright, Arthur Wimperis, and the fashion couple Henry and Phyllis Digby-Morton.
The ten children among the fare-paying passengers included the three Bech children — Barbara, fourteen; Sonia, eleven; and Derek, nine — were travelling with their mother Marguerite. They were leaving their home in Bognor Regis, while their father, Emil, would stay in London to continue his Danish porcelain business. Patricia (Pat) Bulmer, fourteen, was traveling with her school-friend, Dorothy Galliard, fifteen, and her mother, Alice Bulmer; she was leaving her home in Wallasey. Lawrence and Patricia Croasdaile, two and nine, were traveling with their mother Florence, an American woman to live with their grandmother in Canada because their father had been captured by the Nazis when his ship was torpedoed and they were waiting for news about him. Diana "Honey" Pine, six, was traveling with her mother Emma. Anthony Quinton, fifteen, was traveling with his mother Letitia, whose mother had asked them to join her in Canada away from the war ("You're no use there," she wrote to them). Colin Richardson, eleven, was traveling alone, as his mother and father (who was an air raid warden) were staying in England with his brother, Julian, who was only five. His mother, instead, had him assigned a private escort, named Laszlo Raskai, a Hungarian BBC reporter, traveling with colleague Eric Davis, also a BBC reporter.
There were also four teenage children, three of whom were part of the Choat family. Frank Choat had served in Gallipoli and had been handicapped by his injuries. When he was taken to England he met his wife, Sylvia, and they fell in love. Now, after finishing their three children's education, they were returning to Canada. Their children were Russell Choat, sixteen; Peter Choat, eighteen, and Rachel Choat, nineteen. The other teenage child was Norma Jacoby, sixteen; she was traveling alone.SS City of Benares Passenger List
Sinking
Late in the evening of 17 September, City of Benares was sighted by U-48, commanded by Heinrich Bleichrodt, who fired two torpedoes at her at 10:00 PM. Both torpedoes missed, and at 10:01 PM on 17 September, the U-boat fired another torpedo at her. The torpedo struck the ship in the stern at 10:03 PM, causing her to sink within 31 minutes, west-southwest of Rockall and from the nearest inhabited land.