'They've Forgotten About Us for the Past 65 Years' in 1940, Britain's Worst Maritime Disaster Occurred When the Clyde-Built Lancastria Was Sunk by German Bombers.

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Pictures: Fiona Wilson/PA

CHARLES Napier was one of the lucky ones. He was on the top deck of the Lancastria, behind a ventilating shaft, when the bombs struck on that grim afternoon of 17 June 1940, five miles off the French coast at St Nazaire. "I looked out and saw a huge lump of something flying through the air," the 88-year-old recalls from his home in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. "I thought they'd hit the plane, because it was up in the air, but it was part of the deck."

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'They've Forgotten About Us for the Past 65 Years' in 1940, Britain's Worst Maritime Disaster Occurred When the Clyde-Built Lancastria Was Sunk by German Bombers.

At that point the young Royal Engineer was hit in the head by debris, and his memory of subsequent events is sketchy. In between spells of unconsciousness, he remembers looking down and watching as crowded lifeboats capsized in the oily water, some of them taken down as the massive bulk of the Clyde-built, former Cunard liner rolled over. He remembers a crazily tilting deck and a sailor who told him to get into a lifeboat and then lowered it from the davits; he has a fleeting memory...

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