The voyage of the SS City of Benares was meant to save children. Britain was under attack, and parents were being asked to make an almost impossible decision. Should they keep their children close while bombs fell around them, or send them across the Atlantic to safety? Some of their homes had been destroyed in the bombing as well. The Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB) had already helped thousands of children reach Canada and other countries without tragedy. There was every reason to hope these children would be among them.
She left Liverpool on Friday, September 13, 1940, with naval military escorts. On board were 406 people, including 90 children evacuated via the government’s CORB program to protect them from the Blitz. The first few days of the voyage were good ones, and the children were having an adventure. By September 17, the convoy reached a point roughly 250 miles west of Ireland. As planned, the destroyers assigned to the convoy detached to escort another convoy, leaving the merchant ships to continue on their own.
That night, a severe storm struck, causing heavy seas and gale-force winds. Out in the dark, the German submarine U-48 spotted the silhouette of the City of Benares. At 11:45 PM, a torpedo struck the ship’s stern. It struck right below where the children were sleeping, throwing them from their bunks into the freezing water rushing in. The children’s escorts risked their lives and went below to get as many as they could.
The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Hurricane arrived 24 hours later and pulled 105 shivering survivors from the water, but the vast majority of the children had already succumbed to hypothermia or drowning. In total, 258 people died, including 77 of the 90 CORB children. Now, Lifeboat 12, carrying Mary Cornish, Father Rory O’Sullivan, six of the CORB boys, and dozens of others, had drifted away from the main search area and was missed by the destroyer. For the next eight days, those aboard the lifeboat battled hunger, thirst, storms, and exhaustion before finally being spotted by an RAF flying boat and rescued by HMS Anthony.
While adrift in the Atlantic for eight days, Mary Cornish did what she knew how to do. After risking her own life by returning below decks to search for more children, Mary Cornish spent eight days adrift in Lifeboat 12 doing what she knew best. She comforted children. She kept them moving. She made up games. She gave frightened boys something to think about besides the endless sea around them. Sometimes courage doesn’t look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like a schoolteacher refusing to let children lose hope. After they were found, she wasn’t seeking recognition. After the rescue, she was honored for her bravery, and Elspeth Huxley even wrote a book about her called Atlantic Ordeal: The Story of Mary Cornish. I have a few stories about the children, Mary, and other heroes on the companion page. They are worth checking out with one of the children earning a commendation for brave conduct.
It’s easy for us to say today that we would never have put our children on a ship crossing the Atlantic during wartime. But we know how the story ends. Those parents didn’t. They had already watched France fall. They saw London being bombed night after night and heard reports that Germany was preparing to invade Britain. Faced with those frightening realities, many believed sending their children overseas offered the best chance of keeping them safe. They didn’t know if Britain would even survive.
The CORB program had already transported 2,664 British children overseas between July and September 1940. Most reached safety without the kind of disaster that struck the City of Benares. The City of Benares wasn’t just a tragedy for the families who lost children. It was also heartbreaking for the families whose children had already arrived safely in Canada and elsewhere through CORB. The program had been working. That success is precisely why other parents were willing to trust it. The government shut the program down after this event.
The German crew of U-48 reportedly did not learn until later that children had been aboard. Several crewmen were said to have expressed shock and regret. Some later accounts claim that their commander, Heinrich Bleichrodt, never fully recovered from the knowledge of what his torpedo had done. However, the extent of his personal remorse is difficult to know. Unlike the RMS Lusitania, there is no evidence that the City of Benares was carrying ammunition or other military cargo.
Most people have never heard of the City of Benares. They should. It reminds us that history is not only made by famous leaders and great battles. Sometimes it is written by ordinary parents trying to protect their children, and by ordinary people like Mary Cornish who refused to give up hope when everything around them was slipping away.
