The Last Lifeboat, page 29
She takes a moment at the top of the steep cliff steps to catch her breath, hands on her hips, head tipped towards the sky. Madeleine and Kitty race past. Howard calls to them to wait for him. Walter follows behind with his new dog. Alice loves the chaos when everyone visits, but there are three guests, in particular, she is most eager to see.
In front of the house, a car pulls up. A familiar figure steps out, followed by a younger woman and a handsome young man. Alice can never believe how much the children grow every year. She shields her eyes from the glare of the sun as her visitors walk towards her.
Lily has hardly altered over the years. The flecks of grey in her hair are unmistakable now, but her olive-green eyes carry the same graceful intensity Alice remembers from their first meeting.
Alice pulls her into a warm embrace. ‘It’s so lovely to see you. You’re looking well!’
Lily kisses Alice’s cheek. ‘And you. I swear you get younger every year!’
Their hands grip each other’s, years of friendship and understanding entwined among their fingers.
She welcomes Georgie next, taking a moment to admire her. ‘Dear Georgie! Look at you!’ The confident little girl has blossomed into such a vibrant young woman.
And then he steps forward.
It always catches Alice by surprise, how much she loves this boy, how much her heart swells to see him.
She presses her hands to his cheeks, once so pale and cold, now lightly sun-kissed and full of the rosy flush of youth. She studies his face; searching, remembering. There are a thousand things she wants to say, but only two words are ever needed for their story to begin again, to take them back, and carry them on.
He takes a deep breath, and smiles. ‘Hello, Auntie.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
All of us children who are still at home think continually of our friends and relations who have gone overseas, who have travelled thousands of miles to find a wartime home and a kindly welcome in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States of America. My sister and I feel we know quite a lot about these countries. Our father and mother have so often talked to us of their visits to different parts of the world, so it is not difficult for us to picture the sort of life you are all leading, and to think of all the new sights you must be seeing and the adventures you must be having …
Extract from a message from Princess Elizabeth to evacuated children, broadcast on BBC Children’s Hour in 1940
The events set out in this novel, while a work of fiction, are closely based on the sinking of British evacuee ship, SS City of Benares, in the mid-Atlantic on 17 September 1940. The known dates and facts surrounding the event, and the eight days that followed for the survivors in lifeboat twelve, inspired my story.
The first wave of mass evacuation from Britain, known as Operation Pied Piper, took place in September 1939 following the announcement that Britain was at war with Germany. The evacuation of children from cities and towns to the safety of the countryside has been well documented over the decades since, but very little has been written about the second wave of mass evacuation and the ‘seavacuees’, who not only left their families and homes, but also left Britain at a time when it was firmly believed that Hitler would invade and the nightly terror of the Blitz bombing campaign began in earnest.
A total of 3,100 children were sent to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa under the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB) scheme between July and September 1940. SS City of Benares, carrying ninety CORB children, was struck by a torpedo fired from German submarine U-48 in the Atlantic Ocean just after 10 p.m. on 17 September 1940. Earlier that day, British naval escorts had left the outbound Benares convoy to meet an inbound supply convoy, their captains believing the vessels to be in safe waters after sailing beyond the range at which it was believed U-boats were operating. This was known as the limit of convoy escort. The German U-boat commander who ordered the torpedo strike on SS City of Benares had stalked the ship for several hours before giving the order to fire. In rough seas, the first torpedo missed its target. A second torpedo also missed. It was the third torpedo fired at the City of Benares that struck the fatal blow. The ship sank within thirty minutes of being hit.
Only seven CORB children were initially rescued by HMS Hurricane, which steamed 480 kilometres to the rescue. It reached the stricken survivors sixteen hours after their ordeal began. Many who had survived the initial torpedo strike and made it to a lifeboat perished in the atrocious conditions at sea. A second vessel in the Benares convoy was also struck by a torpedo from U-48 that night. One of the lifeboats from that vessel was mistaken for one of the City of Benares’s lifeboats, and therefore all the Benares lifeboats were believed to have been accounted for. However, the last lifeboat to launch from City of Benares, having taken on less water and in better condition than the other lifeboats, had already sailed beyond the site of the initial impact and was subsequently missed by HMS Hurricane during its rescue mission.
Eight days later, the pilot of an RAF Sunderland flying boat, accompanying another convoy, spotted the lost lifeboat. Six more CORB children had miraculously survived, bringing the total number of surviving children to just thirteen out of the ninety who had boarded the ship. All future CORB sailings were immediately cancelled. Although there was no official inquiry into the tragedy, shipping rules were eventually changed to supply all convoys with special ships, whose sole purpose would be to rescue any survivors of a shipwreck. By the end of the war, these special rescue ships had saved over four thousand lives.
My characters, while inspired by accounts of those aboard City of Benares, are all fictional. Alice King is inspired by Mary Cornish, a music teacher who found herself the only woman in lifeboat twelve and took most of the responsibility for the six children’s welfare. She was awarded an OBE for her courage. Owen Shaw/Richard Heath is partly inspired by escort Michael Rennie, who took daily swims around the lifeboat and was particularly remembered for keeping the children’s spirits up with his rather unconventional attitude.
Lily Nicholls is drawn entirely from my imagination. I wanted to explore the impact of a tragedy such as this not just from the point of view of those on board the ship, and those in the lost lifeboat, but also from the point of view of those back home in England. I particularly wanted to explore these events from a mother’s perspective and to consider the impossible decisions and unimaginable ‘what ifs’ that so many parents faced during the war.
The details set out in Kitty’s letter to the Times Educational Supplement are drawn from various correspondences between the Minister for Shipping, the Admiralty, and Geoffrey Shakespeare (the head of the CORB programme), and from depositions of the surviving crew of the City of Benares. While the letter is of my own imagination, the points set out in it are very much based in fact. Many parents wrote letters to editors of newspapers and the Times Educational Supplement, but most were heavily censored, or never printed.
Elsie’s and Peter’s diary entries are inspired by the Mass-Observation archives held at the University of Sussex, and brilliantly captured in the book Blitz Spirit, compiled by Becky Brown. During World War II, around five hundred men and women kept personal diaries of their experience as part of a national social observation experiment called Mass-Observation. These diary entries were submitted in monthly instalments. No special instructions were given to diarists, and consequently the diaries vary considerably in style and content. Although some diarists maintained a continuous flow for years on end, others wrote intermittently or for only short periods. Most stopped after 1945, although a few continued well into the post-war years. The last diary entry received was written in 1967.
In writing Peter, Walter, Howard and Owen/Richard, I also hoped to consider a different experience for men responding to the call to do their bit. So often, we hear the story of the heroic soldier, but what of those men who refused to fight, or who found the experience so terrifying that they couldn’t bear to continue?
And, finally, the letter Ada receives from Billy, months after the tragedy, is based in devastating fact. Dozens of letters, written by the children in Liverpool before they set sail on City of Benares, were found several months after the sinking, and sent on to grieving parents. I learned about this through a special World War II episode of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, aired in September 2019, which featured a collection of some fifty pieces of correspondence relating to the CORB evacuation scheme, among them a postcard, written by nine-year-old Audrey Mansfield, who died in the tragedy. The postcard was received by her parents in November 1940, two months after their daughter had died.
There is a memorial to CORB escort Michael Rennie, and the City of Benares victims, in the Parish Church of St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb. Many details about City of Benares and other evacuee ships are held at Liverpool’s Maritime Museum and the Imperial War Museum in London.
As I write this note in November 2022, children are, once again, being separated from their families, evacuated from their homes and countries, and displaced by war.
‘Every war is a war against children.’
Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children
READER QUESTIONS
The Last Lifeboat focuses on overseas evacuation, rather than the better-known accounts of British children who were evacuated from cities to the countryside at the outbreak of war during Operation Pied Piper. In what ways did reading about this second phase of mass evacuation, and the decision to send children overseas, surprise you?
Lily faces an impossible decision: whether to send her children away, or whether to keep them with her in London. How did you respond to her anguish in reaching that decision, and her emotional state following the children’s departure?
The novel moves between the experiences of two very different women, both faced with life-changing decisions. Whose narrative arc did you relate to most – Alice or Lily? Why?
How did you feel when reading the scenes in the lifeboat? Who were you rooting for, and why?
Historical fiction offers a way for readers to step into a period of history and walk in the shoes of those whose stories have been forgotten or unexplored. In what ways has The Last Lifeboat made you think about WWII differently? What is it about reading historical fiction that you particularly enjoy?
Do you enjoy reading stories about survival? How do you react emotionally when characters you care for are placed in danger?
What other books have you read in which survival, or disaster at sea, are a setting or theme?
We often wonder what we would do if faced with a life-or-death situation. Did the actions of any of the characters in the lifeboat surprise you?
Who was your favourite main character in the book, and why? Would you like to see any character’s story developed further?
While many WWII novels and movies focus on the men who bravely fought for their countries, The Last Lifeboat considers issues of desertion, failed medicals, conscientious objectors and fatal training accidents. What were your thoughts on these responses to war by the men in the book?
Mass-Observation was established for ordinary British civilians to record their thoughts and experiences of war. Had you heard about Mass-Observation before reading The Last Lifeboat? Did you enjoy reading the fictional diary entries included in the novel, and why do you think the author included them?
In the closing scene, we see the connection that has endured between Alice and Lily, and Alice and Arthur. If you could meet up with someone who had a significant impact on your life – either as a child, or as an adult – who would that be, and why?
What were your feelings on finishing the book? In what ways did the ending surprise you? Would you change the ending for any of the characters?
What three words would you use to describe the novel to a friend?
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
In researching and writing The Last Lifeboat, I read dozens of articles and books about the subject of overseas evacuation and the specific events relating to the sinking of SS City of Benares. Some were very moving personal accounts of the tragedy by those who were there, or had relatives on board the ship and who later told them about the tragedy. Others considered the war in Britain, and mass evacuation, more widely. Each item was incredibly helpful in developing my practical and emotional understanding of wartime Britain, overseas evacuation, and in helping me to step into the shoes of the survivors, particularly those in lifeboat twelve. The following books were particularly helpful during my research:
Barker, Ralph, Children of the Benares: A War Crime and its Victims (Methuen, 1987)
Brown, Becky, Blitz Spirit: 1939–1945 (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020)
Heiligman, Deborah, Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of ‘The Children’s Ship’ (Henry Holt, 2019)
Huxley, Elspeth, Atlantic Ordeal: The Story of Mary Cornish (Chatto & Windus, 1941)
Mann, Jessica, Out of Harm’s Way: The Wartime Evacuation of Children from Britain (Headline, 2005)
Menzies, Janet, Children of the Doomed Voyage (Wiley, 2005)
Nagorski, Tom, Miracles on the Water: The Heroic Survivors of a World War II U-Boat Attack (Hachette, 2015)
Stilgoe, John R., Lifeboat (University of Virginia Press, 2007)
Other books I have enjoyed which focus on stories of human endurance and survival:
Lansing, Alfred, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Basic Books, 2014)
Napolitano, Ann, Dear Edward (Viking, 2020)
Rogan, Charlotte, The Lifeboat (Little, Brown, 2013)
Simpson, Joe, Touching the Void (Vintage, 2008)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Although my name is on the cover, it takes an entire team (or crew, in this case) to create a book, so forgive me for gushing about those behind the scenes, without whom I am just a girl, standing in front of a blank page.
As always, enormous thanks to my agent, Michelle Brower, who continues to push and steer me with a steady hand, and whose assurance, talent and instinct knows no bounds. I am so proud to be part of the mighty Team Trellis.
This book has taken my words to an exciting new home at Penguin Random House/Berkley in the USA. To Claire Zion, Editor in Chief, thank you so much for your enthusiastic response and incredibly warm welcome. I’m so thrilled to be the new girl! And I honestly cannot say enough about my incredible editors, Amanda Bergeron at Berkley and Lynne Drew at HarperFiction, for their faith in my writing, and their tenacity and passion in making this book the best it could possibly be. I love working with you both! Thanks also to Katie Lumsden and Lucy Stewart, whose keen eyes shaped the book this has become, and thank you, as always, to the brilliant Kimberley Young and Kate Elton, for your continued support.
Thank you to Craig Burke, Hannah Engler, Tara O’Connor, Sareer Khader and countless others at Berkley for welcoming me to the family with your open arms and brilliant talents, and huge thanks to the wonderful teams at HarperFiction and HarperCollins Ireland, whose continued support and enthusiasm for my words ten years on means everything. A special mention to the copyeditors for spotting my bloopers and sparing my blushes, and to the cover designers, Colleen Reinhart in the US and Claire Ward in the UK, and everyone in the art departments who worked their visual magic on my words. A special mention to photographer, Thomas Hallman, and his granddaughter, Zinnia Jane Munilla, who was a wonderful model for the children in the lifeboat on the US cover.
I am nothing without my family, friends, fellow writers and a chilled bottle of rosé. Group hugs and massive thanks to Catherine Ryan Howard, Carmel Harrington and Heather Webb, for always having my back and an endless resource of calm advice. A huge historical high five to Gill Paul, Tracy Rees, Dinah Jefferies, Eve Chase, Liz Trenow and Jenny Ashcroft, who kept me smiling through our Covid-lockdown Zooms and have been so generous in their support.
To my sister Helen, apologies for always showing you the worst version of the book before anyone else has seen it. This version is way better! To Tanya, Ciara, and Angela, thank you for the walks, lunches, brunches, and laughter; and to Damien, Max, and Sam, who keep my feet firmly on the ground, supply emergency Turkish Delight at just the right time, and catch the big spiders – my eternal love and thanks. And to Puffin, cat supreme and constant companion. I’ll let you out in a minute.
Finally, to you, the reader. Thank you for choosing to spend time with my book. I am beyond grateful.
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