Albatros 1/1250 Alk123 RMS Lancastria, Cunard Line Troopship (1940)
Launched on the Clyde, Scotland, in 1920 as the Tyrrhenia for the Anchor Line, a subsidiary of Cunard, the 16,243ton, 578foot (176m) liner could carry 2,200 passengers in three classes and was built by William Beardmore and Company of Glasgow, Scotland. She made her maiden voyage on 19 June 1922.
Renamed Lancastria in 1924, after American passengers complained that they could not properly pronounce Tyrrhenia, she sailed scheduled routes from Liverpool to New York until 1932, and was then used as a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. With the outbreak of the Second World War, she carried cargo before being requisitioned in April 1940 as a troopship, becoming the HMT Lancastria. She was first used to assist in the evacuation of troops from Norway.
After a short overhaul, she left Liverpool on 14 June under Captain Rudolph Sharp and arrived in the mouth of the Loire river estuary on 16 June. By the mid-afternoon of 17 June, she had embarked an unknown number (estimates range from 4,000 up to 9,000) of civilian refugees and RAF personnel. The ship's official capacity was 2,200. She was sunk off the French port of St. Nazaire while taking part in Operation Ariel, the evacuation of British nationals and troops from France, two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation. She was bombed at 15:48 by Junkers 88 aircraft from II. Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 30. Three direct hits caused the ship to list first to starboard then to port and she rolled over and sank within twenty minutes. Over 1,400 tons of fuel oil leaked into the sea and was set partially ablaze, possibly by strafing. Many drowned, were choked by the oil, or were shot by the strafing German aircraft. There were 2,477 survivors. The death toll accounted for roughly a third of the total losses of the British Expeditionary Force in France. She sank around 5nm south of Moulin Point in the Charpentier roads, around 9nm out of the Port of St. Nazaire.
This model shows the red funnel painted black. Rumour has it that Lancastria arrived at the port of St. Nazaire with her funnel painted red but the Boarding Officer refused to load passengers until the red had been painted out with black. The Captain refused, saying that his ship had only been leased by HM Government, not bought. It has been said that the compromise was to cover the red with soot from the funnel. This model represents the ship only for the last few hours of her service life.