The memorial, that appears to be carved from
black granite, is located in the entrance to St Peter's Italian church in
Clerkenwell, London. The memorial reads:
"IN MEMORIA DEI PERITI NELL'
AFFONDAMENTO
DELL' ARANDORA STAR
2 LUGLIO 1940
..IL RICORDO CHE E' VIVO NEL CUORE DEI
PARENTI, DEI SUPERSTITTI E' COLONIA ITALIANA
4 NOVEMBRE 1960"
Translated to English this reads:
"IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO PERISHED IN THE
SINKING
OF THE ARANDORA STAR
2 JULY 1940
THE MEMORY LIES IN THE HEART OF THE
RELATIVES, THE SURVIVORS AND THE ITALIAN COMMUNITY
4 NOVEMBER 1960"
At the start of the Second World War,
Italian and German citizens, living in the United Kingdom, were interred. This
is the story of what happened to some of them in 1940:
"It was there (at Liverpool) on June 29th 1940, after the most strenuous and
eventful month of her career, that the senior officers of the Arandora Star
heard that they were to go alongside next day to embark a large number of German
and Italian internees and some prisoners of war. These were destined for St.
Johns, Newfoundland.
These internees primarily consisted of enemy aliens, but during the first two
years of the Second World War other aliens were also interned, including
refugees who had fled Nazi Germany to escape persecution. Fears of invasion led
to a general feeling of hostility towards all enemy aliens. After the outbreak
of war in September 1939, known Nazi sympathisers were rounded up. This was the
start of a campaign, which lasted until mid 1940, by which time, 8000 internees
had been gathered into camps, to be deported to the dominions. What was
appalling by today's standards, was that their wives and families were left
behind without any information of their whereabouts or any communication.
At about 4.00 a.m. on the 2nd July 1940 the Arandora Star sailed from Liverpool.
In all she carried 1,673 people, made up as follows:
Officers & Crew 174
Military Guard 200
German Interned Males 479
German POW 86
Italian Interned Males 734
The weather was fine when the ship reached the open sea. Steaming at 15 knots
and zigzagging, she went unescorted. All went well until 6.15 a.m. on the 2nd
July when the ship, steering west, was suddenly torpedoed in a position about 75
miles west of the Bloody Foreland [7] [, County Donegal. The Chief Officer, Mr.
F. B. Brown and the Third Officer, Mr. W. H. Tulip, were both on the bridge.
Four extra lookouts were posted but no vestige of the submarine was seen. The
submarine was the German U-47, commanded by Korvkpt. Gunther Prien which later
went missing on the 7th March 1941.
The torpedo struck and exploded on the starboard at the after engine-room, which
was flooded at once to sea level. Two engineer officers and all the men below
were either drowned or killed in the blast. The turbines were completely
wrecked. The main and emergency generators were put out of action, which flung
the ship into complete darkness; and all communications between the bridge,
engine-room and wireless office were destroyed. One lifeboat on the starboard
side was smashed by the explosion and the davits and falls of another were
damaged. The ship�s position was being plotted on the chart every half-hour
and as soon as the torpedo struck Mr. Brown sent the position to the wireless
room with orders to send out an S.O.S. It was duly sent out and answered by
Malin Head, radio station.
Out of a total of 12 boats, 10 were lowered, only to be overcrowded by swarms of
prisoners going down the side ladders and falls. The rest of the rafts were
launched overboard.
The list of the ship rapidly increased and by 07.15 a.m. it was apparent she was
going to sink. It was then that Captain Moulton and his senior officers walked
over the side as the water came up to meet them. And so at 07.20 a.m. the
Arandora Star rolled over, flung her bows vertically in the air and went to the
bottom, carrying many people with her. Left on the heaving surface were 10
lifeboats and an ever widening patch of fuel oil littered with rafts, wreckage
and the heads of swimmers.
Royal Navy Coastal Command was rapidly on the scene, for at about 9.30 a.m. a
Royal Air force Sunderland flying boat appeared and dropped first-aid outfits,
food and cigarettes in watertight bags together with a message to say help was
on the way. The aircraft circled overhead until about 1.0 p.m., when the
Canadian destroyer H.M.C.S. St. Laurent, Commander H. G. De Wolf, arrived at
full speed for the work of rescue.
It was a task of the greatest difficulty which took in all 5 hours. Picking up
people in the boats was easy enough; but rescuing small parties or individual
people clinging to rafts or wreckage required patience and great nicety of
judgment, not to mention good seamanship. Few of the survivors could help
themselves, or even grasp a rope, because of the scum of oil with which they and
the sea was covered. Sailors had to be put over the side with bowlines with
which many of the swimmers were hoisted bodily on board.
A British destroyer, H.M.S. Walker, arrived later and scoured the area; but no
further survivors were found.
It was the evening by the time St. Laurent had rescued all she could find: some
868 people, who were landed next day at Greenock. With a thousand people on
board, counting her own crew, the St. Laurent was a very crowded ship. How she
cared for a crowd of exhausted survivors which completely filled the mess-decks,
officers quarters, and one boiler-room, leaving a number to be accommodated
behind the dubious shelter of canvas screens on the upper deck, is difficult to
realise.
In the tragic disaster Captain E. W. Moulton and 12 other officers, together
with 42 of the crew of the Arandora Star lost their lives. Of the military guard
37 were drowned, with 470 Italians and 243 Germans, a total death roll of 805
souls of the 1,673 carried.
The harsh policy of deportation was gradually relaxed after the sinking of the
S.S. Arandora Star. This disaster led to vigorous protests about the British
internment policy, which was changed to internment of enemy aliens in camps in
Britain only."
Source Blue Star Line.