Bibliograph

Churchill's thin grey line, British merchant ships at war 1939-1945, Bernard Edwards

Type

Label

Churchill's thin grey line, British merchant ships at war 1939-1945, Bernard Edwards

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Churchill's thin grey line

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Bernard Edwards

Sub title

British merchant ships at war 1939-1945

Summary

The first British casualties of the Second World War were not members of the Royal Navy, the army, or the Royal Air Force. They were British merchant seamen on the transatlantic passenger liner SS Athenia, torpedoed by a German U-30 submarine on September 3, 1939. For the duration of the war, Britain's merchant fleet performed a vital role, carrying the essential supplies that kept the country running during the darkest days and made victory possible. Their achievements came at a terrible cost with 2,535 British oceangoing merchant ships being sunk and, of the 185,000 men and women serving in the British Merchant Navy at the time, 36,749 sacrificed their lives. Another 4,707 were wounded and 5,720 ended up as prisoners of war. Their casualty rate of twenty-five percent was second only to RAF Bomber Command's. Thoroughly researched and full of fascinating true accounts, Bernard Edwards's Churchill's Thin Grey Line tells the inspiring story of those brave civilian volunteers who fought so gallantly to defend their ships, cargo, and country

Target audience

adult

Classification