LIFEBOAT Comes to Jack Studio Theatre

On Friday 13 September 1940, a ship, The City of Benares, set sail from Liverpool for Canada. On board were 90 evacuees escaping the bombing and dangers of war torn Britain. Four days into the crossing, the ship was torpedoed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and sank. Only eleven of the evacuees survived.

Two fifteen year old school girls, Bess Walder and Beth Cummings, spent 19 terrifying hours in the water on an upturned lifeboat. They willed each other to survive. LIFEBOAT tells their extraordinary true story, a story of courage, of resilience and of enduring friendship. "We were not in the business of giving up."

LIFEBOAT is produced by the same team behind the five star and Off West End nominated productions of Kes and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

Box office: www.brockleyjack.co.uk or 0333 666 3366 (£1.50 fee for phone bookings only)

Tickets: £16, £13 conc.

The City of Benares. On 13th September 1940, The City of Benares left Liverpool bound for Canada. On board were 90 evacuee children, who were being relocated as part of the Children's Overseas Reception Board's plan to take British children away from the effects of the Blitz.

On the night of September 17, in the middle of a storm, the ship was rocked by a huge explosion. It had been tracked and targeted by a German submarine, which launched a torpedo into the liner's hold. She sank within thirty minutes. Some children were killed in the explosion, and some were trapped in their cabins. Others died when the lifeboats were launched incorrectly and children were tipped into the sea.

For nineteen hours during the night and day that followed, Bess Walder and Beth Cummings clung to their overturned lifeboat in the stormy seas. They were wearing only pyjamas and dressing gowns.

At the time, the sinking of City of Benares was the worst maritime disaster of the war. It is estimated that 258 lives were lost. Twenty families lost two children or more, one family lost five.

Captain Bleichrodt, captain of the U-boat, was later to be charged with War Crimes but was cleared on the grounds that he could not have known, nor be expected to know, that children were aboard. The sinking caused such public outrage in Britain that it led to Winston Churchill cancelling the Children's Overseas Reception Board plan to relocate British children abroad.

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