Two days ago, we looked at the heartbreaking story of the SS City of Benares, and yesterday we looked more closely at the Children’s Overseas Reception Board, the government scheme which sent British children abroad in the hope of keeping them safe from the war. Today I want to go back a few weeks before the City of Benares disaster, because another ship carrying children had already shown just how dangerous these journeys could be.
Her name was the SS Volendam.
In August 1940, the Volendam left Britain carrying hundreds of passengers, including around 320 children travelling under the CORB scheme. They were heading towards Canada, where families were waiting to give them homes away from the bombing and the threat of invasion in Britain.
I keep thinking about what those children must have felt as they left. For some it may have seemed like a great adventure, but behind them were Mums and Dads who had made an incredibly difficult decision. They were sending their children across the sea because they believed that, however painful the separation, it might give them the best chance of staying safe.
During the night of the 30th and 31st of August 1940, that sense of safety disappeared. At the time, the Volendam was sailing in Convoy OB-205 when she was torpedoed by the German U-boat U-60.
The torpedo hit the front of the ship and water began pouring into her holds. With the Volendam badly damaged, the order was given to abandon ship, and hundreds of people now had to make their way into lifeboats in the darkness.
Thankfully, the children had practised what to do before leaving port. Contemporary accounts describe them remaining remarkably calm as they were taken from their cabins and brought to their boat stations, with some reportedly singing “Roll Out the Barrel” while they waited to be rescued.
It is difficult to imagine the scene. Children who had been sent abroad to escape the dangers of war were now sitting in lifeboats at sea after the ship beneath them had been torpedoed.
But this story had an outcome that could so easily have been very different. Other ships came to their aid and all of the children were rescued, along with the other passengers. One member of the Volendam’s crew, the purser, sadly lost his life during the evacuation.
The Volendam herself did not sink. She was eventually taken in tow, and when she was later examined an extraordinary discovery was made: another torpedo had become lodged in her bow without exploding.
When I read that, I cannot help thinking how narrowly disaster had been avoided. Had that second torpedo exploded, the story of the Volendam might have been remembered very differently.
The children were brought back to Britain, but for some families the ordeal did not end there. Parents still had to decide whether to try again and send their children abroad on another ship.
Remarkably, two of the children who had survived the Volendam were later sent abroad again and were among the CORB children aboard the SS City of Benares.
And this is where the story connects so painfully with the one we looked at two days ago.
Less than three weeks later, on the 17th of September 1940, the SS City of Benares was torpedoed while carrying another group of children towards Canada. This time there was no fortunate ending. Seventy-seven children lost their lives, and the government-sponsored scheme was suspended.
Looking at these stories together makes the decision facing parents in 1940 seem even more impossible. Keep your children at home while Britain faced bombing and the possibility of invasion, or send them away across a dangerous sea in the hope that somewhere far away from home might be safer.
Yesterday I asked what you would have done if you had been one of those parents. After reading what happened aboard the Volendam, I think that question becomes even harder.
If your child had survived the Volendam and returned home, would you have been able to let them leave Britain for a second time?
I would love to hear what you think, and if your family has a connection to the children who were sent abroad during the war, please do share their story.
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