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Greenock is a town and administrative centre in the Inverclyde council area in Scotland and a former burgh within the historic county of Renfrewshire, located in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It forms part of a contiguous urban area with Gourock to the west and Port Glasgow to the east.
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SS City of Benares was a steam passenger ship built for Ellerman Lines by Barclay, Curle & Co of Glasgow in 1936. During the Second World War the City of Benares was used as an evacuee ship to evacuate 90 children from Britain to Canada. The ship was torpedoed in September of 1940 by the German submarine U-48 with heavy loss of life, including the death of 77 of the evacuated children. The sinking caused such public outrage in Britain that it led to Winston Churchill cancelling the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) plan to relocate British children abroad.
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The Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) was a British government sponsored organisation. The CORB evacuated 2,664 British children from England, so that they would escape the imminent threat of German invasion and the risk of enemy bombing in World War II. This was during a critical period in British history, between July and September 1940, when the Battle of Britain was raging, and German invasion forces were being amassed across the English Channel.
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Captain Sir Edward Folmer Archdale, 3rd Baronet DSC was a British baronet, Royal Navy officer, submariner during the Second World War and local politician in Northern Ireland.
SS Vestris was a 1912 passenger steamship owned by Lamport and Holt Line and used in their New York to River Plate service. On 12 November 1928 she began listing about 200 miles off Hampton Roads, Virginia, was abandoned, and sank, killing more than 100 people. Her wreck is thought to rest some 1.2 miles (2 km) beneath the North Atlantic.
David MacBrayne is a limited company owned by the Scottish Government. Formed in 1851 as a private shipping company, it became the main carrier for freight and passengers in the Hebrides, with a co-ordinated network of shipping, road haulage and bus operations. In 1973, it was merged with Caledonian Steam Packet Company as state-owned Caledonian MacBrayne. Since 2006 it has been the holding company for ferry operators CalMac Ferries Ltd and Argyll Ferries.
HMS Sabre was an Admiralty S-class destroyer of the Royal Navy launched in September 1918 at the close of World War I. She was built in Scotland by Alex Stephens and completed by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan. Commissioned for Fleet service in 1919, she was the first Royal Navy ship to carry this name.
SS Volendam was a 15,434 GRT ton ocean liner operated by Holland America Line. She was built in 1922 by Harland & Wolff Ltd, in Govan, Glasgow. Her 15,450 GRT sister ship TSS Veendam was built by Harland & Wolff the following year. She operated on transatlantic routes between Europe and the USA, sailing the Rotterdam – New York and Rotterdam – Halifax service.
Events from the year 1940 in Scotland.
References
- ↑ Sir Richard Steele (1897). Selections from the Works of Sir Richard Steele. Ginn. pp. 14–.
- ↑ Newspaper Press Directory. Benn Brothers. 1928.
- ↑ Henry Alan Moisley (1962). The county of Renfrew. Collins.
- ↑ The Gourock Times, 6 September 1940