( www.MaritimeCyprus.com ) This British ocean liner was commandeered by the government during World War II. It was sunk on June 17th, 1940, resulting in the loss of over 4,000 lives, possibly many more. This is considered to be the worst loss of life in the sinking of a single British ship, and the bloodiest single engagement for UK forces (in terms of lives lost) in all of WW2. This disaster claimed more lives than the combined losses of the Titanic and Lusitania . With the outbreak of the Second World War, she carried cargo before being requisitioned in April 1940 as a troopship, becoming the HMT Lancastria . She was first used to assist in the evacuation of troops from Norway. She was sunk off the French port of St. Nazaire while taking part in Operation Ariel , the evacuation of British nationals and troops from France, two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation. After a short overhaul, she left Liverpool on 14 June under Captain Rudolph Sharp (born 27 October 1885) and arrived in the mouth of the Loire estuary on 16 June. She anchored 11 miles (18 km) south-west of St. Nazaire. By the mid-afternoon of 17 June, she had embarked an unknown number (estimates range from 4,000 up to 9,000), of civilian refugees (including embassy staff, employees of Fairey Aviation of Belgium), line-of-communication troops (such as Pioneer and RASC soldiers) and RAF personnel. The ship’s official capacity was 2,200 including the 375-man crew. Captain Sharp had been instructed by the Royal Navy to “load as many men as possible without regard to the limits set down under international law”. At 1350 hrs, during an air-raid, the nearby Oronsay , a 20,000-ton Orient Liner, was hit on the bridge by a German bomb. Lancastria was free to depart and the captain of the British destroyer HMS Havelock advised her to do so, but without a destroyer escort against possible submarine attack, Sharp decided to wait. A fresh air raid began before 4 p.m. Lancastria was bombed at 1548 hrs by Junkers Ju 88 a